… Comedy Writer for Funny Or Die

Not many LinkedIn users have appeared on “The Tonight Show.” Still, Zack Poitras has zero connections on his outdated online profile. Now a full-time writer for Funny or Die and a part-timer for The Onion, Poitras advanced in his funny field by networking in person. “In college, I joined a sketch comedy group called Slow Children at Play,” said Poitras, who did in fact graduate from Boston University, as his resume indicates. “Joining that group was probably the luckiest, best thing to ever happen to me because I found a group of people who were just as obsessed with comedy and wanted to be great at it.” The Portland, Ore., native credits the spin-off Pangea 3000 as his continuing education, and he still performs and directs shows for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. We got serious with him about his joker-of-all-trades job.

This interview with @bigzackpoitras was condensed for clarity. To contribute to ValuePenguin’s coverage on careers, follow us @VP_Careers.

How do you explain what you do professionally to strangers?

I usually say that I do comedy. It’s hard now to pin it down as just being a writer, or an actor, or any of that kind of thing, because I think now most people wear a lot of hats within one career. I do comedy in the sense that I write sketches, I act in my own sketches and in other people’s sketches, I write comedy pieces, I just act in general, and then I also direct things, edit things, animate things, do VO [voiceover], draw things, so there’s a lot. I just do so many other random things that it’s hard to pin it down and put in one easy-to-digest sentence.

“I do comedy” must elicit a lot of interest…

I think one of the nice things about doing comedy full-time is that it’s not the most common job in the world, so a lot of people have questions about it. Usually, people feel very comfortable asking me questions about it, and I like it. I’m happy to answer them. The only downside is when I tell them I do comedy, they often are more hesitant — or self-conscious — about telling me what they do, like, “Oh, it’s not as exciting as comedy” — even though it’s often more interesting!

I can’t tell if it’s a cocky thing to say. It kind of sucks because I’m like, “No, I really want to know, I’m really interested in it! Please tell me what you do!” Part of also being a writer is you’re inherently interested in jobs you don’t have.

Were you always curious about being a comedian?

I’ve wanted to do comedy pretty much my whole life. I was trying to memorize Mr. Bean bits and stuff like that, and perform them for my classmates, in middle school. I would record stand-up sets on my VCR and watch them over and over.

The other thing I benefitted from was being an insomniac when I was growing up. It’s partially because I was scared of everything: I couldn’t sleep with the light on; I couldn’t sleep with the light off. I always thought creatures, or King Tut’s curse, or velociraptors or Jaws or whatever was after me. I’d check my bed for scorpions and stuff. I went to a therapist and they diagnosed me with having an overactive imagination. And so it’s always felt like it was meant to be.

When did your training begin?

I started taking acting classes when I was like 10, and it did help funnel my excess imagination energy into something. It was almost therapeutic, in a way, to start doing acting and writing.

When I was in high school, I did all the school plays and stuff. I was the host of our school’s open mic night, and I was also the host of a lot of our assemblies. So I started doing that kind of stuff then.

Then I got lucky and worked with a great group of people in college: Seth Reiss is a writer at Late Night with Seth Meyers; Arthur Meyer is now a writer for Jimmy Fallon; Sam Kenneth is a writer at The Onion; Dan Klein was a writer for Wet Hot American Summer. These were the people that I then went on after college to continue doing sketch comedy with, in a group called Pangea 3000.

That’s where my real comedy education came from: working with those guys who were a few years older than me, obsessed with comedy. They taught me how to write sketches, taught me how to perform on stage better. I think we had great shows, and sketches that we’re still proud of, because we were just so particular about them being good. I think we rehearsed at least 15 hours a week, every week. It was a lot. And I was also a film major; I worked on screenwriting at Boston University.

When I graduated, I joined Pangea 30000 when I moved to New York in 2009. We started performing at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and then I started taking improv classes there. I never took a sketch class at the UCB, but I did start teaching sketch at UCB. My sketch group in college, we stumbled upon how to write a sketch as basically the way the UCB teaches to write a sketch. So I was very lucky in that regard.

In terms of improv, I got better at performing by myself, with people I didn’t know. In terms of making comedy up on the spot, and being able to work with an audience, the UCB definitely helped me with that.

Would you recommend the path that you took?

What I would recommend is, for one, the most important thing is to just make stuff, and to just keep making stuff. When I was in college, I also wrote a humor column for my school newspaper. You know that was only because I wrote pieces and auditioned to get that spot.

It’s always a battle with comedy to find your voice, finding what you’re good at in comedy, what you can bring to it that’s unique. Trying and failing a lot, and just making stuff, and throwing things out into the ether. Pretty much every professional job I’ve gotten has often come from a YouTube video or a written piece that only has 200 or 300 views. It’s not about going viral; it’s the right people seeing what you make; that’s what matters. If it’s also clear that you put your heart and your soul into it, that also comes through. It doesn’t matter how high your budget was.

The UCB is great, and I totally recommend taking classes and learning, but you can’t look at the UCB as the end-all for doing comedy. Because it’s a huge school, and there are only so many spots for improv teams and for sketch teams. And it’s expensive! The classes are expensive. I know when I was taking those classes, I was a dog walker at the time, when I first moved to New York, and I just plowed through the improv classes as quick as I could. I didn’t even look at my bank account, I would just buy the classes, because I didn’t want to know how much money they were. The percentage that I was spending on classes, of my overall income, was insane, like 40% or something like that. But I was like, “Whatever, just get through it.”

The way to learn is also watching other comedy, immersing yourself in that stuff, and putting yourself out there: trying things, doing open mics. There are ways to get on stages, in New York City especially, that open up other stages and other avenues. The UCB is a great system, but it is also a crowded system. And just because if you’re not making it at UCB, that doesn’t mean you’re out of options.

Are you working on anything right now that you’re excited about?

One thing I’m working on right now is a six-issue comic book series called “Pigeon Man” that I’m doing with my friend and coworker Pat O’Brien. I am very excited about that. We’ve had one issue come out, and we’ve got five more coming out in 2016. I would say it’s definitely one of my favorite things that I’ve done, and I’m very excited about it.

What creation of yours helped you land a full-time job at Funny or Die?

One of the reasons I got this job was because of a web series I made that had maybe 400 views on it. It was called “The Hand Show” and it’s just a talk show for hands. But I made the whole set, and I wrote it and edited it. They were impressed with how much I cared about comedy, and how much of a perfectionist I was. That came through.

My original position at Funny or Die was not for video writing, it was for articles. The other thing that helped me was just some silly Facebook Photoshop post I made, that I just put up because I thought, “This is something I made that I think was funny.” And some friends who were at Funny or Die showed it to their boss, and they were like, “This is the kind of stuff we need.” That helped get me the job.

Courtesy of Zack Poitras

What’s a day in your work life like now at Funny or Die?

I would say every day is still different, which is cool. I would say a normal day would be waking up, getting on the work email around 9 a.m., and there’s usually a couple written pieces for me to work on, try to get something up on the site. Or try to help others get something up on the site — I also do editing — and help prep other articles and videos. And then I go to the office, and at the office I may be helping to build some props, I may be writing scripts, I may be helping the editor with something that I wrote, or just going over the next project; we have three or four upcoming projects, figuring out what needs to be done for those, writing copy for those. Pretty much just putting my fingerprint on like 15 things a day is pretty much what happens.

How different is the office culture there?

Well, on St. Patrick’s Day, all the writers got drunk to make all their content. On 4/20, last year I built a giant fort out of cardboard so we could all get high in the fort and make content all day stoned. So, yeah, I would say it’s definitely different.

I don’t need to wear a suit. Even if one of my coworkers wears a tie, all of a sudden he will have no shirt on, or something like that. It’s very lax. You see bare feet. There’s definitely a lot of differences between this place and most of my friends’ workplaces.

As for your freelance work, what keeps you doing it?

I direct friends’ sketch shows because I think it helps me get better at directing, and also I like to help out with comedy, to put stuff out. I’m not making any money from that. I’ll be in my friends’ videos for free. I’ll do a lot of that stuff just because I think it’s important to keep making those things. And then I’ll do other commercials or whatever for money and exposure or whatever the heck.

All that stuff is usually on a freelance basis. Funny or Die is very cool about it; they understood when they hired me and said, “If you’re a working comedian, we totally get that you’re going to be doing other gigs and stuff. As long as you’re taking care of your end, that’s fine with us.” When you do comedy, or something artistic like that, a lot of times you’re just doing it because you love it, not for money or anything other reason than that.

Speaking of the art form, what is inherent to being a good comedian?

Having an open mind but also having strong opinions. I would say those two things are a couple of the most important aspects. If you have an open mind, and you’re curious, that means you want to explore and learn about all these different things, and then you form an opinion about it, and that’s where comedy starts: having an opinion, or putting out a funny opinion, about a particular subject or a particular thing. And then also having a good imagination is the other thing; but you can probably do comedy without having a great imagination.

What is the most challenging part about being a writer or performer?

It’s a constant grind. You have to be constantly working at it, because you never know where the next piece of success is going to come from. So you’re always trying to think, “What’s the next thing I’m working on? What am I working on right now? Am I working on anything?”

Alot of people out there want to be comedians. You’re also in a competitive atmosphere, so you need to constantly be working on stuff. And I don’t know how much of that is a New York City comedian’s take on it, but I’m pretty sure comedians everywhere are constantly thinking about, or in the act of, turning out comedy.

My wife, she doesn’t do comedy. It’s hard when it’s like, “I’m not going to be home until late tonight, I’ve got a show.” It’s hard in all aspects, when you’re doing this kind of grind. But if I wasn’t doing a grind in this, I’d be doing a grind in something else. So I don’t really know; maybe it’s just me, maybe the hardest thing about comedy is just how I do this stuff.

There’s also the fear. There’s a constant fear that what you’re putting out there is not funny. You just hope it’s funny. And as long as you think it’s funny, that’s a great starting point; you’ve got to think it’s funny. And there are a lot of people who aren’t going to like what you do, and that’s OK too. That used to get to me, a little bit, but it doesn’t anymore. Fear of failure is huge thing that you need to get used to, get over or deail with when you’re starting out in comedy. You’re going to fail a lot in comedy, and that’s OK. I’ve bombed in shows, and I’ve failed in a lot of things, and it does make you better almost every time. And you do get used to it, and it does become kind of funny.

What excites you about the future of comedy?

I’d say I’m always excited about the future of comedy, because… I don’t think comedy is something you have to worry about. Right now we’re in such an environment where your niche… you can find your fans, or what you’re a fan of, and your niche… so whenever there’s a worry about, “Oh man, all the comedy movies are terrible; comedy today is bad,” it’s like, just those things are. Just the things that are trying to be liked by everybody. But there’s always these other things that are just trying to be what they are, and want to be. If that’s what you laugh at, you’ll usually find it. I think that’s great. I think there’s a lot of great comedy television shows on right now. I think it’s a great time for comedy. I think there’s a lot of people trying and doing comedy. So I don’t know how that’s going to affect things, the fact that there’s so many people trying to do comedy. Maybe we’ll just all make less money. But I guess it doesn’t really bother me that much, because… I would be so unhappy, trying to do something else. I don’t care how much money I’d be making, I would just be very unhappy. So that doesn’t really bother me. I think things are looking good for comedy, moving forward.

Comedy is becoming ubiquitous across traditional, digital and social media. Who will the next generation be influenced by and where?

I think Tim & Eric has influenced a whole new generation. In terms of what people are getting influenced by now, there are things like Broad City that’s probably a great influence on people; especially women, just feeling like, “Yeah, this is great, we can go make comedy shows now.” I think that is the biggest change: that’s it’s a better place — and a more open place — for women. When I was growing up, you didn’t see many females in comedy. It felt like a harder place for them to enter into. I think that it’s easier now, and as comedy embraces diversity and all that stuff, it’s just going to make it all better.

I was influenced by Saturday Night Live, Monty Python, Mr. Bean and PeeWee Herman, and I think there’s still plenty of stuff out there to influence people, in a whole different and a good way. There is bad stuff out there; but there was bad stuff out there when I was growing up, and I watched a lot of it, and I’m just not telling you that it influenced me; maybe it did, I don’t know. But hopefully it won’t stick with you.

Zack Poitras’ Reading List

• What I’d Say to the Martians, by Jack Handey — It’s one of my favorite comedy books.
• Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen — It had a big influence on me. Because I may not be out in the woods, but the whole idea of doing it yourself is something that have always influenced me. I think that is a huge part of making comedy now: what can you do with what you have? I love making elaborate things from just regular arts and crafts, making a costume out of whatever the hell you have around you. I think that that’s an important skill to have. You just have to become self-reliant on yourself. You can’t wait for other people to give you money to do something; you’ve just got to go do it yourself. That’s why I like those books: I just have a hatchet; how can I build a fort? I only have these things; how can I make a funny thing out of it?

This story originally appeared on ValuePenguin.