| The Apiary Network |  |
 |
 |
||
 | |||||
By: Mo Diggs | Main | New Video Wednesday! »
November 27, 2007
Character Sketches | Sean Patton
By: Neil Padover
Sean Patton doesn't do characters. He doesn't jump around on stage or deliver deadpan one-liners, although he admits to having tried all of these things at one time. What you see is what you get, and what you see is someone who looks like John Belushi's body double (sometimes Ron Jeremy, depending on if the moustache is in bloom). Despite all of the personal baggage you're likely to hear about in Patton's act, perhaps the comic's greatest challenge has been in finding his comedic voice. "One of the guys I admire the most is Eddie Izzard. This guy can just kind of weave through being really animated and pantomiming a lot, to just kind of standing there--and either way it works for him,'" Patton says. "I would watch other guys like Sam Kinison who's always full force. And I was like, 'what am I?'"
At "The Creek and the Cave" recently, his twenty minute set covered a variety of topics like his struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder, being broke in New York, and living with his aunt, a recovering "crackhead." Patton's jokes don't just sublimate his personal experiences into some form of therapy as so many comics often do. He is able to look beyond himself and articulate how his own experiences are representative of those things which affect us all on a grander scale.
When Patton tells a joke, you never end up back where you started. Each premise is a building block for the absurd world he creates on stage. One of the funniest moments of the show involved a story about Patton's drug addled aunt getting arrested for stealing from a supermarket and then selling the goods out in the store's parking lot. Patton jokes, "Clearly she was arrested because that's just brilliant, that's too good of an idea. We've got to put the kibosh on that before everyone finds out and they're all millionaires. And the thing is, the security cameras caught it: people were buying shit from her." In three lines the bit has grown from a tragically funny anecdote about a family member's troubles with addiction into a satirical take on law enforcement and run-of-the-mill consumerism.
While in high school, Sean began working for his father's catering company, a family business that employs most of Sean's aunts, uncles, and cousins. After dropping out of community college, Patton worked for his father full time. "It was clear to me I was like the next boss and I didn't want to do that and it took a lot of kicking and screaming for my dad to realize 'Hey this isn't anything personal'... but I did that for seven years."
Patton spent four years doing stand up in his native New Orleans, a city which at the time, had a mostly DIY comedy scene; there was one open mic and zero comedy clubs, so most shows were run by comics in bars and restaurants. Once Katrina hit, Patton decided to take his chances and move out West. The pressure to follow suit, to conform to different rules and expectations, didn't stop once he left Louisiana for the lights of Los Angeles. "It just felt like [in Los Angeles] it was more about making it. It was more about 'this is what you've got to do to be successful in comedy and these are the people you need to talk to." Patton insists this isn't a knock to the L.A. comics he met along the way, but more a criticism of "the way things are done out there." It was no surprise then that he fled La La Land after just under a year for New York City where the streets are paved with comedy gold. On the scene in the Big Apple, Patton insists, "It's just such a great place to become a comic. Because you just see so much and you hear so much... If you're ever like, 'I don't know what I'm gonna write comedy about today. Oh nevermind. [he points to a random nearby object] That.'"
Even with six years of stand up under his belt, Patton admits he still gets nervous. "If I ever was about to do stand up and wasn't nervous, I would kind of worry. Sometimes you're not nervous at all but you're definitely excited. You have to feel something. Something's got to be awake if you really love doing this." Patton paused searching for his words, "If you're in this to make a million bucks, get the fuck out of here. As long as you're constantly trying to move the craft forward, that's what it's all about." Listening to Sean Patton speak passionately about the importance of comedy and role of comedians, it is clear: this is a performer who is wide-awake to the world around him both onstage and off, a quality which only makes his comedy that much more enthralling to watch.
Posted by The Apiary at November 27, 2007 2:15 PM