Opening doors

The Mauss that roared

Meet the man who could put Boston's comedy scene back on the map

By: SEAN L. MCCARTHY

3/30/2007 5:14:44 PM

TAKING IT ALL IN STRIDE: Shane Mauss may be keeping his cool, but the past few weeks have taught him something about the cultural buzz of anthropology.

A month ago, Boston comedian Shane Mauss could barely get local comedy clubs to return his calls. Just three weeks ago, he was headlining at an Elks lodge in Connecticut. But last Wednesday, the 26-year-old was performing for millions on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, where he had the host and fellow guest Neil Patrick Harris howling over his girlfriend's dismal view of the bedroom. "The vagina's always half-empty," he deadpanned.

Despite legend and the fervent dreams of multitudes, overnight sensations are rare in show business. But Shane Mauss seems to have pulled it off, through the usual combination of luck and pluck, as well as sharp joke-writing skill and a magnetic (some might call it hypnotic) stage presence.

Comedian Paul Provenza, who directed the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, singled out Mauss on Penn Jillette's radio show earlier this year, calling Mauss one of a new breed of stand-ups who, judging by appearances, "don't really know what they're doing," but clearly have "so much skill and craft. Very smart stuff."

Trying out his act
Over the past six months, Mauss, who'd been doing stand-up for only three years, has been raising his game at comedy competitions both here in Boston and across the country. Provenza had crossed paths with him in January at the Las Vegas Comedy Festival. And his performances during the Boston Comedy Festival stand-up contest last September, where he placed seventh, grabbed the attention of his fellow comedians, including Steven Wright (who introduced the Boston comedy scene to a national audience 25 years ago with his debut on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, prompting talent scouts to launch the careers of "undiscovered" comics Bobcat Goldthwait, Denis Leary, Lenny Clarke, Paula Poundstone, Kevin Meaney, and many others — think of what Nirvana did for Seattle music, only a decade earlier and much less tragic). Soon, an HBO scout invited Mauss to audition for its annual US Comedy Arts Festival, held each February in Aspen, Colorado. "He was one of the last people booked," HBO talent executive Kathi Khoury said. "I had to fight for Shane," who didn't have an agent.

It was a huge break: Aspen is to comedy what Austin is to music and Sundance is to movies — a place where show-business executives gather to suss out the Next Big Thing. And on March 3, before all those heavyweights, Mauss's seven-minute set won best stand-up honors. "I got a bowling trophy once," he said that night. "Bowled a 235 in eighth grade. This (award) is going right next to that!"

Just a couple of days earlier, Mauss had been perhaps the least known person — even among Bostonians — on the Aspen program, which included celebrations for Stephen Colbert, George Carlin, Don Rickles, and the cast and creators of Entourage, as well as one-man shows by Steven Wright and Katt Williams.

Hanging out with him that week was like taking a class in the cultural anthropology of buzz. You could see it in the way Aspen's well-to-do quoted his jokes about pussy and anal beads. He couldn't sit down to eat a meal without customers, waiters, and executives approaching his table — respectfully, somewhat gingerly — to offer their congratulations.

"It was pretty amazing," says Mauss. "At one point I was in a fancy restaurant having a meeting with Mosaic, who represent Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, and Sacha Baron Cohen — and they're interested in me?"

After Mauss won his festival award, TV producer Dan Pasternack and executives from Super Deluxe — the new online comedy site from Turner Broadcasting — treated Mauss to a celebratory dinner. "He has the material and the timing of a seasoned pro, as well as that rarest of all attributes . . . a unique and distinctive comedic voice," Pasternack said. "I love what he's doing and I think he has a big future in comedy."

For someone who seems so, well, off-balance and vaguely inebriated both on and off stage, Mauss exhibits a keen sense of focus on what it takes to make a joke funny, as well as what it'll take to ensure that his career doesn't peak with Conan. His slurring, ambling speech (with more than a hint of Midwestern flatness) stands out, and suggests a 180-degree departure from the slick, observational stand-ups who followed the Jerry Seinfeld mold. Instead of noticing the humor in others, Mauss pokes fun at himself, his sex life, and his drunken adventures. It appealed to one of Conan's booking agents, who called on Mauss, a week after Aspen, when a band had to pull out of the March 21 show. He auditioned over the phone. Five minutes later, he had the gig.

That's all the more remarkable given that, when Mauss moved to Boston from his native LaCrosse, Wisconsin, three years ago, he had never told a joke onstage. The oldest of three kids, Mauss describes himself as a quiet, reserved type who began jotting down jokes when he was 16. He didn't play sports or get involved in school activities or even really pay much attention in class. "No," he laughs. "I smoked a lot of weed."

His conservative Christian parents (his father is a countertop maker; his mother, a manager of a health clinic) didn't condone his behavior. Mauss guessed they probably wouldn't approve of his jokes either, which they heard for the first time last week on Conan. Performing the next night before a crowd of 20 at the Comedy Studio, he riffed, "My family was calling me all day. 'Congratulations! You really disappointed us!' "

Mauss bypassed college and headed to Boston because a friend of his was moving here to work at MIT. "In my head, I was like, well, I have to get to a coast. You go to New York, and you become a stand-up comic. It's just that easy," he said. "I figured [Boston was] close enough to New York."

His jokes, however, weren't yet close enough to funny, as he learned his first time onstage at the Comedy Studio. "I forgot what I was going to say," he said. His notes couldn't save him, either. "I reached into my pocket. There was nothing there." Club owner Rick Jenkins told Mauss to take a class if he was serious about comedy, so he enrolled in Rich Gustus's program at Brookline Adult & Community Education. Mauss also started showing up at the Emerald Isle in Dorchester to practice. "I'd get one laugh every week," Mauss recalled. Not great at all. But, by the time he finished the class, he had learned to put all of those one-laughers together for a full set of gut-busters.

In January 2006, Mauss hit the stage every night as the Comedy Studio's monthly comic-in-residence, using that time to prepare for the Boston Comedy Festival, which had rejected him the year before. "You have to make your own breaks, it seems," he says.

That is so especially in a scene such as Boston's, which is overflowing with both young aspiring comics and veteran headliners who never moved away, all looking for gigs. The region remains fruitful for stand-up comedians because of its huge college-age population, providing both an ample talent pool and ready audiences; a blessing if you want steady work without having to leave your family behind for the road, a curse if you're not an established comic with the proper veteran-headliner connections. Even after his initial brush with success in Boston, Mauss had troubles getting booked.

He clearly needed a manager, and after Aspen, he found one in The Collective's Max Burgos, who also represents Katt Williams (HBO's The Pimp Chronicles). He also signed with Douglas Edley of the high-powered Gersh Agency.

Edley, a Boston University grad, calls Boston "a great place for him to grow as an artist and as a comedian." Edley is busy fielding calls from TV networks and movie studios curious about Mauss, but he insists that the comedian's prime objective should be to write more material and to get more experience on the road.

"The important thing is not to jump too quickly, jump too high," says Edley.

He remained modest later that night at a viewing party in his hotel room, taking phone calls and responding to e-mails and MySpace messages. Friends joked about his weirdly unwrinkled designer duds — MacDonald had purchased his TV outfit from the Lucky store at Copley Place. They hushed one another when O'Brien introduced Mauss. Afterward, they celebrated with a Champagne-cocktail toast. And yet, after the biggest moment of his career so far, Mauss wanted to show friends another comedian's work online. "This is the funniest thing I've ever seen," he said, pointing to an online cartoon by Brad Neely on Super Deluxe.

Mauss says he wishes the camera had given him a full body shot for the punch line to his act "Crazy Maggie," about his girlfriend's premenstrual sexual openness ("I'm Crazy Maggie and I'm giving it away!"). But he really wished he could've plugged his home club, the Comedy Studio. Instead, O'Brien promoted Mauss's upcoming appearance in June on Long Island — something the club wanted in exchange for booking Mauss. "I wanted to surprise Rick (Jenkins) with that," he said. "That was my first taste of what show business is about. I was like, what?"

Even as he navigates these shocks, Mauss has big plans for the future.

"I had a great idea the other day. I think I'm going to be rich. It's for a bumper sticker that just says on it: 'I am a child molester.' I'm going to sell a lot of those!" he said. "No? Oh, maybe I should explain, sorry, the bumper sticker. You don't put it on your car. That'd be stupid!"

Shane Mauss will be opening for John Heffron at the Comedy Connection in Boston April 25 to 28. You can also see him in Boston on April 7 at the Boston Center for the Arts, and on April 8 at The Vault in Remington's.