Over at Mediaite, Jon Bershad has a lovely, exhaustive interview with Chris Gethard about The Chris Gethard Show, currently airing on Manhattan Neighborhood Network. It will make you excited to get your own public access show, then spell out why only a few people (Gethard) are really cut out for it. “I guess I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock music and really having that sort of Do-It-Yourself thing ingrained in me,” Gethard says. “Ever since I’ve been doing comedy, I’ve felt like the things that I respect the most are clearly the things where people are sort of boxing out their own corner of the world and doing their own thing. So working at public access seemed like a real opportunity to put it in our own hands.”
In addition to organizing the on-stage chaos, fielding viewer calls and maintaining human/aquatic relations via the Human Fish, Gethard is exploring how to get the show into as many human face holes as possible, including via the show’s video podcast, available through iTunes soon. “Really what the show should be is sort of like a community center for this fucked up community of nerds with nothing better to do,” he says. “If you have nothing better to do on a Wednesday from 11-midnight eastern time, then you should be a part of this community, which I think is always what the internet has been great at.” Random Jean…forever.
