Neal Brennan has never performed in Boston before, as the closest he’s come over the years have been shows in New Haven and Providence.
“I don’t what happened,” Brennan tells Metro. “It was an oversight.”
While Thursday’s show at Royale will mark his first gig in the Hub, the 44-year-old comedy veteran does have a bit of a Boston connection. Well, sort of. Brennan’s first job in comedy was at the now closed Boston Comedy Club in Greenwich Village when he was a student at New York University. There, he struck up friendships with a number of comics who would go on to be stars, including the one-and-only Dave Chappelle. Brennan proved his comedy chops by feeding them jokes to try—even though he was just a kid.
“I would give people punch lines for their acts, like, ‘Hey try this, try that,'” Brennan says. “I was 18. I was kind of a know-it-all, but I had no business doing that at all.”
Brennan has grown quite a bit since those days, going on to create “Chappelle’s Show” and write “Half Baked” with his longtime pal, as well as serve as a writer, director and performer for everything from “All That” and “Kenan & Kel” to “Inside Amy Schumer” and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.” When he’s not working on his stand-up or other projects, Brennan continues to help comics with their punch lines, consulting for big names like Chris Rock and Ellen DeGeneres.
“I still do the same thing, now it’s just for money,” Brennan jokes.
Neal Brennan talks Nanette, political correctness and comedy
Although Chappelle and Rock have radically different styles than DeGeneres, Brennan doesn’t alter his approach to get inside each comedians’ head. “I don’t see it as this is a Chris joke, this is a Dave joke, this is an Ellen joke.” The Pennsylvania native admits, though, that each comic does tend to cover specific topics when they’re on stage.
“Subject wise, if you’re talking about Dave or Chris, it’s more, generally speaking, sociological or gender or race,” he says. “With Ellen, it’s just very observational.”
“I’m probably a combo of both,” Brennan adds, noting that his own stand-up work tends to fall into more of the Rock and Chappelle territory, as he “likes jokes about issues.”
As for what inspires Brennan in the world of comedy these days, he’s just looking for something original to stand out from all the noise. His recent Netflix special “3 Mics” is a testament to that, as Brennan used three different mic stands for the performance, one dedicated to reading jokes off index cards, another to talk about his personal issues and the third for more traditional stand-up comedy.
“More than anything, the thing that’s inspiring me is how do you stand out,” says Brennan. “I didn’t want to just be confident for an hour or glib.”
This focus on originality is why he loves Hannah Gadsby’s special “Nanette,” which has earned a ton of acclaim, as well as backlash from some in the comedy sphere who don’t view it as stand-up, since much of the performance deals with heavy issues that resonate in the #MeToo era. Brennan claims that he’s been a fan of “Nanette” for a while, having seen the show live over the spring and writing a lengthy Instagram post in support of it. Brennan even offered to pass along a link of the special to DeGeneres for Gadsby after seeing it.
“I’m a big fan of it,” says Brennan. “I didn’t feel very threatened by it. I think that’s probably the main adjective people feel like.”
“I had people call me like, ‘So do I have to be sad now?'” he adds. “No dummy, you don’t have to be sad now. Just do your thing.”
Brennan believes that the art of comedy is open to all kinds of interpretations, the key is to “just do something interesting.”
“Do whatever you want,” says Brennan. “If you have an idea, do the idea.”
“I thought ‘Nanette’ was great, and I don’t say that in a pandering way,” he adds. “I’ve got the Instagrams to prove it.”
According to Brennan, the focus on more personal topics has been coming up more and more in specials, even before “Nanette” hit the scene.
“Ellen’s special is more personal than she’s been,” says Brennan. “Chris’ special was personal, the stuff about the divorce. That’s not really what he’s done.”
“As much as people may bellyache about it, there’s been a quiet movement of that in comedy for a while,” he adds. “It’s people being babies and feeling threatened. It’s corny, honestly.”
Another perennial topic in the world of comedy is how “political correctness” helps or hinders comics from doing what they do. Brennan has an interesting view on “this so-called ‘PC’ stuff,” as he doesn’t believe it’s really a big deal to ask performers to not use slurs or be overly insensitive to various groups.
“All these groups are asking for is minimal consideration,” says Brennan. “I don’t think that they’re saying you need to cater to us.”
“To not call a transgender person a ‘tranny’ is very minor,” he adds. “It takes very little effort on my part. I don’t feel dragged down or restricted by any of it.”
Brennan recalls a conversation he had with Rock about an episode of Marc Maron’s podcast featuring Jay Leno, where they talked about how the new “PC” rules for comedy are similar to when they made rules for car emissions.
“Detroit complained and Japan did them, and Japan got a 15-20 year head start,” Brennan says. “If you want to sit and complain about the rules, be my guest, but you’re going to lose time.”
“None of this so-called ‘PC’ stuff is a very big deal,” he adds. “Not sexually harassing people is pretty easy to do. Not sticking your hand on women’s butts, not masturbating in front of women, not saying that Valerie Jarrett looks like she’s from ‘Planet of the Apes’ – these are not challenging things for most people. I just think it’s a fake argument and it’s born out of laziness.”
