Engineering Laughs

Dan Nainan is living his dream.

It’s a few minutes before eight on a Sunday evening in Ontario, California and the energetic comedian has just performed for 1000 people at the North American Kerala Hindu Convention. He’s famished and briefly considers the convention’s vegetarian buffet, then heads for the hotel steakhouse instead, pausing en route to shake hands and give out business cards.

“Take two, they’re free!” Nainan shouts to passersby, rolling his r’s Indian-style. “Indians LOVE free stuff!” the comic (who is half Indian) confides with a wink.  “Hey, look me up on Facebook!” he urges a group of Desi teens. “I only have one friend!”

Between gulps of grilled salmon (no butter, he is watching his waistline) he returns messages on his Treo 700p while simultaneously extolling the virtues of his favorite discount travel websites.

Later, Nainan sets up shop in the hallway outside the banquet room.  As the moon rises over the Doubletree Inn, he hawks his latest CD and tries to book more gigs so he can keep doing what he loves to do:  make people laugh.

Nainan has logged more than 125,000 flight miles this year. By year’s end he will have performed more than 150 gigs in nearly 50 cities worldwide. Although it sounds brutal, his frenetic pace has led to some prestigious gigs, including performing with comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Bob Saget and touring with Indian comic Russell Peters. He has appeared on Saturday Night Live and Last Comic Standing and is currently filming alongside Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel in a movie directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Recently, I caught up with the multiversant performer and he told me the joke about the Indian/Japanese guy who went to sleep an Intel engineer and woke up a comedian.

Only, in Nainan’s case, it’s no joke.

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Q:  You bill yourself as “the only Indian/Japanese comedian.”  How has your ethnic background influenced your career?

A:  It’s funny, when I took my first comedy class, I asked the teacher if she thought that [my ethnicity] would be a disadvantage.  I was seriously concerned about that because there weren’t many mixed race comics out there.  But she told me ‘this is going to be your greatest advantage’ and she turned out to be extremely prophetic and correct. I don’t do only ethnic jokes, but by doing those jokes I am able to gain acceptance.  Both cultures - Indian and Japanese - have been very accepting.

Q:  Growing up, did you identify more as Indian, Japanese or American?

A: I was born in Indiana so I really identified more with being American. The only problem was that the other kids made fun of me a lot because of my race.  Starting with college, [my race] became less of an issue.  Now in my adult life, I welcome it.  It’s very flattering to be asked about my race.  It took me a while to realize that people were not asking that with any malice.  Now it’s more a source of conversation.

Q:  Were you a funny kid?

A:  No, I was extremely, painfully shy and withdrawn.  A real wallflower.  It was so bad I didn’t even get invited to parties.  I was a straight A student but once a month or so I would say something really witty and smart alecky and everybody would burst out laughing and I would get kicked out of class for the rest of the day.

Q:  In the late 1990’s you were working for Intel as a demo engineer. How did you get into comedy?

A:  My job at Intel was to design technical demos that would be featured in the speeches of executives like CEO Andy Grove.  [I traveled] all over the world – to distributors’ conferences, analysts’ meetings in New York City, shows in Vegas.  We were doing live demos on stage for things like voice dictation or the latest graphic software in front of thousands of people or sometimes millions on television. I was extremely nervous so to try to get over that I took Intel’s Toastmasters class, which prepares you to do business presentations. But it wasn’t enough of an adrenaline rush because I was in front of 10 to 15 nerds like myself.  Then I heard there was a comedy class being offered in San Francisco.  People had told me I should do comedy or acting.  That was the germination of the idea that I could do comedy.  That, paired with the need to get over stage fright was the impetus to take a comedy class.

Q:  When did you realize that you could make a career doing comedy?

A:  The final event for the class was a show at a real comedy club.  I was very, very nervous about that.  Terrified!  I practiced my act over and over, said it in the car all the way to San Francisco.  When I got onstage [the audience] was laughing and laughing from the get go.  I didn’t know it then, but for a debut it was extremely successful.  A few weeks after that, Intel sent me on the road again to a convention in Vegas.  I had my tape of that first show with me and I mentioned to some people that I had it.  They watched it and they liked it.  It turned out they were in charge of the entertainment for the final team dinner for Intel.  So I performed at that event and I did impressions of Andy Grove and Bill Clinton and they absolutely loved it.  Two months later I performed the same act at an international sales conference and I had 2500 people rolling at that event.  People actually thought I had been hired as a professional comedian.  That’s when I thought, hey, I can do this!  I decided to leave Intel about a year and a half later to get serious about comedy.

Q:  Much of your comedy is based on your ethnicity.  Why does that resonate with your audiences?

A:  I think that, especially from the Indian side, you have an audience that really hasn’t been exposed to stand up comedy.  It’s an art form invented in America and isn’t something that’s been prevalent throughout the world.  But, because of Russell Peters, comedy is now gigantic in the South Asian community. I think that if you do ethnic humor, it is going to appeal to that ethnicity.

Q: Do you perform for both Asian and mainstream audiences?

A:  I would say ninety percent of the shows I do are for Indian audiences, eight percent are East Asian and two percent are mainstream. I think people tend to identify with whatever race you look like.  There are a lot of Indians who have dark skin like me but I don’t think there are too many Japanese who have my skin tone. But it’s also very gratifying to perform for mainstream audiences.  If you can do ethnic jokes for mainstream and have them laugh, it’s kind of like you’ve won a battle.

Q:  Are there any subjects you stay away from in your act?

A:  I don’t do any profanity.  I don’t do sex humor.  There are a lot of staples in mainstream comedy clubs [that I don’t do], like picking on the disabled or mentally challenged.  I just think it’s really cruel and that isn’t the kind of humor I want to do.  I think that actually helps me because doing that kind of humor narrows the kind of groups that will hire me.

Q:  You’ve worked with some well-known comedians.  Who influenced you the most?

A:  Jerry Seinfeld. I asked him once if he had any advice and he said ‘Dan, you’ll work a lot more if you do clean.’ So I try to emulate him in [that sense]. Also, his approach was different.  Your typical comic is an alcoholic or drug addict, getting stoned after the shows, waking up at five in the afternoon.  Jerry had a different attitude.  He would dress up onstage and show up at noon and people would be shocked.  I like to emulate the fact that he is a real professional.  Comedians are known for diva behavior and I don’t like to do that.

Q:  You’ve been filming a movie this summer.  Can you tell me about it?

A:  I just wrapped up filming The Last Airbender, a live-action adaptation of the TV series The Last Avatar.  It’s an M. Night Shyamalan movie, the first that he, himself, hasn’t written. I play the part of Fire Nation Soldier as well as stand in for [actor] Aasif Mandvi. Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire is one of the stars.  I shot for 16 days in Philadelphia, which enabled me to get my Screen Actors’ Guild card.  I got to know Night very well and I got to know Dev and Aasif really well and had an absolute blast.

Q:  When will the movie be released?

A:  It’s coming out in June of next year.

Q:  What was it like to work with M. Night Shyamalan?

A:  Night, as everyone calls him, was absolutely magnificent.  Everyone says you’re not supposed to talk to the director or the stars, but that was completely untrue on this movie.  He was standing next to me on my second day of shooting.  I told him that I had performed at a wedding part at the Four Seasons in Philadelphia about a year and a half ago and that his father and mother had come up to me an introduced themselves as his parents.  His eyes widened and he said, “That was you?!  My father was absolutely raving about you!”

Q:  What else have you been working on?

A:  I just shot my first episode of Desi States of America, which is on [an Indian] channel called PanDesi.  I’m the host and I do some improv stuff and some sketch stuff.  Once it airs, it will be available on their YouTube channel.

Q:  When you’re not performing, what do you like to do?

A:  It’s really important to stay in shape, so [I do] karate, squash, cycling, lifting weights. I don’t watch television, ever – I think I watch fewer than 10 hours a year.  I’m always learning a language on my MP3, whenever I’m driving or on the subway or at the gym. I also play five instruments: keyboards, guitar, bass, drums and cello. Once I get my home studio set up, I’m going to start writing some songs.  Secretly, I want to be a musician.  Every musician wants to be a comedian and vice versa.  It’s funny how that works.

Q:  What advice would you give to young people who want to pursue a non-traditional profession?

A:  A lot of people say to me, “I want to be a comedian or a dancer or a musician or a director, but my parents want me to be a doctor or an engineer.  This is a constant struggle between the young and the old.   What I would tell kids is your parents are right - you really should get gainful employment first.  To suddenly come out of college and say I’m gonna be a poet or a musician…you just can’t do that.  It takes years of honing your art before you can get to the point where you make money. If you want to do something artistic you need to have a 9 to 5 job and make a living first.  The times that you can work on your craft are evenings, when everyone else is watching television, and weekends, when everyone else is getting drunk.

Q:  Have your parents been supportive of your comedy career?

A:  My parents have been extremely supportive.  But I’m not like the guy who wanted to become a comedian right out of college. If that had happened they would have been horrified.

Q:  What is something that nobody knows about you?

A:  I have a hard time admitting this, but I have a pink and white Hello Kitty toaster.  It actually toasts an image of Hello Kitty’s face on the bread.  I also have one of the only bottles of “Michael Jackson King of Pop” cologne in existence.  They were going to market it but never did.  It’s actually a pretty nice scent!

For more information on Dan Nainan, visit his website: www.nainan.com