Posts
More videos on this link:
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/8rit53/stand-up-tom-kenny--cartoon-universe
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http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---moving/
http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---cartoon-universe/
http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---high-speed-tank-chase
http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---titanic/
http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---miss-teen-usa
http://comedians.jokes.com/tom-kenny/videos/tom-kenny---aftershocks
Here's an excerpt from an interview I found:
We recently had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Kenny about all this, how he doesn’t miss stand up, and how he really doesn’t care if you don’t know who he is.
When I was looking at your resume, I was blown away because you do so much stuff.
Yeah, I’m pretty ubiquitous (Laughs). Well I guess secretly ubiquitous. I’m like all over the place but under the radar at the same time, which is kind of a weird occupation in bold description.
How did you transition from film and stand-up to voiceover? You know, Shakes The Clown is kind of a cult classic and you were on the sketch comedy shows and everything.
Well it’s funny. It wasn’t so much a transition as, you know, you’re just doing a whole bunch of stuff. And I started doing standup as a standup comedian and sketch performer and wound up being cast in Shakes The Clown because I knew Bob Goldthwait really well from when we were kids and I was working with Julie Brown on stuff. And he was just calling in favors to his friends. So at the time I was doing Shakes The Clown, I was also at that time, a writer on the America’s Funniest Home Videos spinoff America’s Funniest People while Shakes was filming. And I was also doing standup. And I wanted to be doing voiceover but I hadn’t quite broken into that very much yet. It was the toughest nut for me to crack and the one that I most wanted to do. But yeah, the short answer is it wasn’t so much a transition as you’re just kinda doing a whole bunch of things at the same time. You just gotta take whatever work comes along and dance with whatever girl wants to dance with you and feeling glad to be gainfully employed at any one place let alone a couple of different places and having fun learning how to do stuff. Learning how to write on a show and that was enough to make me realize that that wasn’t a direction I wanted to go in (Laughs). And you know, just trying to build a career and decide what your career’s gonna be.
Are you still doing stand-up?
No, not for many years. I don’t think I’ve done it since sometime in the 90′s.
Is it tough to let that go?
For some people I think it would be tough to let it go but for me it was incredibly easy (Laughs). It’s amazingly easy. I felt like I’d done it and I knew how to do it and it was never my first love. And I had to come of age during the 80′s comedy boom and say “wow, I think I can do that. And I figured out how to do it. But I wasn’t as passionate about it as I think you need to be. Like some guys, they have to go on stage 4 or 5 times a week or they get itchy palms. I was totally lacking that gene. It was starting to not be as fun for me and I think I was starting to realize that since I didn’t have that requisite passion and love for it that there was only so far you can be able to go with it, if you don’t love it. You know what I mean? If it’s not your passion, you get a feeling after a while, cause it’s not what you love. You can figure it out. And I had fun doing it; I got to go to a lot of places and meet a lot of people and make 100% of my living as a stand-up comedian instead of working in a Dilbert-type cubicle (laughs) but I felt like I was ready to transition into something else. And when the voiceover thing started happening, it was an easy door to walk through for me. I still don’t feel like I was leaving anything behind, you know? If I had to walk away from voiceover I would feel like I was leaving something I loved behind. With standup I felt like I had this skillset I accrued from doing this a bazillion times and I think I can put that in this other arena and have a different kind of job that maybe suits me better. But then there’s like Patton (Oswalt) and you know, people I know like Steven Wright, Robin Williams, Bobcat Goldthwait. They love doing standup. They love to pick up their sword and sally forth into battle, you know? And I was always lacking that gene.
Excerpts from Shakes the Clown
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Kenny
