Gary Gulman has a knack for writing jokes that stick deep within your brain.
For some, his loopy, six-minute “How the States got their abbreviations” Conan set where he recounts the difficulties a fictional crack team encountered while trying to determine which two letters would represent each of the 50 U.S. states is the definitive, memorable Gulman gag. The absurd, punchline-heavy story put the “Last Comic Standing” alum on the map.
“I remember one of my favorite instances of being recognized was a man yelling ‘ne’er-do-well!’ [one of the many jokes embedded within the story] from across the street and I was floored,” Gulman told the New York Post in an exclusive interview.
For others, his stickiest bit might be the observation that you “don’t need to point at the food you’re ordering at Chipotle.” Or “how everything is always 40% off at Banana Republic.” Perhaps you know him from his classic “Trader Joe’s is no doubt Communist” line. Or, per chance, you’re a fan of his timeless “oh s— handle” routine. The options are endless–Gulman has a gift for turning ideas on their head while nonchalantly employing trademark Ivy League-level vocabulary to get his point across.
Still, whatever the joke of his was that nestled itself deep within the recesses of your subconscious, seeing Gulman live can be equally unforgettable.
And, if you’re in New York, now is your opportunity to catch him onstage.
Starting Tuesday, Jan. 7, the 54-year-old comic is settling in at the 299-seat Lucille Lortel Theatre for a month-long residency where he’ll debut his one-man show ‘Grandiloquent.’
“The show, in some ways, is a prequel to [Gulman’s 2019 HBO special] ‘The Great Depresh’ and an adaptation of [Gulman’s 2023 memoir] ‘Misfit,’” Gulman noted. “It’s a show about my childhood and what it did to me in terms of of my personality and certain neuroses but also a survey of important incidents, both positive and negative. It’s given a theatrical, dramatic presentation by my director [Tony nominee] Moritz von Stuelpnagel so there’s a more elaborate set up than just a stand-up stage.”
Gulman recognizes the irony that he’s pivoted to Mike Birbiglia-style storytelling after he made fun of one-man shows in his most recent hour, “Born On Third Base.”
“Yes, the new show is ‘Birbiglian.’ That’s the exact adjective I would use,” Gulman chuckled. “It’s Birbiglian in that it’s very funny, but there are also some heavy moments and strong acting.
“This show, I’m told, has an abundance of this thing where — have you seen ‘Harold and Maude?’ I hadn’t seen it until I was 50 because I knew it was sad — but it is so funny and so joyful. And yes, I cried really hard at the end, but I would have missed out on so many laughs and so much joy. I think ‘Harold and Maude’ and I hope ‘Grandiloquent’ is sort of a stand-in or a surrogate for life in some ways in that, yes, life is always going to have a sad ending, but in the middle of it and in spurts, you can have great joy and great laughter.”
Even though the subject matter may be of a more serious nature than usual, the “Last Comic Standing” alum is quick to point out that he has “trouble saying things that aren’t funny onstage.”
He claims if he had written ‘Do Unto Others,’ he “probably wouldn’t share it unless I could have punched it up. Then I imagine Jesus workshopping ‘Do Unto Others’ at the Open Mount and different sermon and hymn clubs.”
“That’s a piece from the show,” Gulman laughed. “In a small theater, it’s not a joke. It’s a piece.”
‘Grandiloquent’ runs from Jan. 7 through Feb. 8 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Gary Gulman ‘Grandiloquent’ dates
After developing ‘Grandiloquent,’ the Boston-born comic decided the Lucille Lortel Theatre — located at 121 Christopher Street in Manhattan’s West Village — would be the perfect home for his new material.
“I had seen Colin Quinn and Jacqueline Novak’s one-person shows at the Lucille Lortel and really liked the vibe,” Gulman told us.
“It’s the right size for intimacy. I also didn’t want it to be too big because I was concerned about having to fill the space for a number of shows, which as as any performer knows, you don’t want to be in too big a space for your fan base in terms. That can be very humbling. So it met a lot of requirements in terms of my experience as an audience member, but also my lack of fame.”
A complete calendar including all ‘Grandiloquent’ dates, start times and links to buy tickets can be found below.
| Gary Gulman ‘Grandiloquent’ dates |
|---|
| Wednesday, Jan. 8 7 p.m. |
| Friday. Jan. 10 7 p.m. |
| Tuesday, Jan. 14 7 p.m. |
| Wednesday, Jan. 15 7 p.m. |
| Thursday, Jan. 16 7 p.m. |
| Friday. Jan. 17 7 p.m. |
| Sunday. Jan. 19 5 p.m. |
| Tuesday, Jan. 21 7 p.m. |
| Wednesday, Jan. 22 7 p.m. |
| Thursday, Jan. 23 7 p.m. |
| Friday. Jan. 24 7 p.m. |
| Saturday, Jan. 25 5 p.m. |
| Saturday, Jan. 25 8 p.m. |
| Tuesday, Jan. 28 7 p.m. |
| Wednesday, Jan. 29 7 p.m. |
| Thursday, Jan. 30 7 p.m. |
| Friday. Jan. 31 7 p.m. |
| Saturday, Feb. 1 5 p.m. |
| Saturday, Feb. 1 8 p.m. |
| Sunday, Feb. 2 2 p.m. |
| Tuesday, Feb. 4 7 p.m. |
| Wednesday, Feb. 5 7 p.m. |
| Thursday, Feb. 6 7 p.m. |
| Friday, Feb. 7 7 p.m. |
| Saturday, Feb. 8 5 p.m. |
| Saturday, Feb. 8 8 p.m. |
Gary Gulman on the road
After wrapping his run at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in early February, Gulman will do portions of ‘Grandiloquent’ on the road.
“(My tour) will be very different in terms of staging and pacing,” he explained. “The context of doing a standup show in a theater is more similar to doing it in a club because you’re trying to be funny most of the time. I think most of ‘Grandiloquent’ is funny but there’s an extended period where I call it ‘nonfiction’ because it’s not humor. It’s heavier and goes longer without laughs.
So what I’m doing on the ‘Misfit Tour’ is straight stand up and then ‘Grandiloquent’ is more like Birbiglia or Novak.”
And although there’s no opening act at his ‘Grandiloquent’ gigs — “the opener is a little music and then I come out,” Gulman quipped — he does bring a number of different openers on the road “because (he tries) to give as many people as (he) can at that level work.”
While we can’t confirm who he’ll join him at these shows, recent openers have included Todd Glass, Sean Donnelly and Kelly MacFarland.
To see if he’s headed to a venue near you, you can find Gary Gulman’s complete 2025 calendar here:
With 31 years of stand-up under his belt, Gulman has had more than his fair share of great road stories. However, one takes the cake for him.
“I was doing a ‘Great Depresh’ show in Delaware at the Baby Grand Theater, which if you don’t have an ego is one of the most perfect places to play because it’s only about 200 seats, really intimate and the stage is at the right height and distance from the audience,” he smiled.
“There was a man sitting front center who was clearly not enjoying the show. I have a great instinct for when somebody is not enjoying my stand up and I couldn’t help it. I said ‘is everything okay?’ and he said, ‘what is this, therapy?’”
The crowd fell silent.
“I remember saying something to the effect of ‘well, it is the Great Depresh. It’s about depression. So it’s not a shocker that I would be mentioning depression during this show’ and he walked out in a huff and was very upset but the audience cheered for me and I thought ‘this is not a bad ratio of people enjoying to people exasperated and outraged.’”
QED Comedy Club in Astoria
Prior to opening at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, Gulman workshopped ‘Grandiloquent’ at Astoria’s QED Comedy Club.
“That was just such a perfect space to not feel bad about bombing because it wasn’t all that expensive for audience members,” Gulman shared. “So, it was invaluable, which also means valuable.”
In addition to being an incubator for his new hour, the cozy club also caters to Gulman’s artistic sensibilities.
“You can literally buy paints, drawing implements and sketch pads there,” he noted. They also have a small bookstore.”
More than anything, he appreciates that’ve curated an audience “that is so patient and encouraging and enthusiastic. I’m just so grateful for that space.”
About Gary Gulman’s writing process
In 2019, Gary Gulman shared one comedy tip a day on Twitter from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.
Naturally, we tried to squeeze a few more nuggets out of him in our chat.
He told us that he loves topical humor “but it’s so hard to make it lasting because the context is changing all the time.”
Gulman also let us know that years of experience has made him more comfortable inserting his point of view into the material.
“I try to get my philosophies and opinions across in a subtle way,” he pointed out. “Vonnegut and Mark Twain were so good at that and their work never felt heavy-handed or preachy.”
And, sometimes, more than anything, all you need is encouragement from a comedian friend.
To wit, when Gulman returned to “Last Comic Standing” for Season Three, he did his now beloved role-play bit to a “completely unimpressed audience.” Thankfully, Colin Quinn was there to save the day.
“He told me ‘don’t give up on that bit. Go even further in terms of being more specific,” Gulman recalled. “As a comedian, a lot of times another comedian’s support can mean more than an audience’s laughter.”
Still, his tallest task as a scribe thus far may have been authoring his vivid, sensitive yet punchy memoir “Misfit.”
“It took me countless drafts, especially at the very beginning,” he said. “My aim was to do justice to this medium that I revere. The artists who write memoirs well are so are so honest and open. It’s just this great way to do something that books do best, which is to instill empathy. I also had been burned so many times by comedians who just typed up their act and put it into a book. So that resistance and stubbornness about not doing that to the readers and audience drove me.”
In order to get to a level that met his literary ambition, Gulman had to build up endurance.
“You can’t say ‘I’m going to write eight hours’ from the first day. You build it up over time. The other thing is to not skip a day because the second day is so much easier to skip than the first day. Luckily, I had bins to put all the stories in since it was a memoir of kindergarten through 12th grade.
Later on, I was able to figure out the interstitials, which became a very important component because it was necessary to know why this 50 year old man is thinking about second grade.”
Clearly, the man still has wisdom to share and is thankfully mulling reviving his daily advice on social media sometime soon.
“I was thinking that there were tips that really helped me recover from my depression, and I thought maybe I would put them on Blue Sky and Instagram. The question is, do I have 365 of them? I imagine some days I could just say something like what got me out of bed or what I’m fighting through.”
“Last Comic Standing”
In 2004, Gulman finished third in the second season of NBC’s “Last Comic Standing” behind John Heffron and Alonzo Bodden. To this day, he looks back fondly on his time as a finalist on the show.
“One of the great experiences from ‘Last Comic Standing’ was living for 24 hours a day with Alonzo Bodden and Todd Glass. It was like being at a summer camp for comedians.
The only thing that comes close are comedy festivals where shows almost become incidental to hanging out, joking around and enjoying each other. Doing bits at the house and hanging out around the fire pit really felt like the equivalent of a fantasy camp that was just for comedians.”
On acting in “Life and Beth”
These days, when he’s not onstage or writing books, Gulman moonlights as a character actor playing Shlomo on Amy Schumer’s Hulu series “Life and Beth.”
That didn’t happen overnight, though.
“For so many years, acting was just preparing and auditioning and not doing all that much acting,” Gulman said. He had taken classes with a teacher named Anita Jesse — who also taught Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy — but not much else had materialized.
“Like most of the things in my career, I’m overly prepared for opportunities that take 20 years to arrive. I don’t know if that was one of the tips I put on Twitter but that is a really good tip- prepare as if somebody might cast you.”
In the late ’90s and early aughts, Gulman landed multiple development deals and wrote a trio of pilots for himself to star in. The only problem was that none of them ever got made.
“The first show was about a guy who wanted to open a restaurant, but was living at home with his mother. The second pilot was about a guy who was a resident in a hospital. When he wasn’t a resident in the hospital, he lived with his mother,” he deadpanned.
“The third one was about a guy who had been a football star and blew out his shoulder and moved back to his hometown. He didn’t live with his mother. It was the first one where my mother was not a co-star of the show.”
Now more than two decades later, Gulman’s years in the trenches — it should be noted he appeared in the 2013 independent film ‘Lucky Them’ starring Toni Collette, Thomas Haden Church and Oliver Platt and shows up in “Joker” as well — paid off and he landed his “Life & Beth” recurring role.
“I was anxious as I always get in every new situation but once I was on set with with Amy — who is such a great boss and acting partner — that it was really much easier than my imagination had made me fear.”
Five great comics to see in 2025
At the end of stories about performers, we like to promote similar acts for readers to seek out.
Since Gulman is such an avid fan of comedy — and generous interview subject — we figured he may have a few suggestions of his own. Of course, he was happy to share. Here are five comedians that inspire the Gul:
“Without her, I don’t know that I would have had the courage to talk about my mental health and treatment like being in the hospital. She’s just so open.”
Chris Gethard
“He did this incredible HBO show ‘Career Suicide,’ which as I watched it, part of me was sort of like, ‘well, he did a great job. Do we need mine?’ Luckily, people talked me into not giving up.”
“I love Eddie. He’s so open about his life, but the commitment to every joke he tells is so inspiring and so inspired. No matter what age you are, you think, ‘I’m too old to be only this far along in my career.’ I’m sure Eddie has those thoughts, but they they have not held him back at all.”
Barbara Swanson
When I was coming up there was a woman in Boston named Barbara Swanson. She’s since passed but she was the first person I ever saw talk about being depressed and on Prozac. I was so blown away and in awe of her courage. I’d been doing stand-up for 15 years before I even snuck it in to the Trader Joe’s joke where I said ‘I’m on everything but roller skates.’ She was an enormous influence in terms of that.”
Chris Elliott
“He was comfortable being a soft man in a lot of his sketches on ‘Letterman’ and wasn’t intimidated by him.
On ‘Get A Life,’ he was just himself, which was such a wonderful gift because it was a template for this character that so that’s so compelling to me, which is the loser who’s a little bit arrogant. Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly do that really well but Chris Elliott was one of the originals who did that.”
This article was written by Matt Levy, New York Post live events reporter. Levy stays up-to-date on all the latest tour announcements from your favorite musical artists and comedians, as well as Broadway openings, sporting events and more live shows – and finds great ticket prices online. Since he started his tenure at the Post in 2022, Levy has reviewed a Bruce Springsteen concert and interviewed Melissa Villaseñor of SNL fame, to name a few. Please note that deals can expire, and all prices are subject to change
