It is not the case that all comics come from broken or dysfunctional families. Consider Jon Dore, the very droll star of The Jon Dore Television Show, which begins its second season of absurdity on the Comedy Network tonight.
Dore, 33, as well known for appearances on Canadian Idol as for his own mockumentary sketch series, was born and raised in “a really boring neighbourhood” near Ottawa's Nepean district. He springs from the conventional union of a special-needs teacher (father) and a nurse (mother), two straitlaced, civically conscious Canadians.
“I think my sister” – his younger sibling, Allison, is also a comic and actor – “ and I noticed my parents trying to help the world, and what did they get for it?” says Dore, his face a mask of Buddhist sobriety. “They weren't the better off for it. They lost their independence and had us, two selfish kids who want to be in the spotlight and not help the world at all.”
The tongue, of course, is lodged firmly in cheek.
Now based in Toronto, Dore started doing stand-up in Ottawa at the age of 21, talking his way onstage as a replacement emcee. “The Lord gave me a sign. What sign? The sign of the comedy club. It wasn't there one day and it was there the next day. It had to be divine intervention.”
The only problem, he recalled over a recent lunch, “was that I had no idea how to tell a joke. I didn't know how to write a joke. I was terrible. It was one of the worst experiences of my life, but it forced me to look at how it was actually done.”
It took him a year to work up enough courage to try again, at Yuk Yuks in Ottawa. Soon, he was on the circuit, putting in the years of laborious craft-honing that would one day allow him to claim overnight success.
“What makes Jon Dore so special,” Yuk Yuks founder Mark Breslin says, “is his ability to draw you into his material through his magnificent deadpan. He's the king of the set-up. His commitment to meta-comedy reminds me of early Steve Martin.”
Experience has changed Dore's entire approach to comedy. There was a time, he says, when he would do anything for a laugh and if he didn't get it, he felt like a complete failure. “With the exception of Bill Cosby – my dad rented a Bill Cosby album when I was 12 – I didn't have a lot of stand-up influences. I discovered that I was boring, using the same kinds of material as other comics. And I wasn't happy. Slowly, I figured out how to tell my own jokes. I started phasing out old material and working in the new, and realized they didn't work together. And audiences know when a comic is comfortable onstage. Now, I can tell a joke that falls completely flat and I couldn't care less, which is a great feeling.”
While in Ottawa, Dore auditioned for and eventually won a regular comic gig on CTV's Canadian Idol. That three-year exposure, and finding family-friendly comedy fit for prime time, “definitely helped me realize what I didn't want to do.” It also connectedhim with the show's producers, John Brunton's Insight Productions and the Comedy Network, a relationship that led to his own Gemini-nominated show.
It was Brunton's imprimatur, Dore says, that helped him sell his show concept to Comedy Network godfather Ed Robinson. In the pilot, Dore interviewed a hairy man unable to land a job as a male stripper and then danced onstage, after having his own body waxed.
The network, he says, was actually lukewarm to the pilot and with good reason. “It was fine, but it didn't have a spine, a storyline, running through it, so we rewrote the concept with help of a show runner [Montreal's Ed Macdonald].” The new outlines won a green light for Season 1.
Season 2 follows the same basic formula, incorporating fictional elements of Dore's life (this season he'll fight white-male discrimination, getting older and violence) and interviews with real people about his problem. In the second episode, for example, he develops an erection that will not let go. In search of a solution, he beds the first buxom blonde he encounters and when, even that fails to cure the tumescence, interviews a reformed sex addict, a sex therapist, an Internet porn performer and his own Aunt Cathy. For much of the show, he wears a pail duct-taped to his groin.
In the off-season, Dore keeps his stand-up chops in tune by going on the comedy-club circuit. The lifestyle, he says, is not conducive to a serious relationship: “Single but straight. I'm pretty selfishly in love with what I'm doing right now.”
At some point, however, he would not be averse to trying to crack the world of Hollywood sitcoms, and he recently secured his United States visa papers. “It would be like starting over,” he concedes. “Not being known, not having relationships with club owners. But it would also be very exciting.”
Producer Brunton, for one, is bullish about Dore's future. He recently sold both seasons of the show to two foreign buyers and sold the concept to two others, including Germany.
The Jon Dore Television Show airs Wednesday nights at 10 ET/PT on the Comedy Network.
