Mitch Fatel appears at the Wilbur Theatre, Saturday 3/21
Fatel has been working in comedy since he was 15 years old, he was an intern on the Howard Stern Show back in the late '80s which is ironic since now Fatel is regularly featured on XM Comedy 150, XM Satellite Radio and on Sirius Satellite Radio's Raw Dog Comedy 104. He has two CDs out now and will be taping a performance for DVD in May so here is your chance to see his new material as he prepares it for that recording. An edgy comic onstage, Fatel was a humble and very friendly guy to interview, who, as we discovered, has a special connection to Boston.
Bostonist: We checked out your tour schedule and you are one busy guy.
Mitch Fatel: I am working so much it's crazy. When you start out as a comic, you try so hard to get work and it's impossible, and then when you finally start getting offered work, you don't know how to turn it down because it would feel too weird. So I just told my agent to just take everything. I love working, I love what I do, so what I've done is built an amazing career and shit on a social life.
Bostonist: We see that some comedians do only one show in the region per year, nothing like your tour calendar, which really seems to be about getting in front of your fans.
Mitch Fatel: What amazes me about having a fan, when you gain a fan, the depth of their commitment to you is overwhelming sometimes. It's an honor, I regularly have people come to shows who have driven 4 hours, 6, 8 hours sometimes, and it really puts it in perspective for you how much you mean to somebody and how important it is to get out there to bring these shows to people.
I won't do less than at least an hour and 15 minutes at a show because I know I'm receiving the honor of people coming to see me, and that they really get a good show. It's a special to be able to do this and I feel so fortunate.
[full interview after the jump]
Bostonist: You've been working in comedy for over 20 years now, correct?
Mitch Fatel: I've been doing this since I was 15 years old but have only started having major success in the last 3 years. In the "old" days, there was no way to connect with fans unless you got a sitcom like Seinfeld and since I'm the shittiest actor since, like, Farrah Fawcett, I could not get a sitcom.
But I loved my stand-up and I started getting better and better at stand-up but they couldn't play my stuff on the radio and Comedy Central didn't really exist the way it does now. But then satellite radio, Sirius and XM came and all of the stuff I'd been doing for years started catching on like wildfire and was able to bring to people what I did without changing it for something like TV, without selling out I like to say.
Bostonist: How has the Internet played into your popularity?
Mitch Fatel: The internet for me, has been a tool for my fans to connect with other fans. People tell their friends to check me out on YouTube and to come with them to a show. I think in the future, YouTube will be an amazing tool for me. Right now YouTube shows cleaned up versions of me from my previous specials.
I'm just as funny cleaned up, but it's kind of like when the Rolling Stones played on "The Ed Sullivan Show" they had to say "let's spend some time together" instead of "let's spend the night together" - they lost that bit of an edge, the meaning of the song was changed. I think that's a good analogy for my material on YouTube, they don't show the more raw CD versions, they show the cleaned up Comedy Central material.
Bostonist: How has Boston been, as part of your fanbase?
Mitch Fatel: I did my first show in Boston last year and was amazed by the numbers, by the passionate fans that came out. What I learned about people in Boston is this, they have a reputation, they either hate you or love you, and when they love you, they love you.
They aren't Boston Red Sox fans through and through for nothing, they fully support the things they like and they despise the things they hate. I am just honored that it seems so far that they like me. I know Boston people don't mess around - they aren't Alabama or the mid-West, where everybody acts friendly no matter what you do.
I would rather know that if I suck, people are going to be rude to me and threaten to beat me up, like they would in Boston, and I love that attitude. The, "hey, what do you have, we'll let you know if it's good".
Boston came out en masse for me and I feel like they've taken me under their wing. I've been a New Yorker my whole life and I think it helps that I admit to everybody that I'm a huge Yankee hater because I'm a Mets fan and as a Mets fan I was always looking for Yankee losses so I always rooted for Boston against the Yankees so I think that has endeared me to Beantown a bit more.
Bostonist: So Boston crowds really let you know where you stand with them?
Mitch Fatel: I never really bought into this until I started traveling but different places have different personalities and Boston has a very definite personality. I know comedians from Boston and when they go back home, and Boston sells those places out for them.
That's one thing you don't get in New York, I've been in New York my whole life and no one gives a shit that I'm from New York, when I come home from somewhere no one comes to support you, New York doesn't have a family feel to it, it's every man for themselves. Boston has a much more family feel to it, you are one of them if they like you they support you.
I will always regret that I was supposed to go to college in Boston, I was supposed to go to Emerson College but at the last minute I decided not to and went to NYU where I did terrible and dropped out a year later to pursue comedy. I almost think that if I had gone to Emerson I wouldn't have dropped out because I wouldn't have been so miserable.
NYU was such a shithole. I went to NYU, hated it, dropped out and have always wondered if I had gone to Boston and gone to Emerson, would I have started doing stand-up there? Would I have become a Boston guy? Would I have lived in an apartment there and stayed there, who knows? So in a weird way I have always had this fondness for and connection to Boston.
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