By Erin Free
“I couldn’t be more psyched…I wish that I was there right now,” Brian Posehn replies when FilmInk asks if he’s looking forward to his impending Australian tour. “A lot of American comic friends of mine have told me that it’s great. If Dave Anthony did well there, I’m sure that I’ll be okay,” he laughs, referring to the stand-up comedian, actor, television writer, and podcaster.
Despite his towering 6”7’ frame, Posehn has a gentle, slightly befuddled, but cuttingly intelligent presence, stealing his scenes with ease in movies like Sex Drive, The Five-Year Engagement, and Knights Of Badassdom, and taking a rare lead in last year’s indie comedy, Uncle Nick. Television has also been a good fit for Posehn’s brand of comedy, with the actor nailing it as Sarah Silverman’s gay buddy, Brian Damien Spukowski, on The Sarah Silverman Program, and forming part of the writing nucleus that created the much loved sketch comedy series, Mr. Show With Bob And David. It is, however, as a stand-up comedian that Brian Posehn truly shines, offering sly, self-deprecating discourse on everything from the dangers of hanging out with fans after shows, to the perils of talking about your kids on stage.
Does Posehn hit the books in order to be stand-up-ready for first-time destinations like Australia. “I do a little bit of research, but it’s mainly about feeling things out with the first few shows,” the engaging comic replies on the line from his home in the states. “This is only my third international tour, but I did some shows in Europe, and I’d have fun with things. I’d ask the audience, ‘Do you have speed bumps here?’ and they’d call back, ‘Yeah, but we call them such and such.’ Or I’d ask, ‘Do you have nerds here?’ Obvious things like that. So I plan to do some research on Australia. But even though I haven’t been there, I feel like I know it a little bit. A lot of things that I love are from there. I’ve known about it since AC/DC, going back to when I was nine-years-old. I remember thinking, ‘This band is from another place!’ It’s like how I knew Canada through Rush!”
It’s no surprise to hear from Posehn that his intro to Australia came through its greatest hard rock export, as the comic is a noted metal-head, having recorded with many of the much maligned musical genre’s heavyweights, and waxed lyrical about the subject both in print and on stage. It’s one of many of Posehn’s left-of-centre pop culture crushes, with the 49-year-old a renowned figurehead in the world of “geek culture.” A lover of sci-fi (his famed bit about Star Wars “being his Vietnam” is profoundly hilarious), superheroes, Dungeons & Dragons, and all things genre related, it’s a sweet time now for Posehn, whose favoured interests were far less popular when he was a kid. “It’s super cool how accessible everything is now to people if you’re a nerd,” the Sacramento, California native says. “There are so many TV shows and movies being made for people like us, for fans, and that wasn’t really the case when I was a kid. There was the Christopher Reeve Superman, and a couple of other things, but now there are three or four things a year for nerds to enjoy. It’s also great because there’s less bullying for people like me. Someone who’s going through school now who has the same kind of interests as me will probably have way more friends than I did. So that’s great for them…bless that generation.”
Posehn’s pop culture cache runs so high that he has even diversified into writing comic books, busting out titles for Marvel and Image. Posehn has also been a regular writer on Deadpool, with his love of pop culture a perfect for the fourth-wall-busting anti-hero. Though not directly involved with the smash hit movie adaptation of the character, Posehn is certainly qualified to comment on its success. “I didn’t think that it would do as well as it has, but I thought that it would do well,” he says. “Since I came onto the book about four years ago, I’ve just seen that character explode at cons. He’s always been semi-popular, but just in the last couple of years, it’s been like watching something truly capture the zeitgeist. With the movie trailers, and the response to the trailers at the cons, I just felt like it was pretty much a slam dunk. I thought that it would make 70 or 80 million…I certainly didn’t think that it was going to make 150 million or whatever it was in its first weekend. I knew that it would be a hit, but I didn’t think that it would be an insane monster hit. They really got the tone right, and the film deserves its success. It’s great, and it’s good for me, because people will hopefully pick up the book, and I’ll get a cheque in the mail. That’s always nice, but it’s also nice as a writer to know that people are reading comics, and that they’re in to comic characters.”
Belying the myth that geeks and nerds do nothing but watch movies and surf the net all day, Brian Posehn is the ultimate multi-tasker, jumping across creative endeavours with roaring abandon. “I do a million things at once, and it’s been easy,” Posehn says. “I got into this knowing that I wanted to stay busy. I realised that there were so many other opportunities outside of stand-up, and I embraced them pretty much the second that I moved here. When I moved here to LA twenty years ago, I found that stand-up wouldn’t be enough for a career, because the bottom had kind of dropped out of it. I got kind of panicky. I had to learn to do other things. I started writing sketches, and I started acting, and I realised that I loved those things. And then over the years, I’ve found all these other things, like comic books, and directing videos. I just want to continue doing that. There’s no real plan, although from year to year, I can see what I’m gonna be doing, like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to work on this comedy special, and then next year, I’m going to work with [Mr. Show With Bob And David creators] Bob [Odenkirk] and David [Cross] again.’ I plan out as much as I can from six months to a year. I knew that I was going to have the big Australian trip this year a while ago, so you plan for that. But then I can’t be flipping out of acting jobs, and I can’t be too bendy with the writing projects. I have to work around those kinds of things.”
Brian Posehn will be touring Australia from April 12-19. For all ticketing and venue information, head to wearenice.com.au/tickets/brianposehn. For more on Brian Posehn, head to brianposehn.com. And keep watching at www.filmink.com.au for more on Brian.
