"A lot of comics will tell you, you have to do what you do in any room, or you're not a comic. You have to go to some bible belt town and do your same act there and have them love you just like anyplace else. I really used to believe that's what you had to do. But, I've realized you don't have to do that, unless you want everyone in the world to love you. I don't really care whether they do or not. For a lot of comics I think that's a huge motivating factor, to have everybody love you. For me, I just want to write funny stuff and get in front of an audience that will appreciate it. For me, I'm hoping to find the right audiences or that the right audiences will find me."

I recently caught Todd Levin perform in front of one of his preferred audiences, Moonwork, at the Children’s Aid Society building on Sullivan. It’s not your typical venue for stand-up. Rarely am I greeted at the door and given directions that include, “Go outside, cut across the playground and past the jungle gym, up three flights of stairs to the cafeteria where they pass out free beer.”

Todd gave me some background on the show. "Tonight, those people had a loyalty to that show. The show, Moonwork, is pretty selective about the performers they put up. It's not like when you walk into a comedy club. In a comedy club, people want to be entertained, but they also want to be rowdy. They almost want it to be an interactive experience. At a show like tonight, to this audience, this is theatre to them. They hate comedy clubs, but they love comedy, for whatever reason. So, this is their way to see comedy, without being jostled around or being made to sit at some weird angle to the stage, forced to drink two expensive watered-down drinks. They know the show is well curated and it'll be a great night out for them."

As expected, Todd did very well in front of this audience. His delivery is low key, almost professorial. His material is subtle and eclectic and not appropriate for most roadhouses or kids parties (Except the part where he imitates his dad toppling over while riding the subway. Kids dig physical humor.).

He’s selective about his shows. Stand-up is not how he makes his living and he is comfortable with that. “I was a writer before I was a stand-up. Ultimately, I will always be more of a writer than a stand-up anyway.”

So, he can do the shows that work for him, not the other way around. "There will be certain cultural references that I can make in one room and not make in another room. I did a joke and abandoned it immediately about the 'Larry 'The Cable Guy' Movie' and the poster they made for it. It's him, holding up his Health Inspector badge with a picture of him in the badge and I was comparing it to an M.C. Escher drawing, sort of folding in upon itself. I wouldn't make an M.C. Escher reference at Stand-Up New York. There are some dark things that I wouldn't do at a comedy club. For instance, I do a joke where I say the word, 'Rape'. It's about my mom being a cautious person. She was in her high school marching band and her instrument of choice was the rape whistle. It's a stupid one-off joke. I have come to learn through bad experiences, that in certain rooms, as soon as you say, 'Rape,' the audience will shut down, unless you've gone out on a limb and established yourself as some guy who will say whatever the hell he pleases. Jim Norton could do that. He sets himself up as the guy who will say the worst shit possible and he's so talented. He's a great joke writer and so authentic in a way, that he just takes you along for the ride. For someone like me, it's a lot of work to make an audience adjust to hearing that word in my act."

“I've never been that much of a punchy comedian. I tend to be more conversational and don't have much of a natural comic rhythm on stage. I think that my stand-up is formed by my writing.”

Although Todd’s stage persona is reserved, to say the least, on this evening he did a bit that a lot of more aggressive comics wouldn’t dare; and that’s bringing a few audience members on stage to read crude material for a sketch. "I was really worried I wouldn't be able to tonight. I thought I wouldn't be able to get a volunteer. You put your act in someone else's hands, a total stranger who clearly is not there to be on stage. They are there to witness it and not be bothered. I kind of love doing that piece because it is a bit of torture for the audience. It's a way for me to talk about things on stage that I'm not comfortable talking about because I force some stranger from the audience to say all the horrible things and I just react to it. It's a little manipulative."

In speaking to Todd, he seems to be an almost unwilling passenger on a guided bus tour to success. "I would never make any assumption that people would come to see me. I'm not funny if I'm not on stage.”

"Really, I don't feel like I take control of my life,” he said in a distinctly Woody Allenesque tone. “These weird accidents come up where I'm backed into or pushed into doing something. It has been weird for some audiences, but it's also been an asset for me because I'm not a really punchy comic who says, 'Here's another crazy thing I noticed,' which is fine. I've seen great comics doing that. I've been told that a lot of the time the audience doesn't know when the joke is coming. There's a moment, 'Oh, there's a joke there. You're talking to us, addressing us as a friend. Suddenly, there's a joke.' That's always what I've liked about Woody Allen. He was always trying desperately to make you believe what he's saying, but it was fairly absurd anyway."

"I think there is one part of doing stand-up that every comedian has to different degrees which is absolutely requiring and needing all of your self-esteem to be fueled by totally external sources. None of it comes from yourself. You have almost this bottomless reservoir of need because you don't know how to fill it yourself. I would think the majority of people doing stand-up comedy have that to some degree and some greater than others. Where I had a problem in my relationships sometimes was to what degree I had that. There was a certain point where that was a much bigger motivating factor for me than it even is now. I didn't really know how to deal with either the adulation of an audience or the disinterest of an audience. Those two things became hugely important for me. I was happy because they liked me or I was unhappy because they didn't like me. I didn't have any way of saying, 'Fuck it. I'm happy anyway.' I feel that's really a dangerous area for a lot of comics."

"I got bullied into doing it. I have this friend, Allison Castillo, a really great comic. She's tough. I had been writing a bunch, some funny pieces here and there, and getting them published. Every time we would go out with other comics, she would say, 'This is Todd, a really, really, funny writer.' Eventually, whenever she would book a show, she would encourage me to read something, something different to change up the pace of the show. Other people saw me and I got used to it, too. Other comics started booking me. In the beginning, it was just some comics who had faith that what I was doing as a writer would translate. What happened was, I saw myself in these stand-up rooms reading off a piece of paper and I thought, 'Well, fuck, I can't just read off a piece of paper. It's weird for the audience to adjust to. So, I'll talk for a couple of minutes. I'll write a couple of jokes, then I'll read it. I'll figure out a way to introduce it.' Over a period of 6-8 months when I wasn't doing it very seriously, I gradually learned to talk more and read less. Then one night I was doing a show called, Hump Night, out of the old UCB Theatre. I literally never got to whatever I was supposed to read. I was just having so much fun talking to the audience, shooting the shit, and telling jokes. After that, I decided to just start writing jokes and see what happens."

“If I can remember through the haze of countless vodka/cranberries...when Todd and I met, I was just starting stand-up.  In fact, I think one of the first things we did ‘together’ was to experience me bombing at the Comic Strip.  I encouraged him to try stand-up because he is a naturally funny person who already had a well deserved reputation as a great writer.  He was a huge comedy fan before he started doing stand-up as well and it was just a natural progression for him.  He was also one of those people who was funny on stage right away.  Everyone improves as they become more experienced, but some people are clearly funny from the get go, and Todd was one of those.

I'm a huge fan of Todd's material because it really captures him - his neuroses and insecurities and his likability.  And just like in his writing, there's a mix of the very real and a kind of exaggerated, fantastic reality.  It's very smart as well, because he's a smart person, not because he has something to prove.  Lastly, he's incredibly prolific.  He's the kind of comic who will tell a joke and you'll see him a week later and he'll have added three tags or found new jokes in a story he's been telling for a while.  To sum it up, he's just fucking funny."
– Allison Castillo, New York comedian

"The place where I really started to do it was this place in Vancouver where I lived for three months. I was there to work on my writing. I didn't know anyone in Vancouver. That's why I picked it. Out of a need for some sort of social interaction, I started to check out the comedy rooms. It was such a small scene that it was very easy to ingratiate myself into it. All I had to do was say, 'I'm a comic from New York.' They'd say, 'Great, we'll introduce you as a comic from New York.' At that point I had done nothing. But it was easy to get shows. I wrote a lot while I was out there. Anytime I've performed outside of town has been a pretty good experience."

Not that all his shows have been good experiences. "I did one at a bar in the East Village. Not only did the audience have no idea that there was going to be a comedy show, there were only around six people there. We didn't even have any lighting in the place, so the only way the audience could see you was if you stood very close to the jukebox. The microphone was the only difference between us being comedians and crazy people who are yelling at bar patrons. It was a terrible show. Something like that is a losing proposition that's not going to go well. You just dig in and hope that it becomes an interesting anecdote someday."

"I've done other shows where I’ll open for a sketch group. Once, the host didn't even introduce me. He just said, 'Todd, you wanna come up?' That was my whole introduction. So, I'm standing in front of these people who are thinking, 'Who the fuck is this guy?'"

Who the fuck indeed? I’d say he’s the fuck who was selected for the Aspen Comedy Festival inside of four years on the stage. "That was a blast. My first Aspen audition was a year prior and I didn't get chosen, which was a defining moment for me as a comic. It was the first time that I realized the work it takes to build a set, to make it air tight, to deliver seven minutes of real comedy. I came up in the alternative scene and you get a little spoiled there. The audience is much more patient, more willing to go with you to a totally weird place that may not pay off. Aspen was the first time someone was evaluating me. I look at that period as having to become a stand-up. One of the people on the Aspen committee, her assistant, had seen me a bunch in little downtown rooms. I think a lot people on the committee don't see a lot of comedy in the course of a year. When it comes time to book auditions, they call comics and ask, 'Who's funny? Who should I see?' Really, it's kind of sad. My name came up a couple of times purely through underlings. I ended up going through three rounds of auditions. I didn't get in. The first time I auditioned for Aspen was the first time I had done a rehearsed seven minute set. Up until then I just did jokes and try out new stuff all the time. I didn't really have a logical order for my set. When you have an audition like that, you have to think about your work more holistically and say, 'How does this joke relate to this joke? How does this joke communicate this thing about me?' I had never really thought about my act until Aspen."

Part of that I believe goes back to his seeing himself as writer doing stand-up; a significant distinction. So how does a writer take what he’s comfortable with, putting his thoughts and hopes on a blank page, and transfer it into a performance. "It's just a matter of adding fart noises. That's pretty much it. It hasn't been that much of a transition for me. It may sound shitty saying this, but you have to have an ear for what's funny. So, you just try to put as many funny-sounding things into writing it. Hopefully that shit translates pretty well on stage. The only adjustments I've had to make was to tighten things up, shortening the sentences, and getting to certain things faster. If you're telling a story or reading a longer piece, the audience is almost operating at a different frequency and know they don't have to hear a joke every ten seconds. Something can build to a joke and be really satisfying. Sometimes if you adjust a written piece with too many punch lines, it kind of fucks up your ability to deliver it in front of a live audience. You lose the rhythm of it. It becomes unbelievable. It's awkward. Whenever I'm reading, I want to have moments where the audience doesn't know whether to laugh or not."

The act of making his audience uncomfortable is a recurring theme. Part of that is his delivery. His demeanor is bookish to say the least. I have this image of him spending all his off hours in an unheated apartment, hunched over a creaking Smith Corona, typing revolutionary messages for the masses through fingerless threadbare gloves. (Joseph Fiennes will play him in the film strip.)

The other part would be his graphic material related to sex, his observations of metropolitan behavior (starring his target market), and the ever increasing presence in his act of religion. “I don't think I did any jokes about being Jewish until, gosh, I don't know, maybe about two years ago. It's a big part of my act and I kind of hate that it is. I don't really want to hear, 'Oh, that's the Jewish comic; the Jewey, Jewey comic.' You don't want to be that.
"It's inevitable. Once I start talking about my mom, or my parents in general; even if I didn't say I was Jewish, people would just know. The only reason I started talking about being Jewish; I had one line which addressed it and moved on. I was so self conscious. I look at myself and think it's ridiculous. I look like a parody of a New York Jew. So I thought it was something to address at the top. Maybe it's because I'm constantly rewriting my stuff, that little piece began to get longer and longer and now it's become a natural part of my act. I have to say that people have gotten into that. Even if it's not universal, it is relatable. Somehow, it grounds my act. For me to ignore those things would be a little bit silly. I hope I'm not exploiting that. You hear some comics say stuff like, 'Another funny thing about being a guy with diabetes...' The whole act goes, 'As a diabetic...' You're holding it from the perspective of being a diabetic. I don't think my act really has a Jewish perspective."

It’s hard to find a Jewish comedian not influenced by Woody Allen and Todd’s no different. It’s in his material to some extent, more so in his delivery. But his influences go beyond that. “I had never heard him doing stand-up before I started doing stand-up. It wasn't until much later. In high school, i just devoured his writing; his collections like Without Feathers. Not just him, but those who influenced him like S.J. Pearlman. I really, really loved his stuff too. There's a kind of rhythm to taking you to someplace very normal; and then there's something absurd. I always loved that; presenting something that is almost factual, a real part of your life, and then tweaking it a little bit.”

"In terms of having an unusual rhythm, Jake Johannsen. I'm hugely fond of him. He's great. To some extent, someone like Bob Newhart, who I grew up listening to as a kid. He was so good at telling a story and trying not to be funny and end up being very funny. I always thought that was a cool way to get laughs, as opposed to begging the audience. Bob Newhart was actually an anti-comedian."

"The two people who got me really excited about comedy were Bill Cosby and Steve Martin but every kid would say the same thing. They are two different types of comedians. They taught two different lessons of what you can do with comedy."

“Dave Attell's a great comic. He's one of those guys, I like him in spite of who he is. If he was another comic, with that same point of view he has, talking about the same things, I would say, 'Fuck you. I hate you.' But, he's so good at what he does.”

"Comedians have an intellectual response to the other people's comedy. They're like, 'Oh, I see how that works. ' You rarely have that kind of primal visceral response to comedy that the audience has. Dave Attell is one of those few comics. I lose control of myself. The first time I saw him, I literally fell out of my chair. It was so fucking funny. Even if I had heard the joke before. He has such an extraordinary rhythm, such a sense of the absurd. It's really nice to see comedy that makes you do that. Chappelle does that for me, Louis CK."

Another Allen similarity would be the inclusion of his parents in his material. While Allen’s parents are involved in more of a fantastic way (Unless his father really did fall asleep while reading his son’s kidnapping letter.), Todd’s appearances in his show are more grounded. "My parents are super supportive of it. I don't know that they always get it, but they are very supportive. My dad visits my website every day, reads my calendar and ask me in order, 'So, what's Moonwork? What's this? What's that?' They came to my taping of Premium Blend, (where Todd included two things you rarely see in his act, a sport jacket and a smile) my TV thing, which was my first time on TV. Somebody after the show asked me if my parents were there. There were two people behind them, one of them a guy, literally crying during my set. My dad will lose his shit. The first time they saw me perform I did a joke about them. I had only told that joke once or twice before and I wondered how my parents would react. They loved the attention. Somehow it's really meaningful to be part of my act."

So, does this 35-year old Albany native have any interest in becoming a road comic? "Not at all. It takes a different sort of discipline to do that. Only certain kinds of comics excel at that. The model I would use is; if I was a band, I could never play Madison Square Garden. And that's fine. But, if I could play little rooms like Bowery Ballroom that would be cool, too. At the same time, there aren't that many bands I'd like to see at Madison Square Garden, so, it's a choice you have to make. You don’t have to be a road comic to make it. There are other ways around it. I'd like to do festivals, colleges here and there, theatre-type shows."

"I know comics who do seven shows a week or more. I'm not like that. If I do four shows a week, that's a lot for me. I usually do between two or three. I spend a lot of time just writing, not running around getting as much stage time as possible. I barely consider myself a performer. I don't crave the stage time like some other comics do."

Since Todd has become a fixture of the downtown scene, I asked him for his thoughts on “Alternative Stand-up”, a term I’ve never been comfortable with. My feeling is that stand-up is stand-up and anything alternative that doesn’t involve setups, punchlines, and storytelling in order to elicit laughter is something else. Performance artists. One man shows. Poets. Sketch comedy. Whatever. Todd’s first-hand experience formed the basis of his view. “I moved to New York in '95. Luna Lounge was where you went to go hear alternative comedy. Maybe Surf Reality. It was kind of a mess. You might see someone who might be an excellent performer some day. Or you'd see someone who if they weren't there would be outside eating cigarette butts. He was there one performance each week; reading from a newspaper or showing his cock.”

"It's like that with art or music. Alternative stand-up is a purely external label. No one who is doing it thought of themselves as alternative as much as a band like Nirvana thought of themselves as apart from the norm. They just thought of themselves as doing what they wanted to do and hoping that people would dig it. I don't think they were self righteous about it in any way. When alternative labels came out for music (IRS), acts like Stone Temple Pilots or shittier bands like Bush, were taking advantage of the label and filling a genre by making a model, 'We sound like these guys, so we're alternative too.' I think that's happening in comedy too where it has emerged as a genre. Before, it was people who loved comedy but couldn't see themselves talking about airplane food. If you go to alternative rooms, just like other rooms, you see hacks. Alternative hacks. Whatever is in a regular stand-up club, some junkie pop culture thing, MySpace. There are certain topics you'll see in clubs like rififi you won't see in regular clubs, but I don't see how that's different."

As with everything else about Todd, it goes back to the material. Words on a page. Writing. "If I'm making a point about something, it's generally a throw-away line. I'll just throw it in there. I tend to not write topical stuff. It's not as interesting to me. Whatever it is I'm writing, I like to go back into it and write and write and write. It's like a type of compulsion. When you write topical stuff, you really can't do that. "

“When you get on stage, you fucking better have something to say, or be really charismatic. When you're on stage in front of an audience, this is not your comfort zone. It's a weird, very formal setup. It's weird. It's almost pretentious that you'd stand up on the stage with just a microphone and these people are going to listen and laugh. It's strange. There's something almost narcissistic about it. Why should the audience even give a shit?”

Todd Levin will co-host How to kick people at Mo Pitkin’s on January 25. To learn more about Todd, visit his website toddlevin.com