Despite not seeing him often (he lives in America), Paul is one of my closest friends – when we do get the chance to catch up we often as not end up talking right through the night. On one of the first such occasions he showed me an early edit of a film he was working on at the time whcih turned out to be the seminal stand up documentary The Aristocrats.
He is a superb comic and has been for some twenty years or so tho he doesn’t often perform these days as – to quote the introduction from an interesting interview “Paul Provenza found a new calling as an interviewer of other stand-ups, and it’s easy to see why. Provenza is talkative, passionate, and endlessly philosophical when it comes to the art and craft of comedy.”
Read the rest of this fascinating and insightful interview here
Embedded within it are three wonderful new pieces of stand up from Paul entitled the “pitching 9/11” routine.” , “Homophobia” and “Right Wing Fanatics” all filmed at the “Purple Onion” club which is credited as one of the venues in which the art of comedy was revolutionised in the 1950’s.
Enjoy!
Xx