Doug Saulnier
written by Ken Carlson
“I’m an improv guy to no end,” says comedian Doug Saulnier. “I’m always interacting with the crowd. I’m a high energy guy. I feed off the energy. I don’t sit down. Stephen Wright, one of the guys I look up to, he does ninety minutes and doesn’t move an inch to the left or right. The audience is buckled over. With me, I can’t sit still.”
When you hear about improvising from a performer, you think of someone using the skills honed in a university coffee house or black box theatre in Chelsea. But just as easily it can apply to an off-hand riff off an audience member or a maneuver in a career path.
For a dozen years Doug Saulnier has taken a whatever-it-takes attitude and a bartender from Southie demeanor to his stand-up career. It didn’t start in the classroom or come from books on the subject. It’s marked by keeping his eyes and ears open, learning from some of the biggest names in the business. It’s also how he got his old day job; he had the confidence to do it once he got his foot in the door. And the subject matter that dominates his act, played a major part in why he went down this road in the first place.
“I didn’t go to acting school,” says Saulnier. “There are some stand-ups who went to Emerson, art schools, took all kind of acting classes, and are funny. But you always see the cross-over. You can tell when an actor is trying to do stand-up comedy. It’s like they’re reading cue cards. They’re not polished. I never went to comedy school. I’m against them. They’re awful. You either know how to do this or your don’t. I don’t think too many successful comics went to comedy school. It’s a scam. I wanted to do straight stand-up. I didn’t come from Upright Citizens Brigade or anything like that.”
“What I like about Doug’s jokes,” says comedian DC Benny, “is that only he can do them because they are truly about Doug’s life. And I still can’t spell his fucking last name without a cheat sheet.”
While Doug’s name may be a little complicated, his act isn’t. He gets up there and talks about his life, his family. It helps to have a list of day-to-day plot twists: an acute interest in following the traditions of Boston-Irish partying, a knack for failed relationships, a dad who works as a mailman and drinks on the job. DC Benny describes it as, “Smart blue collar with inimitable physicality topped off with likeable realness.”
“People who see comedy, but don’t know anyone connected to it,” says Saulnier, “have no idea what it’s like behind the scenes - or what it’s like to make it, sustain it. Guys like Bill Burr, Dave Attell, Robert Schimmel; to sustain it like they have is unbelievable. They’re not sitcom stars. Schimmel’s a true road comic. I’ve toured with Schimmel for four years. Two years ago, he and I did 42 weeks together. Playing the road, that’s what he says is the time in his life, the day, the moment, he can control. He gets off stage, he’s got kids, wife, bills, problems...”
“It’s become more of a business for me,” says Saulnier, “It’s my lifestyle, my life, my livelihood. So, it’s a little different. Last weekend, I was at the Wilbur Theatre in Boston in front of a thousand people. I did radio in the morning. After the show a hundred people were there from my high school who heard I’d been doing comedy, but thought I was just mucking it up in some bar. That was a great feeling. I was home, had a great set, appearing on radio stations that I had listened to as a kid. It was surreal. I had to deliver, whereas, when I wasn’t making any money, I didn’t put any thought into it. I have a schedule, meetings, some pressure because it’s a business. You know if you’re not funny, they’ll just say, ‘Let’s get this kid out of here.’”
This kid is turning 38 this year and turning the corner of expectations. He’s settling down in his personal life as he prepares to get married later this year, noting though he takes pride in making people laugh in one piece of his life, he “should really stop being a clown” in another.
He keeps a serious eye on all the pieces of his career path, what clubs he plays, how he looks, when he’ll get around to recording a CD/DVD. While stand-up in front of a live audience is his passion, he recognizes the importance of appearing on TV, “If I ever met a stand-up who said, ‘Oh my god, I’d never want to be on TV,’ they’d be full of shit.”
“Being a comedian’s what I do. But I’m not funny in my personal life,” says Saulnier, “I’ll do a show and people will come up to me and say, ‘Wow, that bit was really funny. How did you say it?’ I tell them I don’t know. I have an idea what I said. I have premises. But I don’t know word for word. I lose myself up there. It’s the only time I’m in total control of my life.”
Doug was a stock broker. He had gone to college, spent a year in Aspen, but didn’t really know what to do next. That’s when he spoke to a friend who worked on Wall Street. “I went to New York and visited a trading firm,” Saulnier recalls, “I thought it was pretty cool, and my friend said, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re full of shit. Why don’t you come back down for a training thing?’ I never left.”
It was the mid 90’s. Wall Street was a fun place for Saulnier to be, not mention for many of his colleagues as NASDAQ climbed to 5,000. Then he met a woman on a flight from Vegas. He’d been acting like the class clown he always was, joking around and making fun of people. She worked in comedy and thought he might do well there. Up to that point, Saulnier hadn’t thought he could channel what he did into writing. He also had plenty of friends who were funnier than him, but, like him, would never go near a stage.
But, a suggestion was all it took. For the next four years, he went to open mics after work, strictly for fun. Then he started to meet people. One of them was DC Benny.
“DC was really influential,” says Saulnier, “ I travelled to college gigs with him. I used to hang out with him at the Boston Comedy Club. He invited me to my first road gig. It paid fifty bucks, along with room and food. We had a fuckin’ blast! Up to that point I thought the comedy world was on West 3rd between Sullivan & Thompson. It was hanging out, barking, handing out flyers. I was having fun. I was 26. That was fine. We did twenty-plus colleges that year. I remember telling my girlfriend at the time, ‘This is really fun. We hang out all day. All these drunk, high kids are laughing.”
Unlike a lot of comedy newcomers, Saulnier figured out early that a key element to making it was acting like a professional. Guys like DC and Talent, a fellow comic from 98.7 FM in New York, pressed on him that so many comics don’t put it together that it takes more than being a smart ass to make a living at it. “You have to be on time,” says Saulnier, “and get off stage when you’re supposed to. I don’t think I’ve ever missed a gig. I’ve shown up and been told about others, ‘Yeah, he didn’t show...’ Great, so I can do more time for the same money. But I’ve always been pretty punctual. Guess it’s how I was raised.”
“I was raised by my mom,” says Saulnier, “My dad came back into my life when I was six or seven. Unless you’ve been through it, you don’t understand that dynamic. My mom was hilarious, the funny lady. At her funeral, my brother, in an unbelievable eulogy said, ‘There was an unbelievable amount of laughter in our house, because it was free.’ My mom was funny, very artsy. She encouraged us to do whatever we wanted in life. The rest of my family told me to become a cop, raise a family, retire. My mom thought that was awful. She thought it was great to move to New York. I did apply for the Police Academy, and a couple of years later, when I decided to be a stock broker instead, she told me, ‘I’m so glad you didn’t become a cop.’ She didn’t say that back then. She wanted me to do what I wanted to do. She was funny, way ahead of her time. My family was Irish-Catholic from Boston; meat and potatoes, get a job, and go home. My mom worked in the Museum of Fine Arts. She was different. My junior year in college, she took me to Paris. She said other kids go to Cancun, just to get drunk. Why don’t we use my sky miles and go to Paris for a week? I learned a lot from her; how to laugh, to knock down doors that most people in my family wouldn’t open. They had the mentality of just moving through life. In comedy, you can’t just move through life, you have to knock down doors, even if sometimes you find a brick wall behind them.”
Moments in a career hang together like threads in a swatch of fabric; one leads to another. One night in Pittsburgh, Saulnier opened for Dave Chappelle before 6,000 people. It opened a door, as Saulnier has headlined at the Improv in Pittsburgh four times in the last two years. From the crowd’s point of view that’s the end of the story. But for Doug there was a lot more to gain behind the scenes.
“I learned a lot about the business from Chappelle,” says Saulnier, “I travelled with him. He’s a very bright guy. One night we had problems with the show. He dealt with LiveNation, who after today, they’re the biggest promoter in the world (Their merger with TicketMaster is pending). He had no one with him but handled it unbelievably well.
The crowd loved him. They were on the ground! But when he got off stage, he was all business. I thought, ‘Whoa.’ I hadn’t seen him like that. He was smoking a cigarette, never raised his voice. He made everyone very nervous, saying, ‘This can never happen again... Really, this is what you’re going to do to me, to my image? I’ve worked at this my whole life.’ What he said to me afterwards, at the back of this venue, was that all you have in this business is your image. It means being on time, being funny. It’s a very catty business, dealing with agents and promoters. Don’t let anyone take that from you. If you do, you don’t have much.”
“I’ll never forget playing Las Vegas,” Saulnier continues, “for the first time. Five minutes before I was supposed to go on, two guys in suits from MGM Properties walked in saying – You can’t say this. You can’t do that. Don’t talk to anybody. Don’t mention anything you see here. If you do, you’re gone. We own half of Vegas and you’ll never play here again. – I told them I talk to the crowd all the time. They did not give a shit. I wished somebody had told me. That was when I realized they didn’t give a shit about comedy. I had to sign a contract that I wouldn’t talk about the trap doors on stage, Lance Burton (magician), or any of the bullshit fuckin’ stuff. I signed it right before I went on. If I did talk about it I wouldn’t have gotten paid. It really deflated me. Schimmel’s agent was there. Even he said, ‘Don’t fuck with them.’”
Call them life lessons. Call them survival skills. Stand-up might present more critical points of business than an MBA from Wharton and at a more accelerated pace because every path is different and unpredictable.
Doug learned in Vegas that you can’t cash your check at MGM Properties because so many entertainers blow all their money gambling while they play Vegas.
He learned from Bill Burr, one of the hottest comics out there, with two HBO specials in two years, to never to take the business side for granted, that you always have to be tough when haggling, even over a sold out house at the end of the night.
And he learned from experience not to bring his girlfriend to Vegas with him while the annual Porn Awards are in town (‘This is what you do on the road?’).
On this night he’s opening, as he has many times before, for Robert Schimmel. “I’ve known Schimmel for four years,” says Saulnier. “He writes it into his contract that I work as his opener. He gets his dates for the year. It gets emailed to me. I pick the dates I want to go to. The clubs pick the rest. Not a lot of guys do that. I’ve learned a lot from him. He has pushed me repeatedly to record a CD. When you go on the road, anywhere outside of New York or LA, people want to buy shit. He’s had seven or eight of them and two Showtime specials. You have to continue to produce. I’m his friend, but it’s a job to him too. Every night, his agency is on the phone asking about the numbers. If they get a report that the opener is awful, then I’m gone. It’s good for me. It’s allowed me to do a lot. Many people in New York know me as the guy who opens for Schimmel. Last week I was with him in Rhode Island and Boston, then I was on my own, then back here at COMIX in New York.”
One of the first things you notice about Doug’s act, from the crowd’s point of view, is that he puts on a show without a putting on an air of pretension. “People used to ask me,” says Saulnier, ‘Who writes your material?’ What? No, my dad is really a mailman and drinks at work. Who writes it? ME! People not involved in comedy don’t get it that this is your whole life.”
Of course, if the audience thinks you’re one of them, there’s always the chance they may want to get friendly and become part of the show.
“You go with it,” says Saulnier on dealing with hecklers. “You know when to get out of it. Even if you’re bashing them in a fun way, maybe they’re too drunk, and the whole crowd is on your side, it’s a no-win. In my show I used to portray that I was angry on stage. I looked like I was ten years old. It didn’t work for me; red hair and freckles. I have anger in me but it doesn’t come out on stage. When I first started in comedy, I thought the audience always had to laugh, which is the gist of it, but I never took chances. I’m happier now. It’s gotten out of hand a few times. Talking to the audience invites people to talk but I usually put it in a direction where they don’t pursue it.”
“You have to stay positive,” says Saulnier, “Coming from Wall Street where one guy might wear a Rolex and other people get mad about it. Well, just be that guy! Don’t take him down. In comedy I’ve learned, never begrudge another comedian for doing well. He or she does what you do. If someone else gets a part on a TV show, don’t say, ‘Oh, they’re not funny!’ Get your own part on a TV show. Why rip that person down? It’s good to get exposure and have other people make it. It’s what amazes me, when you hang out with other comics and the talk turns to bashing other comics they don’t think are funny. It’s all taste. To say they made it for other reasons is convoluted and it clouds your mind. We’re all doing the same thing. There are plenty of guys who haven’t made it who are brilliant. It happens. Don’t begrudge them, it’ll hold you back in this business. It’s so easy to sit in a condo in Cleveland where the heat is broken 90 percent of the time and say, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck! All my friends are married with kids and I can’t have any kids because I’m in a condo in Cleveland! Later I have to walk on stage and say, ‘Hello Cleveland, I love it here!’ You can’t get mad, at the end of the day it just weighs on you.”
If you ask a comic what stand-up means to him or her, you’re likely to get a lengthy rant rivalling an Oscar acceptance speech. For Saulnier, he puts it like this. “You’re a different person. You’re absolutely never swayed by anyone but yourself. To fail is fine.”
For more on Doug, visit MySpace.com/DougSaulnier