Interview: Jim Norton's Not a Fraud
Comedian Jim Norton is in Detroit this week with the Opie & Anthony Traveling Virus Comedy Tour and to promote his new book Happy Endings: The Tales of a Meaty-Breasted Zilch. The Detroit Free Press has a short interview with him. Here's a little:
QUESTION: Can you talk about why your comedy style is raunchy, where some comedians go in a different, cleaner direction?
ANSWER: You have to do what makes you funny, whatever
is true to you. To me, there's no valor in clean and there's no valor
in dirty. It's only about being original and true to who you are as a
funny person. I've done a Letterman. I've done four "Tonight" shows…
so I do work clean as well. But I try to be at least a little darker
when I'm clean… To me, if you're a clean guy and that's your humor,
that's great. But if you go out of your way just to be TV clean, you're
not doing yourself a service as a comic. You're a fraud. Why is that
better? Lenny Bruce wasn't clean. Pryor wasn't clean. Carlin wasn't
clean. Bill Hicks wasn't clean. These are all great comedians.
The full interview can be read at the Free Press site and Norton can be seen at the DTE Energy Music Theater this Saturday evening.
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