Phoning a stand-up comedian for an interview at 8:20 in the morning seems completely counterintuitive; stand-up comedy is an after-five affair, best suited for darkened rooms and two-drink minimums, but there I was, without even a drop of coffee in me yet, dialling the phone card access number to talk to Pablo Francisco in the States about his upcoming Australian tour. It was pretty much after five for Francisco in LA, and he was clearly getting into the zone; what started off as a typical conversation about his new show somehow turned into me getting my own personal 10 minute stand-up show.
Francisco has been cooking up something new, a show called Here We Go Again (Back in the Outback) and he wants to use Australia as a test kitchen. “Doing a show in Australia, it’s like doing a show in front of your family, but a cool family. A family that lets you drink a beer. It’s a great testing ground for everything,” he says. This is his fourth time touring the country, which he describes as ”like a rainbow and a sunset in one.”
This time around, he’s teamed up with his friend, Steve Kramer, whose biography includes everything from stand-up to voice acting to animation. It’s this last talent that Francisco’s put to greatest use in his new show, which features cartoons along with the tried-and-true material that Francisco’s fans are used to. “This gentleman is a secret weapon, he’s a great comedian. Steve is controlling all the cartoon antics; he’s basically like Family Guy plus AC/DC divided by the square root of Apple Macintosh. He’s the brains, the electrician of the show, I guess. It’ll be fun.”
So while Francisco is going multi-media with this show, he remains a little wary of social media outside his stage work, though he does have quite an active presence on Facebook and Twitter. He says that social media can make a pretty big impact on comedians. He explains that while fans can sometimes begin to dictate to comedians through social media, he tries to keep a certain distance. “People want to communicate with you, it’s a different kind of fan thing now. A lot of other comedians get too close to their fans. You don’t even get close to your own mother like you do to your fans. It’s like – hey buddy, did you have your coffee today?” he says with a high-pitched whine.
And this is where the funny voices and bits of his routine begin to slip in. He says, “You don’t want to cross the line. You don’t want to start hating on people. You just want to make fun of it and move on. You want to say, ‘look, do you recognize this about this? have you recognised…’ Here’s Deadliest Catch. Here’s these guys going out bragging, ‘We put our lives on the line,’ here’s the captain, sitting in a nice cozy… watching these guys almost die, and all for what? To give a drunk person crab legs at a bar!”
From here on out, I just let the guy run; I couldn’t get a word in edgewise between his barrage of material and my own giggling. His mind jumps from subject to subject and he rapid-fires stuff at me that may or may not be in his upcoming show, but one thing is clear, audiences are in for a good night. He says, “It’s gonna be the way it should be, fun and free and all that good stuff. Start the party off at the Pablo show. Go and get some beers, get buzzed and then drive on the other side of the road.”
CICELY BINFORD
Pablo Francisco appears at The Regal Theatre on Friday, April 24. Tickets are available via Ticketek.
