{"id":32145,"date":"2019-03-22T03:52:39","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T10:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32145"},"modified":"2019-03-20T12:32:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T19:32:59","slug":"jnf-gala-features-comic-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/03\/22\/jnf-gala-features-comic-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"JNF gala features comic Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elon Gold performs in Vancouver on April 14 at the JNF Negev Gala. (photo from elongold.com<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Comedian Elon Gold loves doing charity events, especially Jewish ones. The Independent<\/em> caught him for a phone interview as he was on the road \u2013 with his family \u2013 to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to do gigs for the Adelson Education Campus and then the Israeli-American Coalition. On April 14, he will be in Vancouver to co-headline, with Ambassador Ron Prosor, the Jewish National Fund, Pacific Region, Negev Gala. The event raises funds for Sderot Animal-Assisted Therapy Centre.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019m doing a mitzvah by making my people laugh. And I\u2019m also helping this cause that\u2019s really important, and Israel is really important to me,\u201d said Gold. \u201cAnd we\u2019re living in a highly antisemitic time, it\u2019s dark out there, so anything I can do to bring light into our world and make my fellow Jew happy, I\u2019m there for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold\u2019s resum\u00e9 is impressive. He starred in the television series Stacked<\/em> and In-Laws<\/em>, had a recurring role on Bones<\/em> and on The Dana Carvey Show<\/em>. He guest starred just recently on HBO\u2019s Crashing<\/em> and, longer ago, on shows including Frasier<\/em> and The Mentalist<\/em>. He has appeared in films, his one-hour Netflix special, Elon Gold: Chosen and Taken<\/em>, is available on Amazon and his show Elon Gold: Pro-Semite<\/em> premi\u00e8red at the Montreal Comedy Festival. He has made multiple appearances on The Tonight Show<\/em> and his July 2018 segment on The Late Late Show With James Corden<\/em> \u2013 how, like everyone else, Jews love sex, money and food, but just in a different order \u2013 has been watched and shared by countless people on the internet, as has his routine on why Jews shouldn\u2019t have Christmas trees and so many others.<\/p>\n

Despite all of his accomplishments and his years in the business, Gold still gets excited about his work, and he shared what he described as a \u201cwow\u201d moment, one of the best days of his life, almost immediately when talking with the JI<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday,\u201d he said, \u201cI was filming a scene of Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/em> with Larry David\u2026. It was really, truly a dream come true.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Gold didn\u2019t take his being hired by David as a sign that he had \u201cmade it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe truth is, I have been a guy with lucky breaks and hard breaks for the last 20 years,\u201d said Gold. \u201cThis is another achievement, and one that\u2019s beyond anything I would dream of\u2026. I\u2019m gratified in the sense that I finally feel like I\u2019m in a place, not where I\u2019ve made it, but where I actually have fans, and my clips are viral and people are sharing my bits on Facebook, WhatsApp or whatever. I did the James Corden<\/em> show and, again, that doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ve arrived \u2026 but what\u2019s cool to me is that I did that set and then everyone\u2019s sharing it, especially Jews. My biggest fans are my people.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a 25-year journey, said Gold of his career, \u201cwith all sorts of great highs, like yesterday, and huge lows, like having a sitcom that you pitched and created and started get canceled. There are so many lows, and then there is the daily rejection that is show business. And that\u2019s why I\u2019m so glad I\u2019m a comedian and an actor. I get rejected all day in Hollywood at auditions, but then, at night, I\u2019ll go to the Laugh Factory comedy club and I\u2019ll have 300 people roaring, and that will validate [me] \u2013 I knew they were wrong! I knew I could do this. See, I\u2019m funny. These people think so, at least.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold said his resilience, his ability to keep trying, likely comes from stand-up. \u201cBecause stand-up is all about bombing and killing, and the killing is so worth it that even the terrible, dejected feeling of bombing [is manageable].\u201d<\/p>\n

As far as his career, he said, \u201cI have no other choice. I don\u2019t love doing anything else and I\u2019m not good at anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Known for his impressions, he said, \u201cI used to impersonate my teachers in eighth grade.\u201d His goal wasn\u2019t to ridicule people, he said, but to make even the teachers laugh.<\/p>\n

He enjoyed making people laugh, and writing comedy. One of the first things he wrote, he said, was a Purim shpiel. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll never forget the feeling of having the entire high school laughing, and thinking, there has never been anything more gratifying than what I just did, I want to do this more. Everybody says it\u2019s like a drug\u2026. It\u2019s so addictive. Once you get a taste of it, that\u2019s it, you\u2019re hooked. And very little can discourage a comedian [so much that they get] out of comedy; certainly not a bad set, because we all know that we all have them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A combination of things drives him.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s probably disingenuous to say that I do this because I love to make others laugh,\u201d he admitted. There is a selfish aspect to it, he said. While making people happy is a \u201ckey component\u201d of why he does comedy, he said, \u201cI also love everything about it\u2026 I love the process of having an observation and then writing it and tinkering with it and working on it. I love doing it and I love the fact that I have so much freedom in my days because I don\u2019t have that nine-to-five job most people have\u2026. I\u2019m always working. At the same time, I\u2019m always on vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold loves getting the laughs, and said that\u2019s probably 70% of the reason he does comedy; the other 30% is making people happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is so much misery in the world,\u201d he said, \u201cto make people happy is a great thing, but it\u2019s only a part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the acting side, Gold said his favourite kind of acting is for sitcoms \u201cwith a live studio audience because you\u2019re still getting the laugh but now you\u2019re not looking at the audience and talking to them, you\u2019re looking at your fellow actor \u2026 and, peripherally, you hear and see these people cracking up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, he said, \u201cI just love performing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only \u201cgrueling part,\u201d he said, is the memorizing \u201cand the pressure of 200 people staring at you, saying, \u2018You better know your lines, pal, because we\u2019re all here and we all want to go home\u2026. Acting is challenging, but it\u2019s also just fun\u2026. It\u2019s fun to get into a character and just play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold, who is from the Bronx originally, recalled his first open-mic night at the Comic Strip Live in Manhattan; he was 16 years old. \u201cFortunately, I had beginner\u2019s luck because I was doing impressions \u2013 my early act was all impressions \u2013 and impressions are like magic tricks, they just wow the audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being a touring comedian by university (he got a bachelor\u2019s in economics at Boston U), it took years, he said, to develop his own voice, to figure out what he wanted to talk about and how to talk about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m obsessed with Jewish stuff because I live such a Jewish life,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m an observant Jew, I keep Shabbos and all that stuff, keep kosher. So much of my life is in the Jewish world, I can\u2019t help myself but to come up with observations about our traditions, our holidays, our rituals. A lot of what I talk about is what I live\u2026. The other part of my life is being married, being a dad, so I talk about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gold and his wife, Sasha, have four kids, two sons and two daughters, ranging in age from 9 to 18. The couple is coming up to their 25th anniversary in June.<\/p>\n

As he stopped to fill up his car with gas on the way to Vegas, he told the JI<\/em> about why he likes performing at Jewish events, while simultaneously directing his kids to be quick about heading into the gas station, as they were running late.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are not a lot of comedians out there that will go that deep into the Jewish experience and, for me, there are not a lot of audiences I can share my Jewish experiences with,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t do lulav and etrog jokes on James Corden<\/em>\u2026. At the same time, we\u2019re raising money, we\u2019re raising awareness for incredible organizations\u2026. It\u2019s all win-win for me \u2013 I\u2019m raising money, I\u2019m making money, I\u2019m getting laughs, I\u2019m getting to do material I don\u2019t do anywhere else\u2026. And I love Jewish audiences; I love connecting on more than just a human level\u2026. We\u2019re connecting about a shared experience that is almost indescribable to anyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

For tickets to the JNF Pacific Region evening event on April 14, which will be held at Schara Tzedeck, call 604-257-5155.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elon Gold performs in Vancouver on April 14 at the JNF Negev Gala. (photo from elongold.com) Comedian Elon Gold loves doing charity events, especially Jewish ones. The Independent caught him for a phone interview as he was on the road \u2013 with his family \u2013 to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to do gigs for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[2723,5278,8805,3128,4330,59,60,8806,2763,1587,1959],"class_list":["post-32145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-animals","tag-comedy","tag-elon-gold","tag-fundraising","tag-israel","tag-jewish-national-fund","tag-jnf","tag-negev-gala","tag-philanthropy","tag-sderot","tag-tikkun-olam"],"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\/32145","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=32145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}