Galifianakis

Mammoth article about Galifianakis in today’s Times. Some ‘graphs:

“What I call the ‘geography’ of a room — its size, its layout, the overall feel of the place — really determines how far you can push things,” the comic in question, a cherubic man with a fiery red beard and the distinctly unshowbizlike name of Zach Galifianakis, told me in the greenroom a short time before. “I love to do shows in unlikely places, because the audience’s expectations are less fixed. If you’re going on right after a guy with suspenders and a skinny, 1980’s-style comedy tie, who’s been striking crazy poses — doing the same type of material that worked in 1991 — there’s no space for trying unconventional stuff. A place like this, on the other hand, is more of a blank slate.”

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We were standing backstage at a club in L.A., U.C.B., that shares a hallway with a restaurant called Birds. On the door that goes into the restaurant, it says ‘Birds employees only,’ and Zach just took his pen and put a comma after ‘Birds,’ so it said, ‘Birds, employees only,’ as if they were telling birds that they are not allowed through this door.

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“When you look like I do, it’s hard to get a table for one at Chuck E. Cheese”