Prepare to become much more Brand conscious
BILL BROWNSTEIN,
The Gazette
Thursday, July 17, 2008
He stole the show in the flick Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and it's an excellent bet that Russell Brand will do plenty of show-stealing here at Just for Laughs during the next few days.
Brand unwinds in his untitled one-man show tonight through Saturday at the Centaur, and he will also be centre-stage - "strutting and swaggering like a buccaneer" - in the Apatow for Destruction spectacle, in which he does stand-up along with Forgetting Sarah Marshall producer Judd Apatow and Canuck wild-man Seth Rogen, tomorrow at midnight at the Metropolis.
North American audiences may have only become aware of the shaggy-haired Brand after his side-splitting romp as the babbling British rock star who hooks up with Sarah Marshall, but he has been something of a phenomenon in his native England for several years. Star of stage, radio, small and big screen there, Brand has been voted Best Comedy Newcomer, Best Stand-up, Funniest Male and Most Stylish Man of the Year as well as Least Stylish Man of the Year in Britain. (Gotta love that Brit irony.) And lest we forget: Brand, 33, was deemed Europe's as well as the world's Sexiest Vegetarian by PETA.
And you know a comic has made it when fellow wits start referencing him in their acts as the barking-mad Brendon Burns does with Brand - something about a dalliance with Kate Moss - in his explosive piece at Théâtre Ste. Catherine. This marks Brand's first appearance at the fest, but he has been following it from afar for years. "I've been a great lover of that little green monster. What a great icon," he says, apparently serious. Then again, maybe not.
But Brand is abundantly aware that his comic heroes, Eddie Izzard and the late Bill Hicks, have triumphed here. London pundits have compared Brand to Hicks. "That's one of the most flattering comparisons I have ever had levelled at me," he says. "I adore his authenticity."
Safe to say, Hicks would have adored Brand's authenticity, specifically his hit one-man plays at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival: Eroticized Humour and Better Now - described by one wag as "an odyssey through a twilight world of whores, heroin and hairdos, demonstrating that the road of excess leads to the palace of unemployment."
Given the outrageousness of his work, audiences may not be certain if it's confessional or the stuff of fantasy. "All my shows are confessional in nature," Brand acknowledges. "There's very little creativity involved. It's more simply a man reciting memories in the vain hope that one day there will be money in it. I try to spin a yarn or two, and make allegorical cross-references and occupy characters."
The ever-self-deprecating Brand may wish to downplay his comic smarts, but he is full of praise for his inspirations. "I love the passion of a Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor's ability to inhabit characters, Eddie Izzard's use of language and Billy Connolly's raconteurish ways. All have had an impact on me and, hopefully, will be in evidence in Montreal."
Brand has been doing a test run of his latest one-man show in L.A. for the last six weeks - where it has earned thumbs-up from the likes of Slash and Morrissey. It is a mélange of new and old satirical material, a re-Branding of Brand.
"I'm not Noam Chomsky, but I have lots of scowling, scantily researched theories, and I mean scantily researched," he deadpans, before expounding on one: "I believe in egalitarianism, a spiritual unity. We have to get rid of the idea of family and currency. We have to cut the population by 50 per cent. When we get rid of the ideas of religion and nationality, we can all live in a blissful Utopia and await the return of our extraterrestrial overlords."
And would these overlords be of the tiny Spielbergian, greenish ilk? "No," Brand shoots back. "More grayish, abstinent, even Nordic types. Frankly, Spielberg's E.T.s would be an annoyance in any revolution."
Don't be fretting for Brand, whose "vain hope" is that there will be one day "money" to be generated from his act. That day has already come. No sooner did Brand complete Forgetting Sarah Marshall than he was signed to do another picture to be produced by Apatow, this pitting him up against Superbad's delightfully corpulent Jonah Hill. This one is not to be confused with Apatow's just-announced comedy on Sherlock Holmes and Watson with Sacha Baron Cohen and Will Ferrell - although Brand and Hill would bring a dimension of delirium to it. The film with Hill is a follow-up to Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in which Brand's rock star character moves to L.A. Brand also recently wrapped shooting with Adam Sandler on Bedtime Stories, and he is slated to star in another Sandler affair shortly.
Between films and stage shows, Brand spent a summer touring the U.S. in an SUV for a BBC documentary on another cultural hero, Jack Kerouac. "I was expecting the worst, but I was astonished by American intelligence. I met hillbillies speaking with authority about the Federal Reserve and Mormons talking about sexual freedom. I was blown away, and I'm very optimistic about America." No joke, even after spending considerable time with Sandler.
Tickets for Russell Brand's shows at the Centaur Theatre and Apatow for Destruction at the Metropolis are sold out.
