LOL WITH IT: Q&A with The Daily Show's Paul Mecurio

The Daily Show's Peabody Award-winning writer Paul Mecurio performs tonight and tomorrow at Helium Comedy Club. This week he talked to us about his unlikely transformation from Wall Street lawyer to comedian and getting his first big break from Leno.

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LOL WITH IT: Q&A with The Daily Show's Paul Mecurio

POSTED: Friday, June 17, 2011, 4:00 PM

City Paper: How did you get started doing comedy?

Paul Mecurio: I got to see Jay Leno perform at a private function back when he was first starting to host the Tonight Show. I had amassed some jokes while I was working on Wall Street and I offered some of them to Jay after the show. He called me back saying, "I can tell you're a lawyer, you're too wordy! You don't need to tell me where and when to make the funny faces, just get to the joke!" And a few days later he read one of my jokes on the opening monologue and I got $60. It was the most powerful moment of my comedy career.

CP: Any good horror stories from the early days?

PM: I started going to crappy open mic nights in New York City, living this double life where I was a lawyer/investment banker during the day and a comic at night. When you're on Wall Street you work all day so I did comedy on my 7 p.m. dinner break. I'd hire a car service to take me downtown, take my suit off and pick a lotto number to try to perform. Some of these clubs were so bad. When people in the street ask you for money so they can go drinking, this is the type of bar they go to spend their hobo-money.

CP: How does your family adjust to you being on the road touring all the time?

PM: They're great. My son's cool. I try to bond with him but, you know... it's hard when you're used to spending your whole life having your own time. We had a weekend together and I did everything he wanted to do — video games, movies ... Then one night I wanted to do the stuff that I wanted to do, and he's giving me lip! "Dad, the lady on the pole scares me, this Jack Daniels is burning my throat ... You call that weed!?"

CP: Anybody really inspire you early on?

PM: My biggest influence is probably Gallagher II because anybody could smash a watermelon. but smashing a pomegranate, putting your own spin on it ... that's a very difficult thing to do. Plus you gotta live in the shadow of Gallagher I, so that kinda makes him my comedy hero. Otherwise, Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Hicks, Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Carlin [and] Pryor, obviously. And also the entire cast of Hee Haw. The way they would sit in that cornfield ... you could FEEL they were in a cornfield.

Fri.-Sat., June 17-18, 8 p.m. and 10: 30 p.m., $20-$27, Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-496-9001, heliumcomedyclub.com.

(ryan.carey@citypaper.net)

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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