{"id":31781,"date":"2019-02-01T03:53:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T11:53:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31781"},"modified":"2019-01-29T17:03:30","modified_gmt":"2019-01-30T01:03:30","slug":"kindler-in-jfls-lineup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/02\/01\/kindler-in-jfls-lineup\/","title":{"rendered":"Kindler in JFL\u2019s lineup"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Andy Kindler (photo \u00a9Maljan)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actor, writer and comedian Andy Kindler is one\nof several Jewish community members on the Just for Laughs NorthWest roster for\nVancouver. He\u2019ll host The Alternative Show<\/em> at Yuk Yuk\u2019s Feb. 21-23.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler spoke with the Independent <\/em>from Montreal, while on a shoot for the dark comedy\nfeature film The Fiddling Horse<\/em>, in which he co-stars as Barry\nBitterman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m a bitter ex-jockey and it\u2019s perfect for\nme,\u201d said Kindler. \u201cI\u2019m five, five-and-a-half, so I almost look like an\nex-jockey, I\u2019m not too tall, and it\u2019s just fun.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler has a ton of acting credits, including Bob\u2019s\nBurgers<\/em>, I\u2019m Dying Up Here<\/em> and Portlandia<\/em>, as well as Everybody\nLoves Raymond<\/em>, Maron<\/em> and But I\u2019m Chris Jericho!<\/em> But standup\ncame first, he said, \u201calthough I did acting in college and in summer camp \u2013 I\nplayed Elwood P. Dowd, the lead in Harvey<\/em>, when I was 12. But, any\nacting that was filmed to be seen by others, that happened after standup.\nStandup, if you\u2019re doing it right, is a good rehearsal for acting; it is just\nbeing yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before standup, Kindler was a musician. It was\nhis pursuit of a music career that took him to Los Angeles \u201cmany, many, many\nyears ago,\u201d but he \u201ccouldn\u2019t make a living.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was in my 20s,\u201d he said. \u201cI was very\ninsecure, I kind of hated myself, like many kids that age, unless you have a\ntremendous amount of confidence. So, I just happened to stumble into standup\ncomedy. A friend of mine \u2013 we were working at the same stereo store together \u2013\nhe said, you\u2019re funny, let\u2019s try it, so I actually was in a duo for a couple\nyears and that was really a good way to start.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler played guitar. \u201cI played classical\nviolin when I was a kid, but I didn\u2019t play very well \u2026 and I still took it for\nanother 12 years, even hating it, because I had issues\u2026. I started playing\nguitar in high school, which was the greatest. When I grew up, people wanted to\nbe the Beatles. We didn\u2019t want to be necessarily [comedian] Shecky Greene. Now\nI want to be Shecky Greene but, back then, all my heroes were musicians, except\nfor Richard Pryor. But, I didn\u2019t know much about comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he learned to do comedy in Los Angeles,\nhe said he wouldn\u2019t recommend that people follow his example, \u201cbecause it\u2019s\nkind of a frightening thing. But I lived in L.A., so the only way I wouldn\u2019t\nhave been able to not start in L.A., I would have had to have moved out of\ntown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI put my name in the hat, did all the open mic\nthings, and that\u2019s how I started and it just, I don\u2019t want to say, took off,\nbut I\u2019ve been making a living since \u201987.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite his long career, Kindler has spoken in\ninterviews about only recently becoming comfortable with doing standup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of people, they see comedians and they\nsay, how can you do it? Well, when you start comedy \u2013 unless you\u2019re a person\nwho really has no fear \u2013 you\u2019re scared for a long time because you can be funny\noff-stage, but you still can\u2019t do it under pressure or it\u2019s not necessarily\nthat you can produce it at anytime. That\u2019s where the technique comes in,\u201d he\nexplained. \u201cThe technique basically for standup comes from doing it over and\nover and over again, until you either hate it or it becomes something you love.\nSo, I felt like, after 10 years, oh, I\u2019m really good at this but I wasn\u2019t\u2026.\nThere are still nights I don\u2019t feel comfortable, but it gets better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler faces challenges that most comedians\ndon\u2019t: he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive compulsive\ndisorder. When he was younger and just starting out, he said, \u201cAt that time,\nyou didn\u2019t hear a lot about OCD and so I thought I was losing my mind, because\nI never got help until a couple of years ago for it\u2026. And when I was first\nstarting comedy, it was like a whole year where I would say to myself onstage,\nI am holding the mic in my right hand, I am gesturing to the crowd with my left\nhand, I am walking two steps \u2013 I couldn\u2019t get out of my head and I didn\u2019t even\nknow I was officially OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While knowing that he has OCD and ADHD hasn\u2019t\nchanged his act, which he describes as \u201cso stream of consciousness,\u201d it has\nhelped him in other ways. \u201cI feel better about myself now,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m more\ncalm.\u201d And he has learned ways of coping, he said, recommending the book Delivered\nfrom Distraction<\/em>. \u201cI don\u2019t make any money on the sales of the book,\u201d he\nsaid, \u201cbut they give you tools for dealing with OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler has been to Vancouver often, including\nwith JFL\u2019s The Alternative Show<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe\nAlternative Show<\/em> started in Montreal at that festival,\u201d explained Kindler,\n\u201cand it started in the late \u201990s when you actually needed to have a show called\nThe Alternative Show<\/em>. A lot of people\nprobably don\u2019t remember there was a big comedy boom, comedy got very generic\nand everybody was like, what\u2019s the deal with this thing? It started to be very\nhomogenized and so there was kind of a movement in L.A. and New York in the mid\nto late \u201990s, or even earlier, for the core of alternative comedy. And now, the\ngood news is, that comedy is better than it ever was, everybody is doing\ninteresting things. So, I don\u2019t really need to have a show because almost the\nwhole festival you could call alternative, but one thing I do like to do is\nhave people working on new stuff and hopefully taking chances, so it\u2019s not like\nthem doing their honed five minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally, Kindler brings five or six comedians\nonstage during the night. \u201cIt\u2019s usually a combination of two things: other\npeople in the festival and local people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler has been coming up to Canada in one\nform or another since the late 1980s. He worked Yuk Yuk\u2019s in the west, he said.\n\u201cSo, I know a lot of the comedians and the comedians in Canada are hilarious. I\nthink Canada has the best comedians per capita in the world. What I\u2019m doing in\nmy act, which is commenting culture, all Canadians do that naturally because\nyou\u2019re next to American culture, but you can comment on it and feel separate\nfrom it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being Jewish is a large part of Kindler\u2019s\nroutine. While he sometimes thinks that, in his act, he\u2019ll just do a few Jewish\njokes and move on to other material, he said, \u201cI just can\u2019t stop it because I\nfeel so Jewish. It\u2019s so much a part of me. I used to make a joke about how\nJewish people are funny even when they\u2019re not trying to be funny. Like, when\nthe Whitney Houston song \u2018How Will I Know?\u2019 came out, I was with this Jewish\nfriend of mine, and she\u2019s singing, \u2018How will I know?\u2019 and my friend yells at\nthe radio, \u2018You\u2019ll know, Whitney, you\u2019ll know. Believe me, you\u2019ll know.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd this is just how all Jews are, even when\nthey\u2019re not trying to be funny. So, I feel very, very Jewish, but it also could\nbe a member of any oppressed group that responds to being oppressed with humour\nand self-deprecation. I love to make fun of the fact that I\u2019m Jewish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While he doesn\u2019t have any topics that he won\u2019t\ntalk about in his act, Kindler does shy away from certain words and thinks\nabout whether his material is unnecessarily offensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI get very angry when comics say they never\napologize, because everybody makes mistakes,\u201d he said, giving the example of\nhaving used, early in his career, a joke that referenced the Holocaust. Two\naudience members approached him afterward, upset because they felt he was\n\u201cgratuitously making fun of the Holocaust, and I decided that I wasn\u2019t in that\nparticular case, but also decided it\u2019s important for comics to think about what\nthey\u2019re saying because, when you\u2019re onstage, you can say something in the\nmoment and then you have the right to not want to say it later. There\u2019s no\nspecific red lines, but I do think about why I\u2019m doing the joke and whether\nit\u2019s worth doing it and who\u2019s the subject of the joke.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kindler said being a comic is a \u201ckind of a\nmiracle, or a magic thing\u201d and \u201clike a dream come true because I really,\nreally, really love standup and a lot of people get sick of it after awhile. I\njust haven\u2019t. That doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t get sick of it temporarily, but it\u2019s\nstill the thing I most love doing, it\u2019s the thing I feel most natural about\ndoing and it\u2019s just I feel it is a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Alternative Show<\/em> is at Yuk Yuk\u2019s Feb. 21, 10 p.m.; and Feb. 22 and 23, 11 p.m. For tickets and the full JFL NorthWest lineup, visit jflnorthwest.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Kindler (photo \u00a9Maljan) Actor, writer and comedian Andy Kindler is one of several Jewish community members on the Just for Laughs NorthWest roster for Vancouver. He\u2019ll host The Alternative Show at Yuk Yuk\u2019s Feb. 21-23. Kindler spoke with the Independent from Montreal, while on a shoot for the dark comedy feature film The Fiddling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[8678,5278,8677],"class_list":["post-31781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-andy-kindler","tag-comedy","tag-jfl-northwest"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}