An interview with comedian Sebastian Maniscalco: How Chicago made him funny and Vince Vaughn gave him his break

It started with funny stories at his Arlington Heights home that grew into humorous presentations at school. Then in college, Sebastian Maniscalco, the son of a hairstylist and secretary from Chicago, decided he had to make people laugh for a living. It was his calling.

It took seven years of waiting tables in L.A. and toiling over his observational brand of stand-up until another Chicago entertainer, Vince Vaughn, gave Sebastian his big break, handpicking the fledgling comedian to play in front of thousands of people for 30 consecutive days on his Wild West Comedy Tour in 2005. (It was the subject of a documentary released in 2008)

Sebastian had the chops to make a career from there, with hysterical sets about flip flop sandals, extreme water slides, and the chaos that is shopping at TJ Maxx. He says his jokes just above a stage whisper, and thanks to the subdued, even calm delivery, his fits of exasperation and physical comedy really pop. He’s gotten good enough to headline gigs across the country, host an hour long special for Comedy Central and DVD called “Sebastian Live,” and to perform correspondent gigs on “The Jay Leno Show.”

The comedian is coming home to Chicago this week to perform a set of shows at Zanies in Chicago and in Vernon Hills. He spoke to Chicago Beat from Los Angeles about how his upbringing in Chicago shaped his act, how Vince Vaughn gave him his break and the greatness that is a Portillo’s hot dog.

Chicago Beat: When did you realize you were funny?

Sebastian Maniscalco: I grew up in an Italian family, and I like to say that my first taste of doing comedy was actually at the kitchen table, where I would go home and share my daily observations or stories that happened in school with my mother, my father and my sister. I knew I had an innate ability to tell funny stories and to make people laugh. I was never the class clown, I never wanted the attention, but once I got in front of a class to do a book report or anything like that, I always had the ability to make it funny. And I knew at a [young] age this is what I wanted to do. I used to watch Johnny Carson and “The Tonight Show,” and I was always a huge fan of comedy in all different forms, from stand-up to improv. John Ritter was a big influence on me as far as his physical comedy. So I always wanted to get into it, but being a kid from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, and having a father who was a hairstylist and a mother who was a school secretary, you just don’t know how to get into the entertainment business. It seems so far living in the northwest suburbs that you’re like, ‘How do I do this?’ But I went to college, graduated, and shortly after that I moved out to L.A. to pursue a career.

CB: Which suburbs did you grow up in, and give me a sense how being from the Chicago area may have influenced your sense of comedy and your style?

SM: The first five years of my life were on Harlem and Belmont Avenue, then we moved out to Arlington Heights, and attended Rolling Meadows High School. But just living in the Midwest I think groomed me from point of view as far as what I’m doing on stage. My parents taught me manners and how to be polite and how to behave in everyday life, and my comedy kind of points out the behaviors of people and how they didn’t get those rules apparently growing up as a kid. It’s more observational type of humor where I get aggravated if the line doesn’t move at the grocery store if people are whipping out checkbooks, whatever they’re doing. But I think my upbringing had a big, big influence on me and what I’m doing on stage. Growing up in the Midwest in a blue collar town like Chicago where people are people, people are friendly, people treat people with respect, and that’s kind of been my through line in my comedy, like, ‘What kind of happened to today’s society?’ I like to consider myself an old soul. I dress up to go out on an airplane, and now when you go to the airport at O’Hare, it looks like people rolled out of bed and they went right to the gate in their pajamas. It’s that type of humor. But that’s how I grew up. My mother inspected me before I left the house. ‘Hey, where are you going with those pants?’ It was more of an old school-type upbringing, and those values and morals have kind of bled into my comedy.

CB: You said that from a young age you were able to get a sense of wanting to do this. When did you make that leap of being funny casually to thinking, ‘I really hope and want to make a living of making people laugh.’?

SM: Shortly after nobody called me for any [job] interviews after college [at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb]. I was like, ‘I got to do something here.’ I was going to quit college as a freshman and go to Los Angeles and pursue stand-up comedy, but my father and mother talked me into staying at college and getting a degree. So I knew as soon as I got that degree I was going to put all of my efforts towards moving out to Los Angeles to pursue a career. I knew in college I was going to do this for a living, it was just getting through college. It was probably the best decision I’ve ever made, because I made lifelong friends in college, and learned to live on my own in college. So it was definitely a positive experience. But I knew in second grade, when career day came along and people wanted to be a fireman and a policeman, I wanted to be a stand-up comedian.

CB: Did people look at you weird that you wanted to do that in second grade?

SM: Uh, yeah. The teacher would laugh, ‘Ok Sebastian. Can you give us a real occupation?’ But I came from a family who was 110% behind what I wanted to do as long as it made me happy, so I was lucky with the fact that I had a family that supported me and my decisions, because the entertainment business is not parent friendly. A lot of parents frown upon it and don’t think there’s any stability or future in it, but my parents were quite the opposite.

CB: You really broke through with the Vince Vaughn comedy tour. How long were you in L.A. working the circuit?

SM: I came out to L.A. in 1998. Started waiting tables at the Four Seasons Hotel and at the same time started doing stand-up comedy at night and building my act and doing every gig that I possibly could of done. Then in 2005, Vince Vaughn had called. We had met a couple of years prior at a comedy club through a mutual friend. He’s a Chicago guy, so we ended up developing a friendship over Portillo’s and the Chicago White Sox. We had a common bond there, and he grew up in Lake Forest, and I grew up in Arlington Heights. So he called me in 2005 and wanted to do a tour with four of his favorite comedians, and I jumped at the chance.

CB: Give me a sense of that friendship with him, how that came together, and what opportunities that opened up for you. How did he decide to take a chance on you even though your name wasn’t well known?

SM: It’s funny about that whole tour. Vince kind of put that together in six weeks. He was filming “The Break Up” in Chicago, and always had a dream to go across the country and provide entertainment to people in America that might not get this type of entertainment. Justin Long, Keir O’Donnell, Jon Favreau made special cameo appearances. He just wanted to bring this type of show to areas in the country that didn’t receive this type of entertainment. He just enjoyed my comedy, watching it. Ahmed Ahmed, who is a friend of his, ran a room in Los Angeles, and he came to see the show and enjoyed what I did on stage. You don’t find that too often in the entertainment business. A lot of people are out for themselves, and Vince is one of the guys who took his star power and put his name on something to give unknown comedians a shot at being in the limelight. I was very grateful he stuck out his neck and gave me an opportunity to perform on the same stage and to make a movie out of it.

CB: I remember seeing the documentary. I remember at the end there was a pretty touching scene where you start to break down a little bit because of this opportunity. Leading up to the tour, were you a waiter still full time?

SM: Yeah, I was waiting tables, and he called, and I asked my boss for a month off to do this tour. And my boss at the Four Seasons was very supportive and said, ‘Yeah, go ahead. Go do this.’ I still had the job. I wasn’t making a lot of money doing the tour where I couldn’t just go back to work. I fully intended when the tour ended that I’d be waiting tables the next day. So the reason for the break down is it was a long, grueling tour, and I had so much fun on it, it was kind of a dream for me to do stand-up comedy every night of the week, especially in front of 2, 3,000 people at night, and to end it in my hometown in Chicago with my parents and my friends there, and getting my mother and father to meet Vince Vaughn. It was a lot of emotion that spilled out at the end of the movie. And I never went back to waiting tables. It slowly got better from that tour. I started booking some independent corporate gigs and some club dates and I made enough money to pay the bills so I didn’t have to go back to waiting tables.

CB: And how is it now? Has it gotten to the point where you feel really stable? It seems like you’re constantly touring, you did some stuff for ‘The Jay Leno Show,’ you’ve got a Comedy Central special. Do you feel like you’re basically made, or is it still kind of a challenge?

SM: There are levels of it. Any career or business that you go into, as you progress and go into different levels, there’s always different challenges. My dream getting into this was to headline comedy clubs, and now that I’m doing so, the next goal is to sell these rooms out. I don’t feel that [I’ve made it] at all. I’m making a living at it. But there’s a lot more I want to accomplish in TV and film and doing live concerts. There’s so much more I want to get into.

CB: As you get more successful, that can be a double-edged sword, right? People are seeking you out, but at the same time, there’s that weight on your own shoulders to keep delivering and keep staying funny and fresh. How do you make sure that you don’t lose your very funny voice that grew from your roots and home, as you’re trying to maintain your success?

SM: That’s the biggest challenge for a comedian is to give people new material. Everybody e-mails me or comes to a show and says, ‘Hey, you got new stuff next time?’ Especially my father. My father is huge on saying, ‘These people are coming back to see you. You better give them new material.’ And I agree. If people are going to spend $20, $25 to come see you and get a babysitter and pay for parking and do a two drink minimum, you better deliver a fresh product. Yeah you’ve got your staples of funny stuff that people want to hear over and over again, no matter how many times you tell it they’re going to laugh. But you have to come to a show and a market if you’re going to succeed with a good portion of new stuff. And the way I develop my material is just living everyday life. It’s the kinds of things that happen to me and I’ve got a funny take on it.  So yeah, that’s the biggest challenge for a comedian to come up with the new stuff.

I mean for a band it’s quite the opposite. When you go see your favorite band, you typically want to hear the song that you know and you can sing along to, and as soon as they go into a new one, you’re like, ‘Oh man, I don’t want to hear this new one.’ For a comedian its like, ‘Hey come on, we want to hear new stuff.’ So I’m always writing and coming up with new material.

CB: Take me through the joke process, how you get an idea, grow it, build a riff off of it, and make sure its funny, that will take an audience by surprise.

SM: How I come up with my material is I’ll tell my mother a story. And for some reason, whatever it is, the way I tell a story to my mother is how I gauge whether or not it’s going to be funny on stage. And if I heard her laughing, I know it’s at least a good one to try on stage. Like I just went to go buy a television from Best Buy, and the whole experience with the salesman, what he was doing to sell me the TV was, in my eyes, hysterical, and I told my mother. So my mother is the first line of defense when it comes to getting material on stage. If my mother enjoys it, I know it’s going to be a good one.

CB: So it sounds like your home and roots are still important to you and for your comedy, even though you’re living in L.A.

SM: Home is a huge part of my career and my development. My father and mother are very involved in what I’m doing. Any time I come home to Chicago, its unbelievable. The tickets that I got to get him for his friends and the family. He’s going to come out, and he never sits down at the show, he’s always standing at the back, he’s always watching other people’s reactions to what I’m doing. He’s giving me notes at the end of the show. He knows my act more than I do. He’s like, ‘You didn’t do this one, how come you left that part out?’ I’m like, ‘Maybe you should perform.’ But they’re a huge part of what I’m doing, and my sister lives out here in L.A., she’s an editor. She edits my promo clips that I send out. So yeah, family is a huge, huge part of what I’m doing.

CB: You seem pretty tight knit, but is it a challenge, since they’re so important to you and your act, doing comedy in L.A. as opposed to Chicago?

SM: Well I still keep in contact obviously with my mother and father in Chicago and my sister out here. But yeah you grow up and you start your own life, and my family I think would be a part of your new beginnings and your new chapters. So yeah, I’ve always kept the bond tight. Yeah it’s difficult; they’re in Chicago, I’m in Los Angeles. But I get home two or three times a year, they come here two or three times a year. So we still see each other quite a bit.

CB: And looking toward the future, you have accomplished a lot, but you want to grow more and do more. How do you hope to move your career forward and evolve your voice?

SM: Yeah, well the plan next is to get on TV, whether it be my own sitcom or a show. We’re pitching a show based on my travels about what I do when I go out and travel. When I travel, there’s a process involved in what I do and how I travel and what I do when I get to a specific city, how I scope it out and figure out what to do in that city. It’s almost like a little travel show from a stand-up comic’s point of view. Maybe take that around, see if I can get that on the Travel Channel. And I’m a huge foodie, I love food. So I wouldn’t mind doing something food oriented on the Food Network. Or just basing a sitcom on my act and my point of view. So that’s the next step, and I’d like to parlay that with a concert across the country.

CB: So what’s it going to be like to play this hometown show at this point in your career?

SM: It’s odd; it’s almost like a reunion. It’s amazing the amount of people that have contacted me via Facebook or through my Web site from grade school and high school, and people coming out to the shows that I haven’t seen in 25 years that I grew up with, and they had no idea I was doing stand-up, but saw me on a Comedy Central special or Jay Leno. So when I come home it’s almost like a mini high school or grade school reunion. And my mother and father are there, and I’m like ‘Ma, look at this! It’s Julie from second grade!’ So it’s wild to see man. People got family and kids now, and last time I saw them we were coloring. And every time I come home it’s really wild who I see. And of course I have to get the staples of a Portillo’s hot dog and a Johnnie’s Beef and a Lou Malnati’s, so I gain seven or eight pounds when I come home. Chicago has got the best food in the country. I live in L.A., and there’s a place out here called Pink’s Hot Dogs, and the line’s wrapped around the corner. And I’m like, ‘Shit, put a Portillo’s here, it would blow this place out of the water.’ So it’s always good to come home and see family, friends, and eat like a slob.

Sebastian also performs at Zanies in Vernon Hills, 230 Hawthorn Village Commons, at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. April 17. $25, plus two drink minimum. Click here for tickets.