Jamie Kennedy: The Hollywood Interview

Comic Jamie Kennedy.

JAMIE KENNEDY TALKS BACK WITH HECKLER
By
Alex Simon

Jamie Kennedy entered the world of standup comedy in the 1990s, after first becoming interested in acting at age 15. Born May 25, 1970 in Upper Darby, PA., Kennedy was the youngest of six children, and moved out to Los Angeles to pursue his dream, after scoring a job as an extra in the classic "Dead Poets Society" in 1989.

Kennedy paid his dues for years on the standup comedy circuit before breaking through, leading to film and television work alike, most notably “The Jamie Kennedy Experiment” from Warner Bros. Television, which ran from 2002-2004. In addition to over 50 TV and movie appearances, Kennedy authored the book “Wannabe: A Hollywood Experiment,” detailing his early years of struggle in Hollywood.

Kennedy makes his documentary film debut with “Heckler,” directed by Mike Addis, which arrives on DVD from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment on September 9. “Heckler” initially takes a pointed look at the abuse standup comics must face while they’re onstage, then goes into a much deeper look at how critical our culture has become across the board. Jamie Kennedy spoke to us recently about “Heckler,” and the ups and downs of being in the spotlight.

How did the idea for “Heckler” come about?
I had been doing standup and comedy films for a while and sometimes when I’d go onstage, hecklers would interrupt the show. I started filming it, and when I sat down to watch it, I realized I had something really funny. My buddy Michael Addis and I thought we should make a movie about how other comedians dealt with hecklers. Around this same time, I started reading the reviews of my films and thinking ‘Wow, those are some pretty bad reviews,’ and it just all came together. (laughs) It just all came together how we’re all a part of this really critical culture.

It was interesting how you broke it up into the different categories of hecklers, critics, and so on, and it also said a lot that you got a who’s-who list of people to participate in the film, from Mike Ditka to George Lucas.
Yeah, any movie with Ron Jeremy and George Lucas in it has to be pretty interesting, right? (laughs) And if I’d kept going for another five months or so, I bet I could have gotten even more people to take part. Most we got to interview by calling up and asking them. I really did try to get Tom Cruise and Brittany Spears, it’s just hard to get through those camps, but they all have stories about what it’s like to be abused by some of these people.

Let’s talk about the different categories and start out with your basic heckler. What do you think motivates your basic heckler in an audience at a comedy club?
Basically, they’re drunk and most of the time if they are drunk, the heckler is a woman. And if they’re drunk, they like to shout out things. Maybe they work hard during the week, and when the come into the club on the weekends, they get drunk and go nuts. Sometimes they’re funny, sometimes they’re obnoxious, and sometimes they’re downright belligerent. That’s just the booze talking. The other time is that people want to “help” you, by shouting out the punchline before you can get to it and participate in your act, so to speak. And sometimes it is funny, if you play it off right. Some guys get really upset by those kinds of hecklers, others just play it off. I’m more of that kind, the loosey-goosey school of just letting it roll off my back.

The DVD of Heckler.

You showed the one clip of a comic bashing his guitar over the head of a heckler who wouldn’t shut up.
That’s a legendary clip. Everyone in the comedy world knows that story. There are those very rare times when people really challenge you. I find that in the beginning of your career, people give over to you more, and then as you get more established, people can get more harsh. About a year ago, this guy got really belligerent and jumped on the stage and was like “You call this funny?” And he started air-punching, and then walked out. I don’t know if he was drunk or trying to get attention, or what. Very strange.

The one Asian comedian you interviewed actually did get punched out onstage.
Yeah, that’s rare. Nobody’s ever gotten physical with me.

Let’s talk about the critics. You talk about how they’ve gone, in the past 25 or 30 years, from being thoughtful advisors about what you should and shouldn’t go to see, to being really nasty, as if that’s their entire purpose: to show you how clever and mean they can be.
I try not to bash the critics, and we try to show both sides with Richard Roeper, and Leonard Maltin, but the real critics are the old school ones like those guys, who don’t do that. But there’s this new breed of people who make a point of going after you and never showing their faces, a lot of them are bloggers. I think a lot of the best feedback you can get is peer-to-peer feedback. But even if you look at some of the comments people make on sites like Amazon.com, some of the people on there consider themselves self-appointed, brilliant critics. The problem is that they go after you personally, which is kind of upsetting.

Do you think they realize how hurtful they’re being towards the people that they attack—that they’re actually dealing with real people?
Not at all. I don’t think they view the people they’re going after as real. It’s like if you see a picture of something it’s not real. The first time I saw the Universal Studios tram, I couldn’t believe it was real. Sometimes people will want to come up and get a picture with me, and it could be really obvious that I’m having a bad day, like I’ve got a bloody nose or something, and they just don’t care. It’s like they don’t see me as a regular, normal person like they are. It’s like I’m an object. I really wanted to explore who these people are.

What do you think has caused the rise of our critical culture over the past 25 years?
Definitely what Andy Warhol said about people wanting their 15 minutes of fame, it’s accessibility, now that everyone has access to the Internet to post whatever films they shoot or write whatever they want anonymously, I think people are starting to feel empowered, as opposed to having some sense of respect for those in the public eye. Now it’s like people get really angry at you if you’re in the public eye. Everyone should absolutely go for their moment in the sun, but you don’t have to put out someone else’s flame in the process. I think most people at their deepest core have no idea what their real talent is, and we all have something to give. But those people make up for that empty feeling by tearing down others. It’s the little man that belittles.

I thought Leonard Maltin put it best.
Yeah, it’s like you start to take seriously what you read on the bathroom wall, and that wall gets read by 30 million people. Then people start believing it! But they don’t care, that’s the whole thing. No one checks their facts, does any research, checks out the backstory. If you have a scar on your face, suddenly you were in a knife fight. You didn’t fall down the stairs. Like, I have no idea what really happened with Christian Bale and his family, and I don’t care. That’s his business. But it was all over the news like some international incident that was going to affect the security of the world. It’s ridiculous. The poor guy is starring in the biggest movie of all time, then all of the sudden somebody starts spreading rumors, trying to take him down?

Interesting timing, wasn’t it?
Yeah, very interesting. It’s like “You’re riding too high. Gotta take you down.” No matter what the facts are, people assume you’re guilty. That’s just our society: we always go negative first. I think if you go through enough of that, people will then accept you. People like Brittany Spears, I think she’s really making some legitimate strides, and now people want her to come back. It’s like people want you to prove yourself, to see how much you can take, before they’ll really accept you.

Kennedy interviewng critic Richard Roeper for Heckler.

I thought it was interesting that most of your really harsh critics, primarily from the Internet, that you confronted were complete pussies in how they wouldn’t acknowledge how mean they were to you. But you also had the one “critic” who came off as a complete sociopath, admitting he was getting off by causing you pain.
To me, he was more sad because he knew what he was doing. He wants to act like he’s crazy and this and that, but he also couldn’t admit one thing positive. I tried to get him to make a single positive comment about someone, or something, and he couldn’t. That said it all to me. I could find positive things about if I looked hard enough. We all have positive qualities.

Joe Mantegna said it best when he described most of these guys as guys who live in their mother’s basements. They’re like the guys who go to “Star Trek” conventions who’ve never kissed a girl—and they’re 38!
I know! (laughs) That’s so funny. What’s weird is that culture is becoming bigger and bigger: all these angry, disenfranchised guys who live through video games and comic books. I’m going to ComicCon this weekend, and I’m sure I’m going to encounter a lot of these people. I was never into any of that stuff, to be honest.

It’s like the Travis Bickle character from “Taxi Driver” now has a voice.
Yeah, totally. And they’re really going nuts.

Let’s talk about the other group you address in the film: focus groups, who are groups of people that aren’t experts that are given power to control the destiny of something, like a movie, that experts in that field have worked on for years.
I know, and I understand the point of what they do in terms of a commercial standpoint, to see if the audience is going to “get it,” so they can recoup their money. The thing is, they may be testing it for the wrong audience. It’s like Eli Roth said: “This one fat girl in Cleveland doesn’t like your movie,” and the executives take her word as gospel. Maybe she isn’t your audience, is that possible?

On that point, you and many of the other comics you interview mention that the movies you guys make aren’t meant to be highbrow entertainment, yet they send these critics to review them who like movies by people like Meryl Streep and Woody Allen. That’s not what “Malibu’s Most Wanted” was meant to be. It was meant to be a crazy, goofy comedy.
Right, it’s aimed at 14 year-olds and people into rap culture. When a critic from The Boston Herald doesn’t get it, well what a shock! (laughs) I get it now, but I didn’t at the time. If it happened again, I wouldn’t be mad about it. If that film were reviewed by The Eighth Grade Weekly, it would get four stars.

In many ways this film can be seen as a companion piece to your book “Wannabe,” which was about your struggle to make it in the world of comedy. What “Heckler” addresses, is that once you get to that successful place, there are a whole new set of problems you have to face as a celebrity, which many people don’t think about when they’re on their way up.
That’s true. It’s interesting, I’ve learned a lot over the years and now when I get involved with something that I can’t quite grasp, I have to write about it. This was an emotionally charged subject for me, the idea that being successful doesn’t solve all your problems like you thought it would when you were struggling.

Do you have any favorite salad days stories, of when you were struggling?
Probably one of them was when I was at this place called The Soup Plantation, in L.A., which was sort of an all you can eat place. I remember grabbing a piece of pizza off someone’s plate, because I was completely broke and so hungry! (laughs) Also, sleeping in your car for a couple weeks is pretty intense. One time this guy owed me $100 and I was on the phone to him at The Beverly Center, and he told me he didn’t have my money. I just remember crying, because I was so broke. This lady saw me crying, came up, and gave me $100. That was really amazing. I’ve always been very lucky with people helping me.

Theatrical trailer for Heckler.

What was the worst heckle you ever got?
I’d say the time when someone yelled out “Jamie, how long before you start doing infomercials?” That was a pretty good one. And I said “I don’t know. What do they pay?” (laughs)