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 Short, balding men aren't usually considered cult heros, however, one unassuming after-hours denizen has rescued late night. The crude, yet smart, host of Comedy Central's Insomniac, comedian Dave Attell, performed a 20-minute guest set at Harrah's Improv on January 9th. He was in Las Vegas to film an episode for the show's upcoming fourth season (which should air in June), and I was fortunate to get about 20 minutes of his time to talk with him on January 10th, 2003.
Dave Attell: Probably when I was a kid PI: What kind of a kid were you? DA: A shy, introverted geek. I was a loner-type kid, I'm a loner type man. I had some friends but I wasn't really popular or anything like that. I went to my prom. I did all that stuff. I was an average student, average person. Thanks man, you kinda threw me with that one. You don't want to get into my devil worship do you? PI: Did you listen to heavy metal? DA: As a boy I listened to something stronger than heavy metal, all right, something called Spyro Gyra. Now that brings the evil out of anybody. That and having a brother who was into jazz. PI: So why did it take so long for Insomniac to get to Vegas? DA: Vegas is such a given, [that for] the first episodes we wanted to show towns where people didn't think there was any type of night life. We wanted to come to Vegas for a long long time. This is one of the few towns in America where you can drink until you run out of money, or you run out of hope. You can drink, you can gamble and do all these things, it's actually too much show for us. With us it has a lot to do with the weather, Vegas is a great place to come when it's cold. It took us a while to get here, but we are definitely glad we're here. It's great being in town with the porn stars and conventions and there's just so much local stuff to do. We try and catch some stuff off the beaten path too, try and hit some local bars, we'll probably go to the Double Down and some places like that. Some things that not all the tourists see. I miss the older, seedier Vegas, not this kind of new-and-improved-roller-coaster-every-guy's-got-their-chest-waxed-and-wind-blown-magician-hair Vegas. And in this town you can still smoke pretty much anywhere. PI: Except in the Improv showroom at Harrah's. DA: Yes, you can't do that, because we know comedy and cigarette smoke don't mix. But pretty much everywhere else you can smoke and it's a real treat, especially since I have a lot of chain-smokers on my shoot. Well, me, I'm the only one. It's cool not having to step outside, I find myself asking people if I can smoke and they're like "what are you, nuts?! Yeah you can! How come you're not smoking a cigar?" PI: I recently learned that you film Insomniac over three days and then put it together. DA: It takes us a week to do it, I can tell you why it takes more that one night. It IS one night, but the reason it takes us three days is because in a town like Vegas, where there's driving involved, you have to unload and load. With our show we have to get access to get into places, we can't just barge in like a home invasion and get thrown out. We want everyone to invite us, sometimes they won't let us in, or they say "can you come tomorrow", so we'll stay an extra day. So we try and do as much as we can. We go all night, pretty much for a whole week. The stuff you see is usually stuff that's happening when we say it's happening. There's nothing we set up really, except for the last shot of the show, which is when I leave town. PI: Are you going to use the Welcome to Las Vegas sign for this episode? It seems like the obvious choice.
PI: It's in the median. DA: Oh, it is? Well, we'll see if we can do it. I'd like to do that. PI: How did the idea for the show develop? DA: Girls Gone Wild. I watch that show, of course, with one hand busy and I'd be like "that's not like my life, I'm not a hot model traveling the world going to fancy clubs and restaurants. I'm a functional alcoholic going to bars and bus stations. Where's that show?" And Comedy Central said "Cool." They had no shows like that: a reality show. I told them I wanted it to be not just partying, but also late night jobs. Things started to work out. We get better at it every time we do one. I think that this show is just a real simple show, people ask me how I came up with and whatever, it's just so simple and basic, it's amazing that people kind like it. It's just straight ahead, there's no writers, we have no makeup, we have no hair. None of the things that other TV shows have. PI: You've been to a garbage collection station, a steel mill and a sausage factory. All these places that most people would never get to peek inside of. DA: It's interesting for me too. There's a million jobs going on all night long that nobody knows about. We have great people busting their asses day and night trying to get access to hospitals, prisons, all that kind of stuff. The times we live in, not everyone wants us to see that kind of stuff. PI: Are you surprised to be working on your fourth season? DA: I'm very thrilled. A lot of times we have trouble, cause I have to go back to these towns and do standup, so I really want to get it right, but because of time and access we don't often go to THE place. So someone will go "how come you didn't go to this bar, man." And I'll say "they wouldn't let us in, they wouldn't return our calls." The fourth season will probably air in June, we went to Key West Fantasy Fest and some European cities, so I'd have to say the shows that are coming up are better than the ones we've done before. We're really looking forward to these shows, we're really good at it now and people know about the show so we have a following of people who are cool and let us in to shoot stuff. It's a win-win for us. PI: People are so willing to make fools of themselves to be on TV.
PI: Standup is pretty hip in other markets, is Vegas behind the curve? DA: You get a lot of people coming in from the Bible belt, so Vegas is very hard for standups. Usually gambling and standup don't mix. It's usually gambling and alcohol, gambling and strippers. I'm kind of a blue act. I'm not a Vegas act, I don't do any magic or hypnotism. I don't have a little dragon friend that I walk around with. I never worked Vegas enough that I got it down. Vegas audiences seem to like weird things. Magic is king. Anywhere else in the country you see a magician and he lives in his car. Here they're billionaires, like Vegas royalty. I think there's a lot of people in Vegas that want to see a blue, dirty, old-school standup show. I know they do one at The Riv, and they are probably going to do some at the Improv. Vegas, it'll come up to it. I think slowly the regular standup shows will get more places to go. There's a lot of standup in this town, I didn't realize that. PI: Do you work on your act a lot? DA: I try to. With this show I feel like I never get the time, I have to write every day, every week to get new jokes for the next show. Then when I go on the road and I do my hour I always feel like I want more new material to make it different. Especially with the CD coming out, I'm sick of those jokes, I want new jokes. You gotta keep working it, it's like a marriage, as people say. The more time you put into it, the more you get out of it. I like to think of it more, I guess, as a sickness. You have no choice. It's just something you have to do. I'm sorry it's not a humorous comment. I like being on the road, I like doing my hour. I've been doing standup for 16 years and on the road pretty hard for eight. Now with the crowds seeing my TV show, they come out and expect I'm going to be drinking and doing the TV show, but a lot of it's just my standup so I feel like I'm disappointing them, but usually we have a good time. PI: Are you going to come back here? I'd love to see your full set. DA: I'd love to come back here. Every time I play in Vegas I always feel like I was too dirty or something like that. Any chance I get, once we're done with the shooting schedule, I want to come back and just hang out and drink and hopefully get laid a little bit. While I'm doing the show it's pretty much non-stop, just go, go, go. I will come back to Vegas and I hope to come back more and more, and maybe, eventually, I'll get my own greeting job here. (laughs) PI: You've also appeared in some films. DA: I'm not really an actor and if you've seen Pootie Tang you know. Pootie Tang is getting a super-huge following, I don't know what's happening, but people are getting into that movie. PI: Maybe it's because you look so dapper in your suit.
PI: You were also recently in a movie called Max And Grace. I think it's about people in an insane asylum or something. DA: I have a very small part where I give the main characters a ride. I think they wanted somebody better, but he couldn't make it, since I was called the day before. Natasha Leone is a very cool person, she's in it and I got to meet her, and a few other really big, real actor types. It was interesting to see them do their thing, I guess it was kinda cool. I didn't think it was going to well when they were running out of time and it got to my scene and the director was like "I think we should just cut this scene out" and I said "OK". (laughs) That's when I knew I was not an actor, when I was like "I'm with you, man, just pay me and send me home." I have really no desire to be a big actor or anything. I'll take whatever comes my way, but standup is pretty much my bag, that's my thing. PI: Comedians seem a lot more accessible than "stars." DA: I'm with you on that. I don't think I'm a star or a celebrity or any thing like that. I could give a shit about any of that stuff. I'm just trying to get the show right and get it out and get as many people on camera as I can. They come up to us and usually it's cool, sometimes they're too drunk and it turns into a bitter festival. Other than that it's going really good. PI: Did you know you're a cult hero? DA: I'm a cult hero? I definitely like that people like the show, and it's the right kind of people. People come up and ask me questions and that's cool, but it's usually when I'm filming, so it's kind of a really weird life-imitating-art thing. People talking to me about the show as we're shooting the show. I guess not many people get to meet the people we see on TV. PI: And the ladies think you're hot. DA: Yeah? Then how come I was jerkin' it last night? You know you're a loser when you're in a town full of beautiful adult film stars, and the occasion curious electronics conventioneer, and you're still going home alone. PI: Well, I have a friend who wants to marry you. DA: Oh yeah? That's good. That's what I like about the people here who live in Vegas, they've seen it all, nothing really shocks them or throws them. You guys are very cool; you know how to handle a lot of weird situations. PI: I think we are really jaded at the same time.
PI: I knew about it, but I don't really care. I never ran into any of them anywhere. DA: I'm about 10 years too old for the show. Drinking with the college kids is fun, but I'm an actual drunk. Those guys are still drinking for fun, I'm just drinking so I don't shake. These kids want to do all that Real World stuff and I really don't get it. PI: Supposedly MTV's target market is 14-year-old girls. DA: Yeah, I know that. PI: So it seems really strange that they are promoting promiscuous sex and drinking. DA: Exactly. It's good for a 14-year-old girl to know that if things go really bad she can always move to Vegas and get a job as a club promoter. Soon we'll have a whole generation of people who have met on reality shows. I met your mom on Shipmates, then we were on Divorce Court, then I met your second mom on The Bacholorette. PI: That's scary isn't it? DA: I dunno. Whatever happened to stalking and bumping into people and all that kind of stuff? Human contact. PI: As a professional drunk can you recommend a hangover cure? DA: The cure is to keep drinking, but when I have to put the speed brakes on, that usually means a cheeseburger or some kind of greasy food that soaks up some of the excess alcohol. I'd say if you think you're drunk, then you're already drunk, but you guys already know that. It's very hard in this town to keep your drinking down, especially if you're gambling 'cause they give you the free drinks, but usually you run out of money before the drink comes to the table, so there are a lot of problems you can run in to. I don't think I'm hip enough for some of these places we go to. We never really go to L.A. or anything because our show isn't really about hip and cool, it's more about regular people doing stuff. PI: Best Of Insomniac will be released on DVD on February 4th, 2003, and it's unedited, so are you getting into that Girls Gone Wild market? DA: Right, I think it's only five shows from the first two seasons. It's unblurred, unbleeped, there's no new footage on it, but you're right, it is kind of a Girls Gone Wild thing. PI: And you've got a CD coming out too. DA: Yeah, the CD is Skanks For The Memories. It's a show I did at the Denver Comedy Works about three months ago. Somebody actually got arrested after the show, there were a lot of drunks. It should be good. I tour when I'm not doing the show, so I'm pretty much on the road all the time. My schedule is on my web site, DaveAttell.com. An edited version of this interview was published in the February 13, 2003 issue of Las Vegas CityLife. Top photo by Poizen Ivy, others courtesy of Comedy Central. |
 Best Of Insomniac-Uncensored Vol. 1 features select episodes from the show's first two seasons
Five Questions With Lightening up the graveyard shift A hard day's night Dave Attell: Comedy's Angry Taking a Dive with Dave Attell ‘Insomniac’ host Dave Attell |
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Poizen Ivy: When did you first realize you were truly an insomniac?
DA: I said that too, but somebody told me it's all blocked by trees or something.
DA: Yeah, I'm just talking with them, sometimes they're a little wilder or crazier than other times. That's the world we live in now, everybody wants to be on TV and I'm not setting them up for a fall. I let them talk and try to make it as humorous as possible. I'm not trying to make anyone look like an idiot, except for myself. 
DA: The interesting story about that movie is that the whole time I'm on pharmaceutical drugs 'cause I had a hernia operation right before the shoot. (laughs) That was my favorite thing about that movie.
DA: There's some jadedness, but I think it's the good kind. You don't get overly excited about TV or film or anything like that. You get to see the stars at their worst, that's what I like. You get to see 'em at the Hard Rock, all crazy. By the way, they wouldn't let us in. I guess because I'm not on The Real World. Question for you, did you guys like having The Real World here?
