AN EVERYMAN MAN WITH A JOBS TO DO

Fred Armisen uses the word “idol” a lot when speaking of individuals he admires, and as we run through some of the personalities he’s inhabited, his comments on Prince speak to an underlying, fanboy’s hunger that helps explain why he can be such an effective impersonator: “I’ve been doing Prince since I was seventeen years old; ‘another huge idol of mine. I’m a Prince fan forever and I’ve been doing that impression in the mirror since I was a teenager”

Did you meet him?
“I did, and he was very nice—fascinating. It was after I was playing him.”

Did he approve?
“In his own way, he approved…I think.”

No recollection of what he said?
“He doesn’t use regular language…But he was great, he was friendly to me. Huge idol. Huge, huge idol.”

Favorite Prince tune?
“The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”

You’ve said Steve Jobs is the person you enjoy impersonating the most. Why?
“Because Steve Jobs is to me what rock stars used to be in the past; I think whatever happened to rock stardom transferred over to him because he turns commerce, turns inventions, into a real event. And his performances are great. He goes out there with nothing—a black shirt, jeans and he gets the audience pumped up in a way about devices that is just… It’s hypnotizing! To me, [it’s like] the excitement I had when a band was putting out a new album…he really is an idol, without a doubt.” While impersonation is the stock-in-trade for Saturday Night Live, Armisen is bringing back the man-forall- seasons utility player through a beguiling number of personas. His rubbery, part Scooby Doo, part Rick Moranis visage, menaced by heavy black glasses behind which arch Groucho eyebrows, capped by a tuft of unruly black hair, suggest that he could deliver Marx in film the way Downey did for Chaplain. Armisen wants to direct and star in his own films, and is writing scripts, which he says are “Something between comedy and drama. Something that you can’t quite figure out what it is.”

PLAYLISTS, JAM BAND-BEEF, REUNIONS

So what are you listening to these days?
“Mostly Marnie Stern. She has this drummer, Zach Hill, and it’s like they’re inventing like a new kind of music. I’ve never heard anyone drum like him, he’s amazing. “Transformer,” that song? ‘Can’t stop listening to it” Armisen’s ongoing interest in the music biz is eminently manifest: He’s directed videos “as a way of staying close to the music biz, without having to actually make music,” and he played the comedy tent at Bonnaroo “‘Cause I wanted to see Joanna Newsome”

At Bonnaroo, I witnessed him get into a bit of verbal jousting during a press conference with Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule after Armisen’s comment about jam band culture and long guitar solos rubbed Rolling Stone’s #23 All-Time Greatest Guitarists the wrong way. He’s also interviewed Cat Power for P4K, jammed with Les Savvy Fay, and of course, he was in a band himself, Trenchmouth, the reunion of which he says will not be added to his considerable agenda. “I don’t think anybody wants to see a comedian trying to play in his old
band again,” he estimates, but admits to succumbing to reunion curiosity in the cases of other bands.

“I saw The Sex Pistols,” he recounts. “I loved them because Paul Cook is a great drummer. They’re all good, they’re all great musicians. They deserved to play big places and have a lot of people come. I missed the Gang of Four reunion and I missed Wire. I saw the Bad Brains, they were great.”

Armisen gamely agrees to shoot some images on the roof in the middle of a snowstorm, and surprisingly, when planning this cover story, was available directly via e-mail, without a publicist buffer. This admirable absence of strict brand protectionism—as well as his multiple side projects—make clear he needs to be expressing himself one way or another. He regularly updates his online show “Thunder Ant” which he produces and performs with Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney.) “She’s a good friend of mine…I used to love Sleater-Kinney. We just became friends, and we started working on these video pieces. We do it solely for fun, there’s no commerce in it.”

THAT JOKE ISN’T FUNNY ANYMORE?

What you do at times is a very powerful kind of satire. But in the real world, do you think there might be some sort of self-reckoning that you might have to make with how your comedy impacts persons that you portray?
“I don’t think any kind of reckoning can happen. You just have to think of SNL members of the past—they don’t have to deal with any kind of reckoning.”

But you don’t know that.
“No, I know that. I don’t think anyone has had to come up with any kind of moral question. It’s a fun gig. They’re just comedians and I’m just a comedian. There’s nothing important about it.”

But there certainly is…
“No, there’s not—I mean, important!? It could be meaningful to people, but I don’t think it sways votes; it’s just a comedy show.”

It’s not just a comedy show.
“It is just a comedy show.”

It’s biting satire, which can carry momentum.
“We don’t go into a room saying, ‘who are we going to satirize this week…“

I’m not saying there’s the intent, but the net result is some effect. There is a reaction.
“I guess so, I don’t know; it’s not our intent, I don’t think we focus on that.”

But why do you do political?
“Because they seem funny—and it’s in the news. And by the way, you’re only talking to me right now; Lorne Michaels will give you a different answer, Jim Downey will give you a different answer, [so will] Seth Meyers. But there’s one thing I know: they do believe in this—it’s just entertainment, it’s just a comedy show.”

But you’re the face, so I wonder, in being that vessel how do you deal with it post-performance—do you just avoid the headlines?
“Oh totally. Tuesday I have to go and write something new, you know, come up with another character. I mean, you’re thinking of the political. You have to remember, there’s a lot more to the show. It’s only a small percentage.”

But reeling it down to the personal—you say there’s no intent, but you’ve said you backed away from the subjects of Lindsay [Lohan] and Amy [Winehouse] and Britney [Spears].
“But that’s not political.”

But you said you backed away from Lindsay and Amy and Britney because they were just too dark—so there is a stance at times.
“But that also goes with laughs too, because it’s a sensitive subject. Let’s take a look at Britney Spears. It’s not just a moral thing, it’s also like, people aren’t gonna laugh at that, ‘cuz at the time it was just too tragic a story. Same thing with Amy Winehouse. I think people just aren’t going to laugh. The room gets chilled very easily; you should see the amount of stuff that we cut.”

LESS THAN ZERO

In the subsequent weeks Armisen plays the Governor again. In that same span of time Paterson surprises many, opting not to pick Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary Clinton. On the surface the Governor is seemingly bucking the system, but his selection, in fact, reveals a mindset as calculating and self-serving as any other politician. (Full disclosure: I publish a pre-selection essay on The Huffington Post, making the case for the Governor to replace the corrupt appointment process with a line of Senatorial succession.) A Village Voice cover story entitled “Paterson: Duped Again” features a jarring illustration of the Governor as a woeful character, blindfolded by a local politician. Judging by the illustration, it seems that Armisen has unintentionally created a conversation
on depicting the legally blind Governor’s physical attributes.

The second time he plays the Governor feels like self-justification in the face of a backlash; the third performance spells out simply that ridiculing the Governor’s blindness— and by extension, whether intentional or not, blind and handicapped individuals—has become a Saturday Night Live cash cow. But the Governor’s emergence to date as just another self-serving politician certainly makes him fair game. End of story. Sort of. Somewhere between the sensationalistic moralizing of Keith Oberman and the nihilistic indifference of Joy Behar’s “I said it, who cares?”, an inchoate question about art, society, media, and statecraft remains unanswered.

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