Rick Shapiro – Of Xbox and Ass

Within minutes of the tape rolling, it becomes apparent that this will be no ordinary interview; Rick Shapiro does not do soundbites. Wonderfully, miraculously, he is blessed with a brain that travels at a constant tangent, switching path as often as some fairytale traveller lost in a wild wood. Talk of psychic vibrations making his legs ache and ruminations on Hamlet ("Why is that ok? Cos it’s a story with a moral? Well, I’m a walking story and I don’t have a moral") and the relative merits of patricide all make for a conversation never less than 80% sidetracked – but what a wonderful track to follow.

Judging by the hype he seems to be generating here, Shapiro is a comic on the rise. A 20 year veteran of the US stand-up scene, his onstage candour and liking for extended set-pieces (for years he played sets upwards of 3 hours) have seen him compared to everyone from Richard Pryor to James Joyce. Like Richard Pryor, Shapiro draws on painful experiences to fuel comedy of the most personal kind: a former addict, prostitute and victim of childhood abuse, his set is peppered with anecdotes that tread the line between hilarity and pitch black pathos with a mesmerizing deftness. As a matter of fact, he takes exception to a review I published of his show, describing him as being made of ‘darker meat’ than most of the comics on show:

"I’m not aware of being ‘dark’. It’s just what I know. Recently I met this girl who was acting really nice, and she would call me up saying, ‘I just feel like I can talk to you’…I said ‘what’s your real problem?’ She said ‘nothing, I just feel comfortable around you and I know that you were a prostitute but I want you to know it’s all over and it’s ok’. I thought…something’s wrong here. She calls me up once a week and then finally she goes ‘I used to be a call-girl and I’m ashamed.’ I said, why are you ashamed of it? And she goes...’well, because it’s wrong’. I said why’s it wrong? It’s not something that’s right or wrong, it’s something that you didn’t want to do. I could easily agree, it is wrong, but what does wrong have to do with it when that’s where your life went? Sure, there is a choice, but a lot of people who grew up as victims of abuse don’t grow up with choice."

Though by his own admission a loner at heart, he has nonetheless won friends in high places. Chris Rock has been a vocal fan and Doug Stanhope has been known to pull stunts just to get him stage time – allotting him slots booked in his own name. His most vocal admirers highlight the feckless sincerity with which he performs. As well as this honesty, Shapiro is also noted for the level of literacy he brings to his shows. On the evening I saw him perform, he name-checked Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, alongside such counter-cultural icons as Abbie Hoffman and Anais Niin. I ask him if these are figures with which he identifies:

"Am I counter culture? If you’re talking about Nicole Ritchie and Paris Hilton, yeah sure, I’m against that. Who wouldn’t be? There’s so much more going on that we could deal with right now. What I am about is saying: 'why sit at home playing X-box when you could be eating ass? Why read Harry Potter when it’s so obviously a franchise, sold to you in big franchise bookstores?' A bunch of kids sitting around a table saying ‘Harry, you’re so weird’ – why can people not see how lacking that is in imagination?"

Big words, especially in the city that birthed the boy wizard, yet they seem utterly without bravado. A frail figure who is, by his own admission, fighting an addiction to prescription downers so powerful they have him walking into walls, Shapiro is inherently likeable. Very much the little boy lost. In the brief time I spend in his company a number of new friends wander over, visibly thrilled to see him. One even declares him her ‘festival baby’. Most exciting of all is the lack of separation in his persona on and off the stage. I had dreaded that his act – so winningly genuine – would prove to be just that. With so many comics trading on a stage presence that in no way reflects their real selves, I dearly hoped that Shapiro’s mix of befuddlement and rage would prove to be a genuine reflection of his own self. Was his apparent candour, I asked him, a career move?

"I can understand the arguments about people saying it’s a career move, but you know what? I’m sorry. Let it be a career move – have a career that’s such a huge dream, career move isn’t a bad word."

Does he worry, then, that this kind of outsider stance is going to alienate him from potential audiences?

"If people would just say it, the stigmas and judgements of conversation would be gone. …‘Oh, she’s weird’…I know a girl who was in 6 foster homes: growing up, they threw meat over the fence to feed her. She has a performance room in L.A. They all say ‘she’s crazy’, but now her room got picked up because she took so many risks…risk is in now…now they’re all her friends but, when they hear about her history they all say ‘she’s a freak’ Why? Because she happened to be born to a mother who gave her away? That makes her what? And, the guy who holds down a telemarketing job, all ‘canIhelpyoucanIhelpyoucanIhelpyou’…he’s not the freak?...What’s what?"

Notoriously, sarcasm seldom registers on paper. Nor do silly voices - and Shapiro has a whole squirming inventory on show. The tyranny of print means that the humour at the heart of his comments might be lost but if you squint it’s there, nonetheless, just a little angry, just a little sad, burning with a sense of indignation at the core.