Kevin Douglas and Inda Craig-Galván, who perform in Chicago and elsewhere as the known as , have nabbed a coveted spot on the schedule at the .

Inda was kind enough to share with the Bastion some thoughts on kevINda's history and experience, the virtue of creating one's own opportunities, and some valuable comedy festival lessons:

"Kevin and I met in a Second City Outreach class about six years ago. It was a week-long intensive taught by Tom Green and Michael Gellman, and my first introduction to improvisation. After that wonderful week ended, Kevin and I didn't see or talk to each other again until we were both cast in a Second City Training Center writing show a few years later.

"In the meantime, Kevin studied writing at Second City and I completed their Conservatory program and their Writing program. I also understudied The Second City etc stage for Nyima Funk. Kevin and I were then cast in Brownco, Second City's "minority" ensemble. We got to work with Josh Funk, Keegan-Michael Key, David Pompeii, John Hildreth and Claudia Wallace. It was a great experience, but we both wanted more. Wanting can be a scary, stupid, painful thing sometimes. So we decided to stop waiting on people to hand us opportunities which, by the way, are fewer and harder to come by when you're a Black person trying to do sketch comedy. We both continued steady acting careers in regular theatre (I was Jeff-nominated, we both have received Black Theater Alliance Award nominations - - I won one) and we've also got a bunch of commercials between us.

"After two Brownco revues together, Kevin began hounding me about doing a two-person show. I resisted, but he's like the Borg. I gave in, and in October 2004 we performed for five weeks in Donny's Skybox. We called the show "These Coloreds Don't Run," and that's been our theme and a reminder to ourselves whenever one of us starts to shy away from certain topics in our writing. Jonathan Pitts saw our opening night, waited for us after the show, and invited us to perform in Chicago Improv Festival in 2005. He's been one of our biggest supporters ever since, and was the one who insisted an HBO producer come check us out at this year's CIF. Two callbacks later, and we're on our way to Aspen in February!

"Valuable comedy festival lessons:

1. If it's their first festival, wait until they have their second and they've gotten some of the kinks out. Especially if you aren't traveling with a tech person.

2. Travel with a tech person.

3. Never travel the day of the festival. Kevin and I have had REALLY bad travel karma of late. We're actually better off if we fly separately.

4. Write with integrity and a strong point of view."

Improvisor and stand-up comedian was one of the lucky attendees at last , and had the moxie to request an interview with Mr. Galifianakis. He graciously accepted the offer and even dropped Chris his digits! Thus follows the transcription of the next day's telephone interview, which can also be listened to .

Chris Burns : I know you grew up in North Carolina, when did you first think that you wanted to try stand-up?

Zach Galifianakis : Hello? Oh sorry. I moved to New York to go to acting school and I hated it. It was a lot of therapy sessions for people and I couldn’t stop laughing when people were trying to do serious scenes and I thought, well, this probably isn’t it for me. And then I met this young lady named Lisa in a bar, and she was like, “Hey, you should do stand-up,” and I was like, “yeah, I’ve thought about it,” and then I started performing in the back of a hamburger restaurant and as soon as I did it I knew that was probably what I was going to do for the rest of my life, so that’s how it happened.

CB : Have you been telling basically these kinds of jokes since you started or did start out more…

ZG : Um, my first joke…

CB : Wasn’t it about a crouton rhyming with futon?

ZG : Yeah, unfortunately that was the joke.

CB : (laughs)

ZG : It was kind of, when you first start you don’t know what you’re doing so you just kind of say things that you think might be clever and then, you know, it takes different forms. I was a lot louder back then, and yelled a lot more. And it just kind of, you know, it just kind of evolved into what it is now, but probably a lot more horrible.

CB : Were there any stand-ups that you watched before you started stand-up and you were like, “That makes me think I can do that”?

ZG : I would go to clubs before I started and I would see Ray Romano before he got big, perform in front of four people. And Dave Attell and Jon Stewart. And then I would see the bad ones and I’m like, “I mean that’s bad, I could probably do that and be just as bad.” I would go watch clubs but as far as studying it, I was a fan of stand-up, but… I knew I wanted to be on stage somehow but I didn’t know what capacity, so I wasn’t a real student of stand-up, so yeah, I would go watch those guys at clubs and try to get inspired that way and you just do as many shows as you possibly can, and that’s how I started.

CB : Did you have to build up the courage in order to do stand-up or was that not really a problem for you?

ZG : No, I’m always amazed at the confidence in people when they first start. I didn’t have that at all and it took me a while to think about it and then bite the bullet and I finally did it. I wasn’t, I didn’t wake up and say, “You know what, I’ll give this a shot.” There was a lot of timidness and I was a little bit scared of it, because it can be kind of scary.

CB : At what point did you start doing open mics everyday or pretty regularly?

ZG : As soon as I got off the stage at that hamburger restaurant, I say stage, I think it was a milk crate. And that was it, I just went into it full throttle. I mean, it’s a desperate art form when you’re first starting so you don’t really know, there’s no formula, I guess there are classes you can take, but I didn’t do that, I would just go perform and literally stand on bar stools while music was playing and while people were not facing you watching the game in a bar, and there was two years of that.

CB : I feel like if you went to class, they would tell you to stop doing it the way you’re doing it.

ZG : Maybe, those classes, I know some people that take them, and they’re good for, I think they construct a little show for you, where you bring your friends and all that stuff, I didn’t want any of my friends, I actually don’t like for anybody that I know to be there, still to this day I just don’t like it, but I’m glad I didn’t take classes, it might have been a little more formulaic that way, like, Where’s your comedy vest?
CB : I would describe your comedy as, not necessarily one-liners in the vein of Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg or Demetri Martin, I would definitely say you’re different than that, but do find yourself compared to those guys a lot?

ZG : Yeah, I think just because we do one-liners, but Steven Wright is a great writer, I sometimes have to rely on uh, where I kind of like element of surprise, I like to change it up a little bit, it’s hard to sustain an audience with one-liners for an hour. You kind of mix in other elements. One-liners are fine and fun, I sometimes just go in and wing it, which is more exciting than sticking to your material, which I do as well. Mitch Hedberg was… I feel to be compared to them is a little bit unfair to them.

CB : There are definitely more and more people who are doing your style of comedy. Is that something that you really care about?

ZG : I’ve seen some comics do some things that, I mean, Steven Wright started all that stuff, and he’s influenced the comics that you mentioned and myself, as far as other comics being compared to me it doesn’t really bother me, I don’t really care.

CB : Do you remember your first paid gig? And how long had you been doing stand-up before you got your first paid gig?

ZG : I think I had been doing it for two years or a year and a half. And my first paid gig was a road gig in Maysville, K.Y. And it was really not the greatest thing, I remember there was a guy who had brought a life-size skeleton and put it in his seat and put a cigarette in his mouth. I guess he wanted me to comment that there was this life-size skeleton with cigarette in his mouth. It was at a bar where, have you ever seen the movie Urban Cowboy, where it’s kind of a very rambunctious environment and there was a beer bottle thrown and that kind of thing, and as soon as it was done there was square dancing right afterwards.

CB : (laughs)

ZG : I bombed so bad, I remember this guy coming up to me and saying (in southern accent), “Man, don’t worry, you were funny, these people are assholes.”

CB : (laughs again) Was that your first DVD that you put out, where it’s you doing stand-up making fun of the guy from Survivor?

ZG : Yeah, I wanted to put out a DVD of me not doing well, or at least being heckled, so I started carrying a camera around and just putting it on a table or something because I think in that one you can only see my legs, and he happened to be in the audience. That DVD was kind of about failure. It’s easy to pull out your punches and your go to material, but it’s a lot more interesting to me to show people that it’s not always that easy, or it shouldn’t be that easy and that’s what that DVD was about.

CB : I noticed that you go on the road, but it’s mostly one-stop gigs, is there a tour coming up?

ZG : Yeah, there is a tour coming up in March, it’s about twenty cities and it will be in rock clubs and some of them are 1200 seat theatres, which will be interesting because it will be a 1200-seat theatre with forty people in the audience.

CB : well…

ZG : I hope not, because I’ve done that before and it is so embarrassing.

CB : Was that Atlantic City show on Comedians of Comedy like that?

ZG : No, that Atlantic City show was packed, but it was, I don’t know if you’ve been to Atlantic City, there were a bunch of old people in the audience and I was like, “Oh God, they’re not gonna get this.” And I don’t care if people get it, I mean I do want people to be entertained…

CB : That was a show where you improvised a lot, right?

ZG : Yeah, I remember that show, yeah.

CB : Do you have any improv training at all?

ZG : No, well I took one improv class, and I wasn’t good at it, because it was like an exercise where we were pretending to throw a fake ball at each other. I got frustrated with it and I think I left during the bathroom break.

CB : Have you taken an acting class since that first acting class that you said was like a therapy session?

ZG : I’ve taken several, but not a lot. I just never found a teacher…actually there was one teacher that I liked a lot, she had one of those, not to be mean, but she had an eye, I don’t know what the term is but an eye, where you can’t tell if they’re looking at you or not? She had one of those eyes, and I couldn’t tell if she was critiquing me or somebody else, so I got confused.

CB : On your IMDB site, it says that you are trying to create a writers retreat in North Carolina.

ZG : Yeah, I have a farm in North Carolina that I’m trying to groom the land for right now. To set up several cabins where people can come and write and hang out with like-minded people. That’s down the road, but that’s my goal. I’m there about half the time and I spend my time on a tractor and just trying to figure out what I’m doing. I’m gonna do that and grow a ton of pot.

CB : Of the comedians out now, who do you enjoy the most?

ZG : Patton Oswalt to me is such a great comic, I mean, he’s a friend, but he’s great. I really enjoy Dave Attell. There is a comic in Los Angeles named Andy Kindler, who to me, is just the best.

CB : Didn’t he recently rant about Dane Cook?

ZG : Yeah, he does a lot of that stuff. But he makes fun of me, he called me, “the smart man’s Pauly Shore.”

CB : (laughs) So is Man Bites Dog gonna have a second season?

ZG : No, it got cancelled.

CB : What do you have upcoming?

ZG : I have a couple movies coming out, one that Sean Penn directed, which was really fun. It’s a serious movie, but I have small part in that. I got to spend two weeks in a hunting lodge. It was just me and Sean Penn and Vince Vaughn and there was little bit of drinking going on, let’s just say that.

CB : Of the movies you’ve done so far, what’s your favorite?

ZG : They’re all pretty bad. I enjoy working on them, they’re fun to work on.

CB : I liked Out Cold.

ZG : Yeah, that movie’s got some funny stuff in it. Sometimes I’ll be in an airport and people are like, “Hey, are you that guy from Out Cold?” And I’ll just be like, “No.” But yeah, that movie was so much fun to work on.

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