Your friendly neighborhood Crawler caught up with everyman comedian Colin Quinn for the full skinny on Long Story Short, a one-man show he is bringing from Broadway to Fox’s MGM Grand Theater for a one-night-only engagement Feb. 18. Here’s some of how it went down.
Nightcrawler: I was just amazed with Long Story Short, at the work that goes into tying something like that all together. Was this the musical equivalent of a band putting out a concept album?
Colin Quinn (laughing): I would say it’s more like the musical equivalent of Sasha Fierce.
It’s a cohesive package as opposed to 10 airline jokes, 10 dick jokes, et cetera.
I know. Maybe I should have tried for 20 airline dick jokes instead? But, yes, I would say a concept album is a fair comparison to this show.
Now I would like to ask my next question, then take a guess at the answer. How did the material for Long Story Short—essentially a 75-minute recap of world history—come together? I’m thinking that the economic collapse of Greece was in the news at the time, and you made the connection to Greece being the first empire. So you had the bookends and fleshed out the middle?
That’s exactly right! And I can’t stop thinking about the Greeks. I think if I can figure them out, I will understand the world.
And in between was a mix of existing material you knew would fit the mold?
Yeah. And we can learn a lot about our perceived empire by looking at all of these and their collapses. We have to do everything in such a big way, you know? Costco-ize everything. History shows us what can happen when you do this.
Something else I noticed you have been doing—perhaps better, certainly differently than most other celebs—is your use of Twitter. It seems you are the Andy Kaufman of Twitter, just tweeting anything you can think of to get any kind of reaction from people.
(Laughing) I do. It’s funny, because someone made that same comparison with Kaufman on Twitter. So I said Andy Kaufman was great at certain aspects of comedy, but I am a better all-around comedian, which got all the Kaufman fans crazy. But I mean, you’ve got these people tweeting, “My new album drops today. I’m so psyched… off to the gym now.” Really?
I can totally picture you just chuckling like a little kid as you read the replies and think of ways to incite people further.
I really do! I got on this thing with Will Ferrell a while ago, saying he used drugs and stole Anchorman, and TMZ started calling. I can’t get enough of it.
Tickets for Long Story Short range from $35 to $65 depending on your proximity to the hilarity. To order, kindly point your browser to comixatfoxwoods.com.
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Since we’ve meandered onto the casino circuit, local hero Aaron Lewis is multi-platinum in multiple genres… okay, at least two. In fact, he was recently nominated for two Academy of Country Music (ACM) awards, including a nod for Vocal Event Of The Year. He’ll be at the Mohegan Sun Arena (mohegansun.com) solo on Thursday, Feb. 16. Stay tuned for an upcoming column that will include both a show review and exclusive interview.
Last but not least, six-stringer Gary Phelps checked in to report that his band, Mutherload, has settled its offspring issues and will return from hiatus for a Feb. 18 Iron Horse (iheg.com) engagement.
“We were working with two separate drummers and they both had babies about the same time,” he explains. “They are both settled in now, and after this local show, we are looking at some festivals, then recording later this year.”
Send correspondence to Nightcrawler, P.O. Box 427, Somers, CT 06071; fax to (860) 394-4262 or email garycarra@aol.com.
