This comedian isn't afraid to show his emotions

There was a time when it wasn't cool for men to share feelings. It wasn't cool to admit that you were hurt.

Posted 4:26 p.m. Mar 29, 2018 — Updated 6:16 p.m. Jul 12, 2018

Tony Castleberry

RALEIGH, N.C. — Leave it to a comedian to apologize for something great.

Matt Braunger, a fantastic stand-up comic who is headlining Goodnights Comedy Club in Raleigh this week, landed a role in a TV show that is filming Thursday. That means he’ll be doing shows at Goodnights on Friday and Saturday instead of the usual Thursday through Saturday headline sets featured at the club.

Only the meanest comedy fan would begrudge Braunger, who was born in Chicago and grew up in Portland, Ore., for taking an acting role instead doing a Thursday night spot, but Braunger still took time to say he was sorry for missing the show.

It’s Braunger’s first time playing Goodnights, although, as we discussed in a Tuesday evening phone interview, he has performed in the Triangle area before.

Braunger and I also talked about how open, honest and funny his hour special, Big Dumb Animal, is, how using humor helped him make friends -- and avoid fights -- when he was a kid, Portland’s beautiful weirdness and more.

Enjoy the interview, follow Braunger on Twitter and don’t forget The Best Tweet I Can Find in Five Minutes at the end.

Tony Castleberry: I know it’s been available for a while now, but I just wanted you to know that I loved Big Dumb Animal. The way it was shot felt so intimate and you opened yourself up in a way that I couldn’t remember you doing in a special before. Was that a conscious decision, to maybe reveal a little bit more of yourself on stage?

Matt Braunger: That was back when I feel like we were all getting a little more open about ourselves and thankfully that movement has kind of continued. I was kind of tired of people going on stage and talking about stuff where you knew, "Ah, you don't care about that." You just didn't see it that often.

Listen, you can make anything funny. I've been doing it, God, 18, 19 years now and you kind of have a little more fun if you dig in and pull out the muck a little bit more. You surprise yourself when you do that how non-embarrassing it is. You think you'd be kind of mortified, but everyone's either heard or felt almost anything you're gonna say in one reflection or another.

Anyway, to answer your question, yeah, it was definitely conscious. I have a new one that's in the can that should be coming out this year. It's even more (revealing).

TC: We are continuing the trend. That probably comes with aging and maybe being a little bit more mature. Does that play into it, you think?

MB: Yeah, I definitely think it comes into play when you figure that I'm a straight, white man too. I got kicked around and I am in the minority in that I'm chinless and all that s***, but you know...put it this way: The thing that immediately came to mind is so many young comedians that are gay or of color, they talk about personal stuff right away because they have stuff on their minds.

It's almost like a them against the world thing. I never really had a lot of that, but aside from talking about societal problems, I think generally speaking, as you get older you do kind of start talking about (personal) stuff because that sense of existential dread kind of comes in on you so much more, you know?

TC: Yeah. We're of a similar age and I'm recognizing those things even in my day-to-day, but I am happy that what you mentioned at the beginning is true. There was a time when it wasn't cool for men to share feelings. It wasn't cool to admit that you were hurt. To be able to do that and to do it on stage like you can do, I think, has to be freeing for you and it's probably freeing for some of your audience members too.

MB: Oh absolutely. The most obvious example of that was Richard Pryor because he was the most vulnerable comedian of his day and possibly since. He was not only the funniest. He was definitely (also) one of the bravest. Every one of these stories, no matter how horrible it was or what had happened, it had all happened to him. You're hearing it from him. That kind of paved the way for men definitely as well as women of course to talk about our vulnerabilities and our foibles and our weaknesses and mine that for humor. That's a deep mind.

TC: It sure is. The rawness of that is something that resonates to this day. Did friends or family members or a significant other or co-worker or anybody tell you before you did stand-up that you should do stand-up or were you a self-starter in that regard?

MB: I was definitely a class clown. I'm an only child and if you listen to George Carlin's album Class Clown -- I listened to it religiously as a kid -- he kind of nails it to the wall when he says, "You're bored. You figure, 'Well, why not deprive someone else of their education?'" [interviewer laughs] I remember I would say things out loud and it was just this selfish kind of need for attention, but at the same time, I found out as an only child who went to a bunch of different schools, I would make friends by being funny and also would avoid getting beat up by being funny. I remember that too. It was just something that always came naturally to me.

I remember a friend in Chicago, when I started getting into improv and stand-up and things, he would say, "You can always say and know that you're funny." That was always a really cool thing. I might not be the best actor, I might not be the best writer or anything like that, but the sense of humor thing has always been something that's part of me. Like anything, if you're gonna do it, you've got to work on it.

TC: How did growing up in Portland shape your comedy, if it did it all?

MB: It was a very different place. I'll have a memory and share it with my wife and she'll be like, "You know that’s really strange, right?" [interviewer laughs] I remember being in a theater class that was, it was kind of a scam.

The guy was not bad, but he would have us perform scenes together inside, like, a mall, the food court, out loud. This kind of guerrilla theater. My parents would come watch it and you could see the looks on their faces. They were like, "What the? What is this crap?" [interviewer laughs]. It's not so much that it kind of gave me all this fuel, but growing up in this kind of environment where almost every kind of art was tolerated or at least considered, it was different.

Also, just being around a lot of weirdos. Portland back then was definitely a place, Chuck Palahniuk wrote a book about it called Rejects and Refugees or something like that (it's Fugitives and Refugees). It's just about how that was a place where people ended up when they didn't fit anywhere else.

They were kicked out of everywhere else. There were just a lot of fringe people that I kind of grew up with. It did keep me open minded to be around any kind of person, people with different trains of thought.

TC: Will this be your first trip to Goodnights?

MB: At Goodnights, yes. I performed at Motorco (Music Hall in Durham) a couple years ago. It's my first time (at Goodnights) and I'm really psyched. Sadly, I had to cancel the Thursday show because I booked a role on this sitcom, Man with a Plan. I'm gonna be guesting on it for a week. It shoots on Thursday so I wasn't able to go (to Raleigh for a Thursday show). I only bring that up because Tommy Johnagin, a comedy road dog friend of mine, is one of the producers on the show.

He was like, "I saw you were going to Goodnights. Have you ever been?" I was like, "I never have." He's been going there forever, even before Marc Grossman and the Helium group took it over. (Johnagin) had nothing but good things to say about it and I've heard nothing but good things.

Here it is, The Best Tweet I Can Find in Five Minutes:

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