Matt Misisco
Friedlander: “With comedy, through an indirect way, truth can be revealed.”
“I’m very different than most comics,” a longshot future president tells Isthmus on a call from his apartment in New York City over a crisp, almost anachronistic landline. “I’m a mix of hands-on and low-key. I’m very kinda indie, do-it-yourself.”
If there is one candidate who deserves more of your attention this election cycle, it is Judah Friedlander: World Champion. He has thrown one of his many, many fun hats into the crowded ring on the self-titled “Future President” tour, which he has described as thematically similar to his recent self-produced stand-up film, Judah Friedlander: America Is The Greatest Country in The United States, which is currently licensed to Netflix.
His next campaign stop is right here in Madison, at the Majestic Dec. 8, for a night of fielding questions about all the important political issues.
Since starting his stand-up career in 1989 — a full 30 years ago, if you wanna get long-in-the-tooth about it — Friedlander has maintained his sense of what comedy is. “For me, personally, comedy is many things: It’s a way of survival, it’s a way of looking at the world, it’s a way of, for me, challenging the world,” he says. “I’ve always looked for comedy and created comedy out of places where you wouldn’t think it’d exist.”
Friedlander isn’t your bog standard stand-up, writing and reciting the same jokes in 100 cities. Nah, what we get with the World Champ here is something new almost every night. On the Future President tour, “I kinda run a mock town hall,” he tells me. “Instead of going up there and just doing a monologue and never interacting with the crowd, I interact with the crowd a lot. It’s always a morphing and growing kind of thing.”
Crowd work can be tricky, though, especially these days. It’s even harder when Friedlander is onstage playing the World Champ/Future President, a satirical character who talks about “all the big human rights issues of the day, and as a nation how we deal with it, and how our government deals with it/causes it.” Through his satirical character, who tends to be the embodiment of narcissism, he tries to show people how the world actually is.
“With comedy, through an indirect way, truth can be revealed,” he says. “That’s where the jokes come from. You have some false things presented together, but when you think about what’s being said, the truth is actually being revealed.” He often hides his meaning in subtext, which requires a little patience or intellectual rigor on the part of the audience.
“Sometimes people just don’t get it,” he says, “so they think I’m just a complete psychopath. Then there’s some people who think I’m a complete psychopath, but they think ‘Hey this guy is great,’” he says, laughing. “Most people obviously get it. If I was a comedian and not getting laughs, I wouldn’t be doing it anymore. “
I ask Friedlander about comments Todd Phillips (Joker, The Hangover) made about how “woke culture” makes it too difficult to make comedy these days. “I disagree completely,” says Friedlander. “Some people say that, but I think it’s just a total cop-out. Maybe they’re not comically strong enough to come up with jokes that work in this culture. You can also satirize the culture instead of just quitting.”
At the end of the day, when it comes to the voting booth, just remember that Judah’s campaign is the most noble of all: “I’m someone who, through jokes, is fighting for human rights.”
