Judd Apatow's highly anticipated Funny People is out today, which means Randy, the foul-mouthed stand-up comedian played by Aziz Ansari, can be seen as was originally intended: on the big screen. Up until now, Ansari's alter ego been an in-the-flesh and small-screen phenomenon, appearing as part of his stand-up tour and the star of a three-part series of viral Web mockumentaries. (The segments, the last of which was posted earlier this week on funnyordie.com, have been one of the movie's main buzz-builders. See parts 1 and 2.)
The surprising thing about Randy is that he's "a small character in the film," Ansari explained when I caught up with him at last week's Just for Laughs film festival in Montreal. (Credit where credit is due: I had help navigating the city's arts scene from Daviel Vieira, who blogs here.)
But Ansari, Apatow, and co-star Seth Rogen saw plenty of potential for Randy beyond "Funny People." "We kept talking about all these other ideas for him. It was like, ‘Wow, we don't have enough room in the movie for this stuff. What if we made a documentary about him?'"
Ansari tapped fellow "Human Giant" alum Jason Wolner to direct and co-write it. Together they drew a portrait of a wuss with an inexplicable appeal to ladies and audiences. Far from being the nerdy outcast you'd think he'd be, Randy is a successful performer, has a nasty mean streak, and takes himself very seriously. And he has a catchphrase that's as good as it is annoying: "Raaaaaaaaaandy!"
According to Ansari, a couple of Randy's quirks are actually insider references to real-life comedians. Vietnamese-Americna comedian Dat Phan really does analyze audio recordings of his own performances. As for Randy's meticulously maintained joke archives: "In the Jerry Seinfeld documentary ‘Comedian,' there was a comedian named Orny Adams and he had all these file cabinets of jokes," Ansari says. "I was like, ‘What? Who has that?'" For the mockumentary, Ansari and Wolner tried to take it one step further, but they'd already been beaten to the punch. "I didn't even realize it, but he really had a folder called ‘JEWISH MATERIAL.' Someone emailed me: ‘Oh, that's a funny shout-out.' We just came up with it!"
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