21 Questions with Jimmy Shubert

Please explain what just happened.

I’m pretty sure I just agreed to do an interview for The Nervous Breakdown.

What is your earliest memory?

Are you kidding? I barely remember last week.I’ve got about 6 brain cells left and they are in a boat screaming, “Who’s got the map?!?!”Actually, even though I have a photographic memory I really don’t live in the past.

If you weren’t a comedian, what other profession would you choose?

Writer, director, editor – something creative where I could make my own hours.

Describe a typical work day.

Get up.Get coffee.Check email.Check news. Jot down news that jumps off the page. Stretch and work out. Rehearse my audition. Make a few business-related calls. Book travel.Write a few jokes. Make lunch.Do laundry.Actually do the audition. Call agents and my manager at the day’s end, and THEN go be funny at a comedy club.Repeat it all the next morning.

Is there a time you wish you’d lied?

I don’t like to lie – it means you have to remember more lies to facilitate the one lie.If you don’t want to know the truth then don’t ask the question, because I am about as subtle as a chain saw. I WILL tell you the truth.

What would you say to yourself if you could go back in time and have a conversation with yourself at age thirteen?

I would have told myself not to be so hard on myself. I would have told myself not to smoke or snort cocaine or ride a motorcycle, and to be more responsible when it comes to money. I would have told myself to always be a gentleman and never lose my class no matter what anyone else is doing.I would have told myself that the harder you work the luckier you get and that what you put out in life is what comes back to you tenfold.

If you could have only one album to get you through a breakup, what would it be?

Not an album, but a song by Bonnie Raitt – I Can’t Make You Love Me – and I would play it over and over again.

What are three websites—other than your email—that you check on a daily basis?

Drudge Report, Facebook & Porn Hub.Actually it’s YouTube (one of the most amazing sites ever invented.)

From what or whom do you derive your greatest inspiration?

Beauty. I try to fill my mind with it, from ocean views to music, written words to human behavior, anything that is truly beautiful that isn’t processed or manufactured.It has to be an organic beauty.

Name three books that have impacted your life.

How the Irish saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill, The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz, and Bukowski’s Tales of Ordinary Madness.

If you could relive one moment over and over again, what would it be?

That’s ridiculous. This isn’t Groundhog Day and life doesn’t work like that… I would try to find other moments instead of living my life around the one brief fleeting moment.That’s just sad.

How are you six degrees from Kevin Bacon?

I am two degrees from Kevin Bacon.

What makes you feel most guilty?

Nothing! Guilt is stupid! There is no such thing as guilty pleasure – it’s just pleasure. Learn to enjoy it.

How do you incorporate the work of other artists into your own?

Well, I am a comedian. I paint pictures with words, so words and language turn me on. I like the way singers or songwriters turn a phrase. I like the way writers play with language. I love the ways actors use words, inflection, and subtext. I am always writing and I am a voracious reader. I think in order to be a good writer you don’t need to be well read, but you do need to read well. And often.

Please explain the motivation/inspiration behind your new one hour special, Alive & Kickin’ (now available on iTunes).

It was a labor of love that I wrote, produced, filmed, edited and did all the post on with my buddy Claude Shires. We shot a short film for the opening sequence explaining the old saying “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” It was something said by a famous comedian on his death bed. This is truly a great special.It’s filmed well and it’s really funny and it is available on iTunes under “Jimmy Shubert, Alive & Kickin’ – The Movie”.

What is the best advice you’ve ever given to someone else?

Work to the top of your intelligence.

List your favorite in the following categories: comedian, musician, author, actor.

George Carlin, Eric Clapton, Charles Bukowski & Hunter S. Thompson, Clint Eastwood & Christian Bale.

If you had complete creative license and an unlimited budget, what would your next project be?

An indie film written and directed by me.

What do you want to know?

Why my government can’t approach problem solving with common sense solutions. I didn’t go to Harvard or Yale, but these people are just fucking stupid. They can’t even do the things they are supposed to do like mail a letter, let alone run health care or handle airport security.

What would you like your last words to be?

That was the best blow job I ever had!!!

Please explain what will happen.

People will continue to sit on their couches and be lazy and fat. They will eat Häagen-Dazs and Pizza Hut and drink Coca Cola and work on their diabetes while they text their votes into American Idol over the AT&T network with their latest iPhone.Because that IS the new American dream – voting on someone else’s dream.No one has any dreams of their own anymore.They will just sit here watching their big screen TV’s that they financed at 34% and receive their high definition satellite signals and they’ll let themselves get distracted by consumerism, Facebook, and those mentally encumbered gindaloons on the Jersey Shore… and then one day they will wake up and realize that they no longer live in a country resembling anything even close to what America once was or used to be… and when they call to complain they will find themselves talking to someone in India. SO WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!

TAGS: Alive and Kickin', Bonnie Raitt, Bukowksi, George Carlin, Jimmy Shubert, the government is clueless, Thomas Cahill

JIMMY SHUBERT started performing right out of high school in comedy clubs around the Philly area. He later moved to Los Angeles and started working at the Comedy Store, where he performed and wrote material for acts like Yakov Smirnoff, Jimmy Walker, and Andrew Dice Clay. It was at the Comedy Store where that he met Sam Kinison and they quickly became friends. Kinison liked Shubert’s chutzpah so much that he included him as one of the original “Outlaws of Comedy” which he toured with for five years, playing venues across America in front of audiences as large as 6,500 people.

His full contact comedy has led him from the Comedy Store in Hollywood to his own stand-up special on Comedy Central, with five years on CBS’s King of Queens and several appearances on Entourage thrown in for good measure.

A veteran of stage and screen, Jimmy is one of the rare triple threats in today’s comedy scene. “I like to entertain people in any form under any circumstances,” he says. “Whether it’s in a sold-out three thousand seat theater or in the middle of a war zone in Afghanistan, my mission is to make them laugh as hard as I can.”

“I call them like I see them,” he says in his Philly rasp that’s as authentic as a Philadelphia cheese steak. “I think people are fed up with all the nonsense we are subjected to on a daily basis - the virtual assault on our senses from every angle… and don’t get me started about the lunatics in Washington, D.C. I will run through your bubble garden with a pin and make no apologies about it, and I think audiences appreciate that candor.”

His hour-long stand-up comedy special Alive N’ Kickin’ was voted one of Punchline Magazine’s Top Ten Best Stand Up comedy DVD’s it 2009.

That special was Shubert’s brainchild from start to finish. “I did everything but hang the lights,” he says. “Oh, wait, I did that, too.” It is a theatrical presentation of his stand-up persona of a working man’s man. Jimmy combines the outlook of a modern-day Archie Bunker with an utterly pragmatic sensibility to create signature bits on Starbucks, airport security, and relationships.

But Jimmy’s work is not confined to comedy. He has aced several dramatic parts as well. He’s played everything from a prison guard in a hostage crisis to a murder victim on Monk, He’s worked with such marquee names as Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Katie Holmes, Robin Williams, Mark Wahlberg and Faye Dunaway. He says, “One of the great things about working in movies is I get a chance to work with A-list filmmakers.” That list includes Jerry Bruckheimer, Doug Liman, Patty Jenkins and Brett Ratner.

He recently completed work on two short films entitled Wedding Jimmy & Uncle Melvin’s Apartment which are currently making their rounds on the festival circuit as well as a feature entitled Cut Off starring Amanda Brooks, Faye Dunaway and Malcolm McDowell.

On the small screen, he made two recent appearances on HBO’s hit comedy Entourage and spent five years in a recurring role on CBS’s King of Queens. He has also been seen on Heist, The Loop, ER, Monk, Reno 911, Rude Awakenings, Angel, Once and Again, Lucky, New Car Smell, Secret Service Guy, Just Shoot Me and Youth In Revolt.

He has performed in Canada, Ireland, The Bahamas, Korea and in 2006, toured with Drew Carey for the troops in Afghanistan as part of the “America Supports You” program for the Defense Department and Armed Forces Entertainment.

Jimmy’s comedy routine is usually performed with an observational point of view, in comedic short-story form, and typically focuses on poking fun at pop culture. As AllMusic.com put it, “His confidence and lucid delivery enhances his humor, making even his most perverse moments hilarious.”

One response to “21 Questions with Jimmy Shubert”

bob shubert says:

February 14, 2011 at 2:22 pm

I like it but you are my favorite funny man.

Love

Reply