Interview - Maz Jobrani

ClOWN PRiNCE OF PERSiA

U P CLOSE A N D PER SO N A L

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. sur la terre . up close and personal .

Maz Jobrani ACTOR, COMEDIAN AND FOUNDING SPOKE IN THE “AXIS OF EVIL COMEDY TOUR,” MAZ JOBRANI BROUGHT HIS UNIQUE BRAND OF STAND-UP COMEDY TO THE REGION IN APRIL, PERFORMING SHOWS IN DUBAI, DOHA AND BAHRAIN. SUR LA TERRE MET WITH THE MAN WHO PUT THE “PURR” INTO PERSIAN OVER COFFEE AT THE W DOHA. -

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here did you get the inspiration to become a standup comedian? I was a big fan of Eddie Murphy when I was a kid, and then I started doing plays when I was 12 and really enjoyed being on stage.

I actually got side-tracked for a while because my parents wanted me to be a lawyer so I went to college and studied political science. At some point, I decided I wanted to be a professor, so I got into a PhD programme at UCLA and, while I was there, I started doing plays and the acting bug got me again. I then dropped out of grad school and had to get an office job just to kind of make it seem legit. I worked in an advertising agency and it took me a little while. You know, there are some comedians that start in their late teens; I started when I was 26. It took a long time to realise that this is my life and you’ve got to do what you want to do.

In your show, you poke fun at your parents pushing you to be a doctor or a lawyer, were they really against you performing or did they eventually become supportive? They did eventually, once they saw I was happy and I could make a living. My father had actually moved back to Iran at the time and, traditionally speaking, they just don’t know that world. My father was a businessman, my mother was a housewife and they were affluent. They come from this place where they had friends who are lawyers, doctors and generals. They just wanted their kid to do something secure. I don’t think [parents] have any malicious intent, they just want you to have a good life. And that is what they think gives a good life and it gives the family a good name. So they didn’t really get it at first.

My mum thought I was crazy at first; she started saying, “Why don’t you at least learn to become a mechanic? People are always going to

need to get their cars fixed.” Then she started recommending other careers based on the last guy that come into our house to fix something.

I swear, she would be like, “What about a washing machine fixer.”

So it took them a while. My mother started to come around once she started seeing the success and started seeing my star rise among the community, and when her friends and people started talking about me, she’d come to a show and see the adulation and all of this stuff, she became very supportive. I think one of the things that I had that was good was my relationship with my parents. I was the eldest son, my sister was older, but I was the eldest son. I had always been a little bit more mature and had this mentality of “I am going to do what I want,” you know? It wasn’t that I would ask permission, I would just say, “This is what I am doing,” and they would resign themselves to it.

Have you ever received a lot of criticism from the Iranian or Middle Eastern communities? I grew up in America and a lot of my friends were American. I had a handful of Iranian friends. My dad had this thing, we’d have a name in the community kind of thing, I don’t know what that means but I always kind of didn’t buy into it, but I did, however, feel the pressure of it. Then we moved to Los Angeles where there are a lot of Iranians. The interesting thing was when I first started doing stand-up, there were some Iranians that would come out and watch the stuff, but a lot of them were very Westernised. I started off in the American clubs and coming to the Middle East was never part of the plan, when I did it. I never thought I would be performing in front of a lot of Middle Easterners. I always thought I was in front of an audience that happened to be Westerners, so there wasn’t a lot of knowledge of me in the community until I was successful and, at that point, they embrace you.

. sur la terre . up close and personal .

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How do you think that your humour goes down over here? When I saw you in Dubai with the Axis of Evil, there were some things that you guys said that was quite close to the knuckle. Have you actually done anything that has put you into trouble when you have been doing these shows? I have never gotten into trouble myself, but every time I have done shows in this region, I will get told there are certain subjects that are off limits. In the States it’s called a TV-friendly set, which is when you don’t swear, etc., so you try and go that route. Some of the things that you say you have to temper.

Somebody was saying to me once that just by being in the region and doing stand-up I am pushing the envelope, because this is a relatively new thing. Western stand-up here has only been going since 2007 or so.

When the Axis of Evil came in it really helped, now you see these locals doing it, and some of them are more risque than the guys coming over to perform. It is a cultural thing and in the West you could sit there in the front row and make fun of some guy’s wife and he would be laughing.

Here you wouldn’t do that!

With the Qatar stand-up guys performing at your show, do you see a bright future for this stand-up comedy in this region? Well, you need to have places to practice. With comedy, the only way you get better is to get up on stage and get writing. You should be doing that around five to 10 times a week. So it’s not just a problem with Doha, it can be a problem with Wisconsin. There are places in the US that don’t have places for somebody to get up five to 10 times a week and perform. Really you have to be in New York, LA, San Francisco or maybe Chicago, as there are a handful of places to do this. Here in Qatar, it is great to see this comedy group that they have put together, great to see guys coming from Dubai.

And if they are able to create a regional network so they are creative and enable to do two shows a week, one in Dubai and one here and one wherever, you know? Just around this region, I think it will be beneficial.

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Do you have any good “Spinal Tap” moments that you look back on and laugh at? What is the most ridiculous situation that you have ever found yourself in at a show? One of the fi rst tour dates that we started doing Axis of Evil: it was me, Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader and we had just done a show in San Diego at the height of the Bush admistration with the country on red alert and all of that crap. We had to get on an aeroplane to go to Boston for a show the next morning, so we showed up at LAX in the morning and they tell us that the fl ight is full and we can’t get on. We explained that we had to get to a show in Boston, so we are trying to figure out what to do, thinking of every option and we asked about flying to New York and taking a train. Finally they found a route for us, we were going to land at JFK, get a cab to LaGuardia airport, with basically an hour to get through New York traffic to get a plane from LaGuardia to Boston. We would be half an hour late to the show, but at least we would make it. So they got us into the last row on the fl ight from LA to JFK. As the plane is landing, we are thinking every second counts, so we need to get off this plane before everybody else. We asked the stewardess if she could ask the other passengers to stay in their seats as there are people trying to get connecting fl ights.

They said that they will announce it but most likely people are going to get up and go, so they were like, “As soon as it lands, before the bell goes, you guys need to get up and run down the aisle…” So you had three Middle Eastern guys with backpacks, running down the aisle of plane discussing how quickly we can get away... We were just running down the aisle trying to sound as American as possible, “Exsqueeze me, ma’am” and all that. We got to LaGuardia and there was this crazy situation, us just running with backpacks… I was like, “Are you serious?” But the staff just kept on saying, “Go for it.” The three of us could have classified as a sleeper cell, but we made the show and didn’t get tazed or shot!

. sur la terre . up close and personal .