Being able to release a new special is already an exciting thing for Kurt Braunohler. But being able to release a special that doesn’t premiere at midnight and then get pushed behind an online paywall? Well, there’s currently no better feeling — and he’s quite literally relishing in the moment.
With his latest hour Perfectly Stupid, which premieres on Moment tonight (October 27) at 9 p.m. EDT, Braunohler is unleashing a multi-faceted comedy beast that’s been more than three years in the making. After stops and starts caused by the pandemic and other factors, as well as the timing of his last special (2016’s Trust Me), Braunohler is looking forward to finally having it out in the world as not only a new body of work but, much to his surprise, a project he has yet to get sick of himself.
“I think it’s my tightest hour yet, and I think it’s also my most personal, so I’m very excited for people to watch it,” Braunohler tells Vanyaland. “As you put stuff out as an artist, a couple of years after you’ve put it out, at least for me, I feel like I have to suffer through it because I don’t like it anymore. But I don’t feel that with this one, so it’s nice to have something where I still like it.”
The confidence level in his own work is certainly a refreshing twist in this new hour for Braunohler, but he’s quick to acknowledge just how much the special’s director, Jonah Ray Rodrigues, was a creative and practical inspiration in the development of the material, as well as on the technical side after filming had concluded. Not to mention, Rodrigues’ dedication to the project helped Braunohler sculpt the final batch of material in just under three months, so the appreciation runs even deeper than expected.
Braunohler had the vision of almost completely juking out the idea of delivering a “pandemic special,” as he wanted the material and the overall feel of the special to feel evergreen. Instead of keeping the material in a time-stamped box, Braunohler had been trying to figure out to talk about the death of his mother, which had happened even before he filmed his previous special in 2016. What came out of it was a truly introspective and enlightening experience that, while it isn’t the entire message of the new hour, brings it to a heartfelt and somewhat poignant conclusion as Braunohler chronicles the aftermath of such an experience.
“My wife found out that she was pregnant not long after my mom had died, and when you’re a parent, it’s the only time that you fully conceive a greater understanding of your parents as human beings and not just as parents,” says Braunohler. “It was just such an insane mindset of that being when I had so many questions for my mom, and of course it happens after she’s gone. So, I wanted to find a way to talk about that in some way while still making people laugh the whole time, and I hope I did an okay job.”
While he does admit that it was cathartic to process grief and parental confusion onstage, by no means do you have to know that feeling in order to enjoy the new hour, as the show is largely comprised of Braunohler’s signature brand of absurdist wit and observational takes that more often than not delve in a different direction than others have explored. But he does hope that it can help others who may be dealing with the same type of loss and confusion.
“I’ve processed things by writing about them, and it’s been very helpful for me, because in some way, when you write a piece, and then perform that piece over and over again. It takes on a life of its own in your head and your life,” says Braunohler. “In some small way, just the amount of times I talked about her onstage, it was definitely therapeutic for me, and I think it could be therapeutic for others, but also, you don’t have to have had experienced that to enjoy the special at all.”
Working on this special with 800 Pound Gorilla Media, one of the leading comedy labels and production companies in the game, Braunohler is fairly over the moon with how well they handled the execution of distributing the project, especially with the pivot to a service like Moment, which isn’t subscription-based like Netflix or Comedy Central’s online service, and offers up a more viewer-focused experience ahead of capital.
“This way of watching is so great because you don’t need a Netflix subscription or your Comedy Central cable access password to watch it,” says Braunohler. “I’m very excited that it’s going to be out there like this, because it can really be a very fan-specific experience, because there’s a meet-and-greet and an afterparty, and you can buy merch while you watch it. I think it’s just a really cool way for comedy specials to be released, and I think a lot more people are going to be doing it this way.”
Another creative force in the fibers of this project lies with Point Grey Pictures, the production company founded by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Having forged a friendship with Rogen while he worked as an on-set writer for Long Shot, Braunohler is appreciative of the creative and directorial knowledge that Rogen, Goldberg, and the rest of the Point Grey team brought to the table.
“They came on really early on and told me they really liked the special, and they’d never done a special before, so they wanted to do it, and they were just a creatively great sounding board,” says Braunohler. “They have a very good eye, so it was very nice to be able to bounce stuff off them and get their opinion and direction for all the little direction points in a special that you don’t really think of when you’re just doing stand-up at a club.”
Braunohler is looking forward to everything that comes with this premiere, and while he suggests sticking around for a Marvelesque post-credit bonus scene, he just hopes that at the end of the event, viewers can come away with finding an appreciation and joy in the absurdities of, as he puts it, our “strange, beautiful world.”
“My favorite moment of this whole thing was the weekend that Jonah Ray and I spent in Portland. It was the first time both he and I had been back at a club, and it felt like it was the same case for every member of the audience,” says Braunohler. “We were all crafting this hour in the same space, and Jonah would have notes after every show and we’d write everything down, and it just felt so creative and so alive. That was truly my favorite moment from the process of prepping for this special.”