Last Thursday, I joined five thousand of my closest friends at Brixton’s chilly Carling Academy to see the comedy stylings of Russell Brand. His one man show, Scandalous, is currently weaving its way across the United Kingdom where sold-out crowds have listened to him riff on everything from his recent not-at-all-voluntary resignation from the BBC to the ability of his spandex-clad ‘fame wand’ to turn “sluts into celebrities”.
He stalked the stage for nearly two hours and as a career fidgeter, I’m always impressed by anything that holds my attention for 120 minutes. Benjamin Button couldn’t, proving to be a big screen sedative despite an entire cast, nightmarish elderly babies, and Brad Pitt’s bare-yet-no-less-boring torso.
My question for most of the night—other than whether I’d lose portions of my face to frostbite—was why can’t Russell seem to do this in America? There have been British comics who have found success on our well Wal-Marted shores (the PBS-supported cast of Monty Python, Ricky Gervais, Eddie Izzard) and those who haven’t (Everyone Else) but none of them seemed to have Russell’s oversized profile preceding them. So is it because of…
…his appearance?
With his penchant for wearing tights as pants, carefully applied eyeliner and the biggest backcombed hair this side of Sarah Palin, he’s like watching Jack Sparrow by way of American Apparel. While England his been conditioned by centuries of effeminate dudes from Shakespeare to Freddy Mercury to Sporty Spice, Russell with his overteased tangles and undersized clothing seems to be a particularly hard sell to, say, the American South. He’ll be fine in New York or El Lay—where he’s already had a successful run of shows—but he might struggle with the HungryMan and Kevin Harvick crowd.
…his lack of US exposure?
When I told my friends I’d scored tickets to see Russell Brand, his name was met with the same cocked, confused expression my dog gives me when I pretend to throw his squeaky duck. He did snag some screen time as oversexed rock star Aldous Snow in last year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, but after that left the theatres he resumed his starring role in Forgetting Russell Brand. In December, he popped up in Adam Sandler’s recent Bedtime Stories but I couldn’t find a single person who’d admit to seeing that.
MTV put him onstage to host last summer’s Movie Awards, but that was a disaster from his opening riff about George "that retard cowboy fella” Bush. True or not, CNN called for him to be deported and the internet shouted comments in all caps, most of them beginning with variations of the word “queer”. He recounted this story from the Brixton stage, reading some of his hate mail and telling some of his other MTV bombs. When a joke about the Jonas Brothers was met with applause, he shouted “WHERE WERE YOU ON THAT NIGHT?”
Here’s hoping he’ll get a second glance in the states after his Comedy Central special (airing March 8) or—two days later—when his UK-bestselling autobiography My Booky Wook will be stacked on our shelves.
…his history of addiction?
He’s always been open about his previous problems with smack and his Philadelphia-based treatment for sex addiction, neither of which have ever been dealbreakers for celebrities. Brand’s been clean since ’02 and America’s never had a problem welcoming fuckups back into the fold. If we eliminated all of the former drug addicts, boozers, or chronic leg humpers from the Comedy Central lineup, we’d be left with nothing but Ellen DeGeneres and an animated meerkat.
…his ability to find trouble?
Most of his jobs have ended with him being escorted out of the building, including gigs with MTV Europe and—most recently—the BBC. Brand and his broadcasting partner Jonathan Ross left a voicemail for 74-year-old former Fawlty Towers star Andrew Sachs that detailed his penis’s field trip through Mister Sachs’ granddaughter. The listeners of the publicly funded Beeb weren’t quite as delighted by it, resulting in Ross’ suspension and RB’s not-at-all-voluntary resignation. The fallout dominated the UK headlines for weeks and also provides a huge chunk of material for his Scandalous stage show which could be accurately subtitled
‘Problems My Penis Has Caused Me.’
…his everything else?
It’s impossible to compare him to America’s current biggest names in comedy, Dan “Larry the Cable Guy” Whitney and Dane Cook. They’re both caricatures, one of the person you never want to be and the other of who you never want to sleep with. When Russell’s onstage he’ll turn the amps up to 11 but he doesn’t act like someone he’s not, won’t pretend to be your best bud, and he’s definitely not dumbing things down for the crowd. That seems to be an issue here, where we prefer our comedy to be full of catch phrases, not stacked with words like ‘recalcitrant’ or ‘exegesis’, both of which he dropped into his Brixton set.
In the back pages of the Scandalous souvenir program, he tells an interviewer “I want to create beauty and wonder and humor and mirth.” So far, he’s been sucessful on all counts, forging a career on the stage, the screen, and the best-seller list. Does Russell Brand really need America? No. But I sometimes I think we need him.