He was a small town boy...living in a lonely world..he walked the

abandoned rail tracks going nowhere. Or something along those

lines.

 

At some point in all our lives we have been sitting at work (which

you probably doing at this very minute as you read this article)

and thought that there had to be something better out there. Instead

of flipping burgers 40 hours a week for the next 40 years you wish

that you be doing something a little bit more exciting. While on

break you crack up your co-workers with your a spot impression

of your boss. After they have stopped laughing and heading to

back to work, your work buddies tell you should be standup

comedian. Which you are half tempted to do. Why not, that comedian

you watched on television last night was a night watchman before he

started telling jokes for a living. 

 

After five years as a newspaper reporter, where he chased

ambulances and cover stories about burning houses, Todd

Merriman headed down to Texas to catch a Ween concert. He

stuck around Austin and joined the cast of the Nightmare Factory

haunted house. One day Todd impressed his boss with the comical

manner in which he would answer the customers question, leading to his manager insisting he give standup a try. 

 

While in Austin Todd was a two-time finalist in both the Funniest Person in Austin and the Funniest Filmmaker in Austin. In 2007 he blended his love for comedy and horror to create The Zombie Apocalypse Talent Show, which took place on Halloween.

In 2009 Todd returned home to Charlestown, IN and joined the local comedy scene in nearby Louisville, KY. He became the head writer on cable-access show Reel Freaks as well as playing the Devil at The Devil's Attic.

Leo Weekly named him the number two standup comedian in the Louisville area. And the rest of Todd’s story lies at the creepy intersection of comedy and horror. 

 

THE INTERVIEW

 

Will/LLM: What is the comedy scene like in Louisville, KY compared to some place like Austin, TX, or any other large city?

 

Todd Merriman: I can't answer for other large cities, as I've only lived and worked the two different cities. Both Louisville and Austin have a tightly-knit community of talented, funny performers. Beyond that... How to answer this diplomatically? Here is a link to an article that just came out yesterday. It's in the blogosphere, so it must be true. Louisville ranked 49th on the list of 50 funniest cities in America. Suck it, Omaha!

 

Austin ranked 19th on the list, and, yes, while it's just a bullshit list some blogger who only just saw his first improv show put together, it seems a little damning of Louisville. We have only one official comedy club. When I lived in Austin, I think there were three, and that number has grown. They've also since started the Moontower Comedy Festival, and their Funniest Person in Austin competition annually gets industry folks, like people from Comedy Central, to come check it out. There's no real industry representation here in Louisville, which means comedians have to work a lot harder to open up venues for comedy, places that aren't actually comedy clubs, but will host shows, like the Bard's Town, or Groucho's. Both those places regularly host shows.

 

http://www.movoto.com/blog/top-ten/the-50-funniest-cities-in-america/

 

Once you get the venue, there's the work of promoting the shows to get people to come, so the comics who do the hard work of networking and promoting themselves seem to do well. I don't know if anyone is making any money, but they get seen by audiences.

 

It's not a matter of any batch of comics being any funnier, but comics who stay in Louisville, I think, have a lot more work to do to get seen by a good audience.

 

Will/LLM: In your opinion how do you think the city of Louisville could improve it's image as a comedy town. Would a comedy festival help? Do you think the people of Louisville would get behind a push to improve the comedy landscape of the city?

 

Todd Merriman: That's the trick, right? Figuring out how to get the audience out of their little homes and out to see comedy. And I think this is true of any performing art in Louisville: the question is how to make people see that there is a whole world of entertainment that's local and is actually quite good. A comedy festival would be great, but if there's no audience, what would it be worth? It's rather more a question of changing consumer behavior to where they're in the habit of saying, “I've got nothing to do tonight. Maybe I'll see what's going on at the Comedy Caravan, or at the Bard's Town, or at Groucho's or The Alley Theater, or at the Rudyard Kipling,” instead of, “I wonder what kind of bland, homogenous crap is playing at the cinema.” We just need people to understand that it's not that big a risk to go check out a show. Truthfully, I think we need a visit from the public relations fairy. At least I do.

 

Will/LLM: Is there any city that you would like to perform in?

 

Todd Merriman: Sure, all of them.

 

Will/LLM: (laughs) Does music play a big part in your comedy? How would you describe your comedy style?

 

Todd Merriman: I don't play a lot of music on stage, though I have a few songs I'm particularly proud of. I generally bring the guitar out when I have a new song, and otherwise, just for simplicity's sake, I leave the guitar at home and rely on my spoken word jokes. The funny songs are a trick I keep in my bag, but if a song like, say, “Bowie's Package,” falls on ears that are a little older, or a little younger than mine, they might not have seen Labyrinth to know how you can see the outline of his penis through his tights the whole movie, and you've just eaten 3 minutes of stage time with people not knowing what the hell you're talking about.

 

I try not to pigeonhole my comedy too much, as I feel funny is funny. I've loved standup comedy since I was a kid, so I've got a fairly diverse range of influence, but when I take the little odds and ends of jokes I've written and put them together to create a set, I think “dark, absurdist satire” probably wins space on the label. And there's usually something about my kid in there, just to keep it grounded in some reality and make it relatable. Kids are funny.

 

Will/LLM: Who are your comedic influences? Have you worked with anybody big in the comedy world? Is there somebody you would like to work with?

 

Todd Merriman: Early influences would probably be Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy. My prime SNL viewing years were the late '80s, early '90s cast with Phil Hartman, Dennis Miller and Dana Carvey. I actually had a Church Lady poster on my bedroom door in middle school, and made a lot of effort to do all of Carvey's characters. I would get embarrassed when my mom would say, "Do Church Lady" at family gatherings, but I did a lot of that kinda shit at the lunch table at school or hanging around the neighborhood. I listened to a lot of Dr. Demento on the radio, until one of the neighbors turned me on to Black Sabbath.

 

About the time I started doing comedy, there were two albums that really made me want to do it. One was David Cross's "Shut Up You Fucking Baby" and Mitch Hedberg's "Mitch All Together."

 

And of course, there are the guys everyone thinks are great. George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Louis CK.

 

I could sit here and list comedians i like for days.

 

As for name comics I've worked with, I've opened for Brian Posehn with Anthony Jeselnik as the middle act. I've featured for Jon Caparulo. There was a night in Austin where the guy initially booked to emcee had a charity show he didn't want to back out of, so I got to open for Tommy Chong, and under similar circumstances, I've worked with Bill Burr. Even weirder circumstances, once I was running food at the Cap City Comedy Club in Austin and the emcee, who was also running food, didn't want to do the second show because he was gross and sweaty from running food, but I didn't care, so I got to open for Josh Blue.

 

I don't know if there's any comic that I would say, "It would be a dream to open for that guy," necessarily, because I've been lucky enough in working at a really good club to meet a lot of great comics. Mostly, I've had great experiences, but every once in a while you meet someone you've always admired and they turn out to be a turd in person.

 

Will/LLM: Does being from a small town, like Charlestown, have any effect on your comedy, and what was it like growing up in Charlestown?

 

Todd Merriman: Of course it does. I'm naturally imbued with those small town values that mean life for me revolves around going to see the football game on Friday night, getting up early Saturday morning to help around the farm, and paying my respects to God every Sunday in church. Also, the Pledge of Allegiance.

 

I'm lying.

 

At age 16, I was 6'2", weighed 140 pounds and couldn't sink a free throw if my life depended on it. In a town that seemed kind of sports-obsessed, my weekends were more often spent playing Dungeons and Dragons or going on campouts with my Scout troop. During the week, I'd spend lots of time in my room listening to heavy metal music on cassette tape. There was a used music store called Root & Roll about halfway between Charlestown and Jeffersonville, which kept me in supply of cheap tapes. Loitering at the mall in Clarksville was another pastime. Back to my room, though, my time was spent mostly doing homework, reading, writing, brooding and masturbating. I also went through a phase where I taught myself to juggle, and later to play guitar. A lot of times I would go for long walks on the abandoned railroad tracks. Sometimes neighborhood friends would join me. Sometimes it was just me and my Walkman. The neighborhood kids that did like me, enjoyed my gift for voice mimicry, which I've not really maintained, but I can whip up silly voices and characters pretty easily.

 

So yeah, I had some very close friends, but I was kinda socially awkward. My family had cable TV when I was a teenager, too, and every station had a comedy show on it, so standup was always on TV and held as sort of an art form, I guess.

 

As for the effect all this had on my comedy, I always felt like kind of an outsider, and lived mostly in some sort of battle against boredom, so conventional thinking became something I often challenged and still do to this day. Does that sound pretentious enough?

 

Will/LLM: Have you always been a fan of horror?

Todd Merriman: I think I've always liked monsters. I know when I was a kid there was a show called "Memories of Monsters" that came on late Saturday night, and it was a big deal with one of my friends when we'd stay over at each other's houses to stay up and watch it. You never saw the host's face, but he sat in a red velvet chair in a dark, smoky room and he'd introduce the show in a dark, smoky voice. That was how I first saw Creature From the Black Lagoon, which is still one of my favorites.

 

Around the house, though, I was fairly discouraged from watching anything violent outside of that context. I grew up in a house where comedy reigned. I could watch R-rated movies when I was 7 or 8, but only if they were deemed sufficiently funny, like National Lampoon's Vacation or Revenge of the Nerds, or, God help us all, Police Academy. Also, I was occasionally allowed to stay up late to watch British comedy on PBS, like Monty Python or, God help us all, again, Benny Hill. My dad also had me stay up and watch Elvira with him sometimes... Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Nothing too serious, though.

 

I was always fascinated and terrified of the horror section at the video store. Something I miss about the 80s -- every video store had this one wall of the most lurid and terrifying artwork you've ever seen. I could only imagine what went on in those movies.

 

But as for modern horror, I think some combination of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 or Friday the 13th 6 when I was in middle school, watched at the babysitter's house, either before or after school, really set me off. i started seeking it out, and it became the thing to do on Dungeons and Dragons nights with my friends -- go to the IGA, pick out the movie most likely to have decapitations and naked breasts, and watch it while eating pizza before starting the game. I've been hooked on horror films since.

 

Will/LLM: In your opinion when were the best horror movies made? Was it the Monster Movies from golden age of Hollywood, the Creature Features of the 50's, the Slasher films of the 80's, the more meta horror films of the 90's, the found footage of the last decade, or the remakes we are getting today?

 

Todd Merriman: Tough question. If by the “meta” films of the 90s, you mean “Scream” where Wes Craven got so very clever and told you you were stupid for enjoying horror film because it was all the same crap over and over again, I'd have to call that a low, as it could just as easily have been about some jaded, old bastard who didn't have any good ideas for a new movie.

 

I think the antidote to that came with “Cabin in the Woods,” where it was meta and suggested that it all followed a formula, but the story justified the formula and even celebrated it.

 

Found footage has become its own cliché, but I'll be damned if I didn't like “The Blair Witch Project” when it came out. “Troll Hunter” was kind of neat, but that gimmick generally doesn't appeal to me.

 

Remakes? Gag!

 

The 50s Creature Features, as you call them, the big wave of UFOs or giant, radioactive insects, they can kind of bleed together, but there are some standouts. I would consider “Creature From the Black Lagoon” part of that wave and it's always been one of my favorite movies. “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” was pretty good, even though that's more sci-fi.

 

The Universal Films of the 30s and 40s are kinda hit and miss, though “Bride of Frankenstein,” was quite excellent, and, seldom counted with those is a film called “Freaks,” which I liked a lot.

 

Naturally, I'm inclined to my own nostalgia, so I'd have to say 80s horror, though the slasher movies grew very redundant and lead us to “Scream” are the most fun. The home video stores opened up a market for low-budget films that I'll go ahead and call unprecedented, though I'm no expert. So there were all these movies on the video store shelves just waiting to be taken home every week. Plus, music video had become a thing, so the idea of editing to fit shrinking attention spans started to catch on as a technique. Nothing was CGI yet, so most the effects, for good or ill, were practical, meaning, if you saw a thing on the screen that was an actual object. Eighties movies can be kind of goofy, but they seem heartfelt.

 

And I've recently gotten into the films made by Hammer Studios in England throughout the 60s – the ones with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in them. They made some really good movies, and some really crappy ones, but the good ones, like “Frankenstein Created Woman,” and “Taste the Blood of Dracula” have a reasonable smidge of gore, and some fun food-for-thought social commentary that run through them. And the women in them are especially sexy. So, those movies are what I watch when I feel like giving something my full attention. The 80s movies are my background noise.

 

Will/LLM: Has being a heavy metal fan helped/influenced/inspired you in any way when it comes to your work in horror?

 

Todd Merriman: Todd Merriman: Oh yeah. I took the Devil's voice from Alice Cooper. If you listen to “Go To Hell”, the part where he goes, “You'd even force feed a diabetic a candy cane!” That's where I started with being the Devil. I also drew inspiration from Oderus Urungus from Gwar. And if I get control of the music before the haunt starts, you can bet I'm gonna throw some metal on to get myself, and hopefully my cast, pumped up to scare some people.

 

Similarly, when working with Scary Noises, all kinds of music influences the work, but for the theme song at least, composed beautifully by my friend Matt Clayton after a couple of hours of me stomping around his studio and saying, “and there's a part where the theremins go dangh-dangh-DAAANGH DUUUUUUUUUUNT!” there's a bit of Hammer Studios brass and old sci-fi, as much as there is some Metallica and Ministry Black Sabbath. Big, distorted guitars are something I love, and I work them in where I can.

 

Will/LLM: Tell us about your podcast, Scary Noises. What can listeners expect to hear?

 

Todd Merriman: Podcasts are big in the comedy community and there are some that are golden that I listen to all the time, and some that try to imitate those just come off as a couple dudes laughing at their own jokes for an hour or three. So I know I've always wanted to do one to promote my comedy and other projects, but I decided I'd rather do something a little more artful with it, so Scary Noises is an attempt at audio story-telling, like old timey radio plays, except we're playing it through a filter of all matter of pop culture. It's like Heavy Metal meets Weird Tales meets Creepshow meets the Twilight Zone with a huge vein of satire running through it. You won't necessarily get quite what we are after in the first two episodes, as we're still evolving our show and what it's supposed to be. But we are on track to deliver just what I described with our upcoming Halloween special.

 

That's the true answer.

 

The fake story is that I volunteered my computer to help SETI scan frequencies for proof of extraterrestrial intelligence, and found one day these messages from a giant space monster who is watching us and making preparations to come eat us. But first he's softening us up with this horrific campaign of psychological warfare.

 

So that's what the listener can expect, our closest approximation to psychological warfare from outer space, with a few laughs mixed in.

 

Will/LLM: What is Devil's Attic and how did you get involved with them?

 

Todd Merriman: The Devil's Attic is a haunted house in Louisville where I play the devil. In 2010, I was looking for a job and found their ad on craigslist. The thing is looking for a job always sucks, and you send out variations on the same boring resume and cover letter all day long and get nothing back, so I decided to write a really fun resume detailing my expertise as a bogeyman from my days at Nightmare Factory in Austin. Two pages full of lines like, "Objective: to steal souls by forcing clients into involuntary physical responses to my acting, be it screaming or urination." and "Expert-level bladeless skill saw slinger." The owner got right back to me and offered me the job as the devil sight unseen. We're starting our fourth season, I'm still the devil and I'm responsible for training the actors how to work their scenes. It's fun.

Will/LLM: What is the oddest thing you have witnessed while working at The Devil's Attic?

 

Todd Merriman: During business hours or at our after-parties? Tough to narrow down, either way. The very idea of someone standing in line to pay you to scare them is pretty damn odd to begin with. So watching people react to that is always fascinating to me. You see people burying their faces in their friends' backs and they won't even look up to see the show they've just paid to see. You see people who work very hard to prove they're not impressed with any of our shenanigans, so they can show they're friends they're not afraid of anything. You have some people who are just drunk and throw fists at corners in the dark for no reason, and somehow they connect with actors' faces.

 

It's a lot of fun and sometimes I'm not sure if I'm there for the audience's entertainment or if they're there for mine.

 

I've seen grown men – big, linebacker types – try to turn tail out the front door before they've reached the first corner. I've seen people come through with sleeping babies.

 

One of our first customers was an autistic child wearing headphones and his mother. After they went through, some of the actors felt stumped, like it was wrong to try and scare a handicapped kid. My philosophy was, and remains, they paid for the ticket, give 'em the show! Anyway, that boy turned out to be some kind of haunt connoisseur. He makes his mom take him to every single haunt every year and he raved about us.

 

That's what it's all about, if we can scare just one handicapped child....

 

Sometimes there are women who are sexually attracted to the Devil, or at least that's their defense mechanism to show they're not afraid. Think about that. You don't want your friends to think you're a scaredy cat so you flirt and act like you're gonna f#ck the monster. What's the psychology behind that?

 

But the oddest thing.......

 

There was one night a group came in, two guys, two girls. One of the guys had an eyepatch. I did my standard spiel, and because none of the five of us were feeling any special magic off of it, I decided to insult the eye patch guy.

 

Where I generally just say, “Welcome to The Devil's Attic!” I customized the performance to, “I welcome you, and your screwy eye, to the Devil's Attic!”

 

He laughed, but the guy who still had both eyes yelled, “Hey!” at me. I shrugged and said, “I'm the Devil, what do you want?”

 

The group got a bit further down the hall and one of the girls yelled back, “He has cancer!” like that was supposed to make me feel bad. Who gets cancer in their eye? I see an eyepatch and assume that means, bad with power tools. Maybe Ralphie didn't need that Red Ryder BB Gun for Christmas, after all.

 

About 10 minutes later, Devil's Attic Owner Jason Besemann comes through, yelling at me, “Why don't you be more sensitive of people's handicaps?”

 

Apparently, the guy with both eyes was so offended at my joke about his buddy's eyeless socket, he complained, and given that it was our first season, we hadn't had many customer complaints, or customers, for that matter. My defense remained, “This is the Devil's Attic. I'm the Devil. If you want to change the name to Grandma's Attic of Hugs and Puppies, I'll be more gentle with people.”

 

But here I was, getting yelled at by my boss about making fun of somebody's eyes, and he was fuming pissed off. All the while, he was wearing cat's eye contact lenses, which demand a little care and attention to make sure you put them in correctly. Cat irises run vertically from the top of the eye to the bottom. His were in crooked, so he looked all cockeyed and was yelling, “Why can't you be more sensitive of people's handicaps?” which, I couldn't admit at the time, was hilarious.

 

I guess I did feel kind of bad about it. I wish I could find the guy today. Maybe we could get together over some rum and sing sea shanties.

 

Will/LLM: What is your favorite pickup line?

“Hey baby, I've got the sausage. You got the eggs. What say we hop over to my frying pan and sizzle?”

 

I've never actually tried it, but I wrote it and if that helps someone get laid they owe me a dollar.

 

Will/LLM: (laughs) If Satan came knocking at your door with a six pack, a bag of chips and wanted to watch a basketball game, how would you react?

 

Todd Merriman: So long as he brought beer he could come in, but I don't have cable so I don't know how I would put the game on.

 

Will/LLM: One morning you wake up with no memory of what happened to you the night before. As you make your way through your home you notice a Bald Eagles feather, a red high heel shoe in your freezer and a pair of firefighters overalls hanging on the bathroom door. What do you assume happened the night

 

Todd Merriman: As a former reporter, I try not to assume anything. I would call my usual hangout buddies for details.

 

Will/LLM: You're given a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it. You are told to stop at Wal-mart, buy a 25 lbs turkey and a jar of Welch's grape jelly. You arrive at the address with the turkey and the jelly, a large man opens the door. You are invited in. Once inside a much smaller tazes you. What happens next?

 

Todd Merriman: Sounds like it's beyond my control at that point. Why would I just follow directions on a random piece of paper telling me to spend money?  

Will/LLM: Well said!  Thank you for this extensive interview. We look forward to checking out the Devil’s Attic and way more laughs from you!

 

Will Muir – Louisville Limelight Magazine