Modest Proposal
Matt Besser
by Brodie Foster Hubbard
November 2004

“The point where they hit you, you’ve realized you’ve really crossed that line. The other night [while doing standup], this woman would not stop talking. I told her to shut up. I was drinking water and she said, ‘Keep drinking that water.’ I said, ‘I’m going to keep drinking this water until I piss in your open mouth.’

“[Her table] got up to leave and I said, ‘I’m just going to take my act out with you into the street, because now you’ve ruined it and now you’re going to hear it all the way home.’

“I started to follow them out of the club, and this woman turned around and started choking me. I just started laughing.”

Besser was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. One may be inclined to think his aspirations for comedy and provoking people came from dissatisfaction with life in the South, but he says, “I never felt that way about Little Rock. I love Little Rock. I’ve wanted to tour through the South. I’ve thought about that a lot.”

He believes he and all other comedians came to humor in the same way: “from being picked on or being unpopular or compensating for not being good-looking and athletic. So I got into punk music or weird comedy like Monty Python or Andy Kaufman which just blew me away as a kid.”

Like Kaufman, Besser blurs the lines of performer and audience, as well as comedy and reality. In Besser’s one-man show “May I Help You, Dumbass?” he plays audio tapes of people mistakenly calling him instead of a tech support line that had a similar phone number. Instead of correcting them, he posed as tech support and asked them for such things as their cock ring size or favorite Yankees player instead of helping them with their problem.

Pranks and confrontational comedy were a big part of The Upright Citizens’ Brigade, which Besser is a founding member of and whose show on Comedy Central aired for three seasons. It mixed sketch comedy with videotaped segments where UCB characters interact with real people.

His last Comedy Central show, “Crossballs,” posed Besser and other comedians, like Andy Daly (“MAD TV”) and Jerry Minor (“Mr. Show”), as experts against real-life experts in their field for a debate in front a studio audience. A host, played by Chris Tallman, egged on each side of the debate. Topics included fashion as a gay conspiracy, fighting overpopulation by sending immigrants to the moon, and women needing to dress ugly to prevent rape.

Besser, who still works with the UCB Theatre in New York City and performs standup at such places as The M Bar in Los Angeles, had a lot more responsibility this time around.

“I wasn’t nearly as much in control and [didn’t have] as much responsibility [with UCB] as I do now as an executive producer,” he said. “We had to have a whole system and figure out how to do that and that was one of the hardest parts of the show.”

Guests were not picked on for their specific beliefs, but rather their expertise on a particular subject. All were considered fair game.

“At least half, if not more, I completely agree with their point of view on life and what they said when they were on the show,” he said. “That doesn’t put them beyond being made fun of. I think it’s kind of dangerous how experts argue for an entire point of view. They’re all Mr. Know-It-Alls, as am I. We all deserve to get held up for scrutiny and taken down a peg every once in a while.”

The show, which ran this summer over the course of eight weeks, has received a good response.

“We didn’t get any advertising for the show at all and nevertheless we’ve gotten pretty good ratings. And they keep improving, too.”

As much as Besser supports the show, he does not want “Crossballs” to be dismissed as another spin on what has become a reality genre staple.

“The gag isn’t, ‘hey, we fooled you!’ That’s what a hidden camera show is. I hate it when they do that. They always look guilty,” he said. “They always look like they splooged in a person’s hair. ‘Hey man, sorry! Oh, you were a good sport, ha ha ha!’ They just seem corny, it seems like they’re selling out the very bit they just did. People who get pranked should deserve to get pranked. We were inviting them into a debate and debate’s what they got.”

However, it has generated some controversy from disgruntled guests, such as gun enthusiast Jim March from the gun control episode, which did not air.

“He wasn’t promised anything,” Besser said. “I completely agree with my character and everything I said. Whether he’d gotten me the real person or my character he would have got the same argument. There are so many people who are into guns and other things because they’re compensating for something else. Just being lonely, looking for a community of people.

“Nothing gives you a feeling of power [even though it’s not real] than a gun because it can kill people. It can take away a life and it’s not something to be underestimated. I do believe that there are sexual issues tied up in all that, not for every single gun owner, but for a lot.”

March accused “Crossballs” of representing the infamous ‘liberal agenda,’ but Besser corrects, “Let’s not confuse me and the show. The show is definitely reflective of things I believe, but it’s also reflective of the other actors, the other creator, and the other writers believe. I wouldn’t speak for everyone. I myself am a Democrat and have always voted Democrat and a fan of Bill and Hillary Clinton. I think he is the greatest president we’ve had in our lifetime, without question.”

Many interview subjects of Modest Proposal are asked, “How do you keep it real?” Besser’s answer is my favorite to date:

“There was a man named Jonathan Swift, have you ever heard of him? He
wrote something called … what was it called?”

“A Modest Proposal,” I answered.

“A Modest Proposal and when he wrote it, he didn’t start off that piece by saying, ‘what I’m about to write is a joke.’ I think he didn’t care that they didn’t get it was a joke. I’m not speaking for him. I’ve never talked to him personally. I think he’s dead. I think he probably wouldn’t even have liked the people that didn’t get his joke.”