CringeHumor

It took two operations on his leg, a failed TV pilot in Los Angeles, one 30-day comedy tour and a bunch of fat jokes for Robert Kelly to get where he is today. Which, he’ll tell you is just the beginning.

Seven years ago, Kelly says he was a novice. He considered himself a comedian, but he hadn’t carved a niche for himself. Coming up with the likes of Jim Norton, Patrice O’Neal, Dane Cook and Bill Burr, Kelly has seen all his buddies go on and reach stardom in this industry, but there was something he still had to figure out before he could begin to proceed to the next level. It didn’t come overnight. There was a transition from a kid comic into the performer he is right now.

“There was a time where I was just trying to get everyone to like me,” Kelly says. “Now I just don’t give a fuck.” Coupled with his need for acceptance in a crowd was his dependence on “physical” standup. “I used to run around like a goofball. I thought I had to show people and illustrate things by being physical on stage. I did that for a long time, but I learned that I had to take it more seriously.”

For Kelly that happened in 2006, when he was on the Tourgasm tour with old buddies, Dane Cook, Gary Gulman and virtual newcomer, Jay Davis. In what has become a well-known moment to Kelly and Tourgasm fans, he injured his leg during a pickup game of football while on the tour. Rather than letting it get him down, Kelly sucked it up and still took the stage.

“I thought to myself, what was I going to do? I wasn’t used to not being able to go on stage and act out a joke,” Kelly says. “But the whole thing turned out to be a blessing.”

It was the first time in Kelly’s career that he would have to use words to describe his life on stage. There would be no more “running around” for him. He had more than half the tour to finish and he would do it like he had never done it before. “I had to come up with jokes in a different way,” he says. “For the first time I had to use more words to paint a picture and I couldn’t yell and scream and jump around.”

There was another epiphany for Kelly. Over seven years ago he found himself in Los Angeles, where he had moved after filming a pilot. He felt out of place in Hollywood and found himself coming back to New York with a new focus on comedy. “If I had made it back then, it wouldn’t have lasted at all,” Kelly admits. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know what being a comic was about.” He adds that he had to find his voice. “Some things come easy and some things don’t. I just think that everything hits when it’s supposed to. For me that’s right now.”

It didn’t work out for him in Los Angeles, but coming back to New York proved to be beneficial. In New York he could focus on writing again. Material, he says, is never as easy as it seems. Kelly feels that comedy was a different industry in years past. Comedians could use the same material for ten years and it wouldn’t matter, but now with the added exposure, a 24-hour comedy television network, countless comedy websites and a need to please the ADD generation, comedians are constantly forced to write new material.

“It’s a different ballgame now,” he says. “It has to always be fresh. There was a time where comedians used to swap jokes, just to get out of jams. Guys like Don Rickles have been doing the same act their entire career, because that’s what works for them, but it doesn’t work for us. Look at a guy like Jim Norton, he writes all the time, but it works out for him. I’m learning that. I’m learning self-discipline.”

His self-discipline doesn’t include his eating habits. Much of Kelly’s struggles nowadays are keeping the weight off, but at the same time he understands that he has to point out the obvious on stage. “I talk about myself on stage. That’s what I do. Right now I’m talking about being a dumpy fatso that stuffs my face with cupcakes. Hopefully in ten years I’ll be talking about how funny fat guys are when I’m skinny again… or I can just keep talking about how I’m still stuffing my face with cupcakes.”

Most comedians will admit their addictions. They’ll say they have been addicted to women on the road, drugs, alcohol or gambling. Kelly has no problem telling everyone he is addicted to food. “It’s my addiction,” he says. “I don’t do drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t bang hookers anymore, I just eat. That’s my escape.”

Certainly, Kelly is aware that he’s not the only comedian doing fat jokes, but what he prides himself on is that he has always talked about his life to his audience. There is rarely a moment when he’s not being real on stage. Being similar to another comedian is just something he doesn’t think about.

“There’s this joke I tell about my wife jerking me off and then me coming on my face, because I had my eyes closed and she wasn’t paying attention. Well, it turns out Louis CK has a similar joke, but he has a different ending. I immediately changed the way I told it because I didn’t want to have something that was the same, but you know that’s gonna happen. People are going to tell similar jokes, because for the most part I’m not watching other comedians. I mean I’ll check out a guy’s progress, but I don’t want to ever absorb anyone’s material.

“Does someone else have a joke like that? Probably. But what can I do? This happened to me, so I’m just gonna go out there and talk about me, because I’ve always been an honest comic.”

Kelly uses the controversial Carlos Mencia as an example. “What he did with the border control joke, that’s not the one anyone should be looking at, because anyone could tell that joke. I had a joke after 9/11 about Osama Bin Laden making all those videos. I said he was going to come out with Osama bloopers. Weeks later I’m watching someone on BET do the same joke. That type of stuff is gonna happen to everyone. The thing about Carlos is you have to look at the joke he stole from Bill Cosby. That’s the joke that really doesn’t make sense. Cosby is talking about being a father and raising his kids, why would Carlos even tell that joke? He’s not a father. What would have inspired him to write something like that?”

So what can the comedy industry do to weed out the hacks and the cheaters? “The problem is, even if we banded together as comics, his fans would still tell us to go fuck ourselves.  If the funniest people were rewarded there would be a lot of funnier people on TV, but that’s not the case. That doesn’t mean that guys like Joe Rogan should stop doing what he’s doing to Carlos. Joe’s great. He’s got a lot of ‘fuck you money’ and he can take on that challenge.”

Kelly found himself in an uncomfortable situation last year during the Opie and Anthony Virus Comedy Tour. Mencia was featured on several of the shows and while it made for awkward moments backstage, there was very little anyone could do or say. “It’s all show business, man,” Kelly says. “Opie and Anthony had to figure out a way to sell out shows. It had nothing to do with principles or whether or not this guy was stealing jokes, that didn’t factor into anything. They had responsibilities, but the sweetest part was, the fans that care, they let him know about it. Some booed, some didn’t pay attention to him at all… I can’t get caught up in who’s funny anymore. People are funny for different reasons. I just know that I’m funny because I talk about myself and people like that. I really don’t care about figuring it out past that.”

On April 8, Comedy Central will be releasing Robert Kelly’s first major DVD/CD special. He’s come a long way from being a “punk” kid who spent two years in juvenile hall in Boston. He’s come a long way from being an immature comedian. Things are different now. There is more responsibility. “When I was middling, nothing mattered. I could go out there and do the best 30 minutes I had and if people liked it, great. If they didn’t, so what, it had no effect on me. Now it’s different. This is how I pay the bills. This is a job for me. I love doing it, but I understand it a lot more now than I used to.”

There was a time when Kelly would pick the brains of fellow comedians, some of whom he had looked up to coming up like Colin Quinn and Louis CK. “I don’t do that anymore,” he says. “Right now I’m making decisions on my own. I’m finally at a place where I can go out there and dominate a crowd and be funny.”

As for his new comedy DVD/CD, he says the title is self-explanatory. “Just the tip,” he says. “This is the start for me. This is just a little piece of the rest of my career.”

To buy Robert’s CD go to http://www.robertkellylive.com for more details.