Risk-taking comedian Williams has uniquely twisted take on everyday life

Opinion

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This article was published 03/03/2015 (3338 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some comedians spend years developing an offbeat stage persona that will allow them to stand out from the standup crowd.

For Harland Williams, becoming the uniquely weird dude you see onstage was simply a matter of not trying to be anyone other than himself.

“I think a lot of people think I’m doing kind of a character onstage, but what you’re really getting is just me,” says Williams, who begins a three-night stand at Rumor’s Comedy Club on Thursday night (tickets $20 at Rumor’s; at press time, limited seating remained for Thursday’s 8 p.m. show and Friday’s 10:30 p.m. performance).

“If you were to come out and hang out with me, just having fun at a nightclub or a party, that’s kind of the version of Harland you’d get — silly, kind of always saying wacky things.

“It actually took me a while to find that guy and be him onstage; when I first started doing standup, I tried a bunch of different characters, and even though I was pretty good at it, I realized it wasn’t sincere to me. So I decided to be my wacky self onstage, and just treat it like I’m at a party, having fun and acting up. So fortunately, I’ve been able to just ride my own personality the whole time.”

The Toronto-born comedian, who has called Los Angeles home (despite maintaining dual citizenship) for the past couple of decades, began his standup career in the early ’80s and quickly established himself as one of Canada’s rising comedy stars.

A decade later, he moved south to L.A. and immediately began to land memorable roles in movies and TV shows, guest-starring in Dumb and Dumber, headlining the 1997 comedy Rocket Man, and contributing supporting-role performances to Dog Park, The Whole Nine Yards and Tom Green’s infamous Freddy Got Fingered.

He also starred in his own sitcom, Simon, for two seasons (1995-96), and has more recently co-starred in the Canadian TV comedy Package Deal.

Regardless of the venue, Williams has maintained an interest in approaching every subject and character from a perspective that no one else might ever expect.

“I try to take normal things — whether it’s a serious subject or something as obscure as a piece of toast — and put a very weird twist on them,” he says. “I try to bend the light so that people will see things in a different way — like when I say that a rhinoceros is just a big, fat white-trash unicorn. It’s still a rhinoceros, but I’m trying to get you to look at it differently.”

Willliams, 52, has experimented not just with comedy styles and joke construction, but with the very art form itself. His 2013 comedy special Harland Williams: A Force of Nature, was filmed, sans audience, atop a rocky plateau in the Mojave Desert. And in web videos for his late-night-spoofing 60 Second Talk Show, Williams can be seen interviewing such “guests” as a chocolate-bar wrapper and a bottle of teriyaki sauce.

In 2010, he released Fudgy Wudgy Fudge Face, a self-produced movie that took six years to write, shoot and edit, which Williams’ website (www.harlandwilliams.com) proudly describes as “possibly the dumbest film ever made.”

“I’d done a ton of movies here in Hollywood, and I realized that every movie I’d done was somebody’s else’s work and someone else’s vision,” says Williams, who offers his fans regular doses of comedy in his free regular podcast, The Harland Highway. “I thought, ‘I really want to have my own pure vision before I kick the bucket,’ so I wrote, cast, directed, shot, edited and acted in this; every element of this movie, I did myself.

“It’s a very purist movie, whether you like it or not. I wanted to create a movie that was just Harland, from start to finish. Whether it’s good or bad, I’ll take the blame or the credit… I leave the criticism or the praise up to the audience, but as far as the process is concerned, I couldn’t be happier.”

Like his comedy act, the movie — which concerns itself with the chance meeting of an alien visitor and Earth’s dumbest human being — is something far removed from the ordinary.

And like his standup, in its own way, it’s just Harland being Harland.

brad.oswald@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @BradOswald