Comedy Court Interview - October 20, 2004

COMEDY COURT
Margaret AGNEW
Oct 20 2004
The Christchurch Press

MARGARET AGNEW talks to one of the men behind the Maui myth and comic madness going on at the Court Theatre.

Jemaine Clement seems strangely nervous. His eyes dart about as if looking for escape and he is easily distracted.

Is it the shy boy underneath the internationally acclaimed comedian exterior? Is it the teetotaller’s lack of alcohol? Is it his hay fever? Or is it the fact that the interviewer has cringe- inducingly made an accidental pun in her first sentence (”Enjoying the clement weather?”).

Actually — and his publicist confirms this — it’s because the unconventionally handsome comedian/actor/musician is shy. He doesn’t like talking about himself, which makes interviews an excruciating business for the man described as “smouldering” on an internet fansite.

Clement, aged 30, may be familiar as one of those wheelbarrow-spinning lads in the beer ad, or as the bad guy Marvin in low-budget Kiwi comedy movie Tongan Ninja, or that guy from the 1990s TV comedy show, Skitz.

He’s also a member of two of the country’s funniest comedy duos — the Humourbeasts with Taika Cohen, and Flight of the Conchords (self- described as “New Zealand’s fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a capella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo”) with Bret McKenzie.

Because one comedy duo is never enough? He mutters he just gets bored easily. Plus, “they’re really different from each other. Nah. One’s not enough”.

“We all — me, Bret and Taika — all do other things. It’s quite important for our sanity, and it’s so we can keep working together that we get time away.”

It’s not easy being so in demand. A few months ago he and Cohen had to cancel a two-week season of the Humourbeasts/Taki Rua show, The Untold Tales of Maui, because of overseas demand for Clement’s other comedy duo, Flight of the Conchords.

Flight of the Conchords have starred in a TV commercial for a British phone company, were nominated for the Perrier Award for best newcomer at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and have been asked by NBC to develop their own show for American audiences.

He says it can be a little difficult: “There’s other things I’d like to be doing as well. I always feel like I’m missing out on something.”

In the two-handed, award-winning, comic play, The Untold Tales of Maui, entertaining audiences at the Court Theatre, he and Cohen play more than 11 characters.

At more than 1.8 metres, Clement seems an unlikely build to play a stunted grandmother telling The Untold Tales of Maui to her disaffected teenage grandson. “It’s a pretty old joke, the way we do it, with the shoes on the knees.

“My own grandmother is really short. She’s hilarious, so I borrow a few of her stylings. I try and remember the way she says things.”

There is a script for The Untold Tales of Maui but “we go off the script all the time”.

“It’s a total mess. There are bits of the show that aren’t scripted, we just see what happens. That’s quite fun, but it’s worrying, too.”

The duo often get caught in fits of barely controlled giggles on stage, as more than one reviewer has noted.

“I guess ideas (are what) drive me. And that’s what I have in common with both Bret and Taika. Bret’s stuff’s mainly music-based and Taika’s is mainly theatre or film.”

Taika Cohen’s film commitments meant he could perform only in the first week of the Christchurch season. His new short film, Tama Tu, about six Maori soldiers waiting in a bombed- out house in Italy in World War 2, directed under the name Taika Waititi, premiered in Wellington last weekend.

Rob Mokaraku will be taking over from Cohen for the rest of the Christchurch season of the play..

As far as influences go, Clement says he doesn’t watch a lot of TV anymore.

“I used to like the Young Ones when I was a kid and Garry Shandling’s show. I like The Office.” Right now he likes the New Zealand cartoon series Bro’town.

He likes the fact that The Office isn’t punchline-based. However, his own show, despite some rather surreal comic tangents, has clever punchlines scattered liberally throughout.

As a child, growing up in Masterton: “I was quite shy. I always thought I’d be good at it (comedy). I was probably more confident as a kid when I hadn’t done it than I am now and I do it all the time.

“I went to university and studied drama, and then sort of fell into it. Met Taika and started doing stuff, then met Bret.”

For the past two years he hasn’t had a break from it. “I wanted to do comedy. I wanted to do lots of things. I’d like to direct films. I like to play around with music.”

He’s been dabbling in animation, too. He wrote a funny, beautifully observed animation about two sheep chatting in a bar, called The Pen, with yet another comedy partner, Guy Capper.

Meanwhile, the Flight of the Conchords’ proposed US TV show is still at the planning stage. He, Bret McKenzie and an American screenwriter have been commissioned to write a pilot “and they (NBC) will pay us to not audition for American TV programmes for the next nine months — which we wouldn’t have anyway ‘cos I live in Wellington.”

His fanbase is definitely growing, if the internet is anything to go by.

“A well of misinformation,” Clement calls it, but he admits he has checked out his own website, dubbed St Clement’s. “It’s hilarious. I feel like I haven’t done anything to deserve a fansite.”