Alex Fossella

Today I am interviewing Alex Fossella, a comedian born in New York, NY who has been doing comedy for four years. To find out more about Alex, visit his website.

Why did you start doing stand-up comedy?

I started doing comedy because I'm just one of those typical artistic weirdos. I was the creepy quiet kid in school who only got attention if I was being funny. I love attention. Performing any art form is addictive. In high school I wanted to be a musician (I still play a lot but don't want it as a career anymore), until I saw a special on Comedy Central called "Patton Oswalt: No Reason to Complain." I'd always liked standup comedy, but this special really made me pay attention. I bought Oswalt's standup album and started my collection from there. That's when I really started looking at comedy like an art and not as just entertainment. For a while I listened to comedy records I liked on a loop (my personal record is listening to a record 20 times in a row). Then I started to think I could do it, but quickly tossed the idea because i didn't want to mess up my music career. Eventually I caved and decided to give comedy a shot.

I still have my first notebook full of awful jokes. My first set was in front of two people in my dorm room. Very awkward. First set in New York was at the Laugh Lounge around Xmas time. After that I got out to the new york open mics whenever I could go. If I don't do a set for long enough, I get into this weird adrenaline withdrawal. I can only go so long without getting my fix of attention.

Who are your favorite comedians and why?

The Classics: Richard Pryor, Don Rickles, Bill Cosby, Steve Martin.
These guys made work that still stands the test of time, even if some of them are dead or out of comedy.

The Harsh guys: Bill Hicks, Rick Shapiro, Dave Attell, Doug Stanhope, Jim Norton.
The first two are unrelenting in their criticism of society's hypocrisies. Hicks was more structured and Shapiro is more free-form, but they both come from the same place. Doug Stanhope is like Bill Hicks on steroids. The DARKEST stuff you've ever heard and hilarious. Norton and Attell are good writers who let out their sleaziness onstage in a very well-thought manner. Philosophical Filth.

The Weird Guys: Patton Oswalt, Dave Chappelle, Kids in the Hall.
Patton Oswalt's work was the first thing that made me want to do comedy. I still listen to him all the time and laugh till my carotid arteries hurt. Chappelle had one of the best sketch shows ever. It was so finely crafted. Same thing with Kids in the Hall. A little more unwieldy than Chappelle's show, but no less brilliant.

The Foreigners: Monty Python, Hugh Laurie (House MD), Craig Ferguson, Sascha Baron Cohen.
Brits are funny. Also people formerly oppressed by the Brits. Monty Python is the Beatles of comedy. Cohen is a genius for his Andy Kaufman-esque character bits. Ferguson always makes me laugh. Laurie is a great actor of drama and comedy.

How do you deal with hecklers?

I deal with hecklers only slightly better than a 4 year old autistic girl. I've only taken down three hecklers successfully. One was talking a lot and I told her "you have not shut your hole all night!" which made my friends laugh. Other one was a woman who I asked if she was a Mom and she said she wanted to kill me, so I said "Sorry for assuming you had a happy life with children!" She came up to me afterward and said she wanted to strangle me because she was unable to have kids. "You were very funny but you ruined my night" was what she said. Other one was a lady with rotten teeth and I said I couldn't hear her words through her alcoholism.

Some hecklers threatened to kick my ass. This is because I don't bother to prepare for them. I usually try to improvise something, which often ends really badly, e.g. me shouting obscenities at them. I am not the man you should come to for heckler advice.