You know that old saw about how comedians are all awkward and quiet once you get them offstage? Well, Fred Armisen is all awkward onstage too. In the past seven years, in shorts for HBO and on Saturday Night Live, he’s made his mark by creating uncomfortable situations: a priest cusses into a cell phone on a busy corner, a man in a motorized wheelchair does the excuse-me dance with shoppers in a food court, a Native American comedian tells impenetrable jokes to a New York audience.
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Armisen, who spent 11 years in Chicago playing drums in the punk band Trenchmouth and briefly in his own salsa outfit, is in town shooting Quebec, a comedy also featuring former Chicagoans John C. Reilly and Lili Taylor. On the patio at Earwax recently, he took every opportunity to engage the waitress, who clearly recognized him and was game when he lodged a complaint about the temperature of his water. “I can bring you some more ice,” she offered. “No ice, just the manager,” he said. He played it straight right to the edge of discomfort, then laughed, letting her in on the joke just a moment before it was at her expense.
Unlike most of his SNL peers, Armisen didn’t hone his craft doing improv or stand-up. He credits instead years of touring in a van with Trenchmouth. “The other guys in Trenchmouth, we spent so much concentrated time together, and they are really, really funny guys,” he says. “We all had characters, scenarios, impressions we did.”
“Actually, yesterday, it happened a couple times. I was out at a Beatles convention, out by O’Hare. People weren’t freaked so much by me being a Beatles dork like them–they were more just freaked out I was in Chicago. Like, ‘What are you doing in Chicago?’ And so I told ’em: ‘None of your fucking business. Tell your kids to get away from me. Walk away from me. Now. Don’t you ever stop me when I’m record shopping.’”
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