(Provided by Kurt Braunohler)
Comedian Kurt Braunohler and his giant, one-ton butt will roll into the Mile High City on Thursday, July 2 as part of the comedian’s cross-country tour with the massively absurd prop.
The road trip, which is the first stunt to be filmed for Braunohler’s new Comedy Central pilot “Better. Dumber. Faster. with Kurt Braunohler,” will include a 7 p.m. stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and a free stand-up set from Braunohler at South Broadway’s 3 Kings Tavern that night, on Andrew Bueno, Zach Reinert and Ian Douglas Terry’s Sexpot Comedy show “Cool Sh–.”
The #LoveButt train left Los Angeles this week and has already stopped in Las Vegas and Moab, Utah. “We’re dropping the butt off in my mom’s driveway in New Jersey,” Braunohler wrote. “She is not aware of this yet.”
But when faced with continuing on a Southern route (which wound through Austin, Texas) or a Rocky Mountain one, the decision was easy for Braunohler.
“People really appreciate weird comedy in Denver,” said Braunohler, a veteran of Denver’s High Plains Comedy Fest whose frequent comedic partner Kristen Schaal (“The Daily Show,” “Bob’s Burgers”) is also a Longmont native. “I’m really happy I made that decision.”
But why a giant butt? Especially a 14-foot-tall, eight-foot-wide, 1,600-pound butt on a flatbed truck? We caught up with Braunohler via phone this morning to find out.
The Den: Where are you and the butt right now?
Kurt Braunohler: We just entered Arizona on our way to Flagstaff, so the plan is to ideally get into Denver sometime tomorrow and head over to the MCA and park the butt next to the heart sculpture, and then do a show after that.
What are some of the best reactions you’ve gotten so far?
One of the best honestly was right after we picked the butt up in L.A. I had my windows rolled down and this guy on the corner was asking for money, and we’re eye-to-eye, so after awhile he walked over and looked at it, then came back and real calmly went “Cool butt, man.” We also met a bunch of truckers at a truck stop in Barstow (Calif.) who were just confused but very very friendly. I felt like in was in some sort of secret club only truckers are into, since when you park in the trucker area everybody assumes you’re one of them.
You’re no stranger to cross-country stunts, like your Jet Ski for Goats tour on the Mississippi River last year. But are you qualified to drive a flatbed truck?
I don’t understand why I am allowed to drive this truck. It’s very big. I do not have a commercial driver’s license and apparently from what I’v been told, you don’t need one. It’s got air brakes and all these gauges that I don’t even understand. I have a lot of air, I’ve got water for some reason, and a DEF indicator. I have a gauge for that and I’m halfway to… something. I don’t know what to do when I get to the top! It’s not like I have driven large trucks for long periods of time before. So it’s a learning process for everybody. America’s learning about a butt, and I’m learning about a truck.
What did you learn from last year’s jet ski trip that could be applied to the butt?
I learned it’s almost useless to plan these things because all of it went out the window like an hour into the journey last year. So this trip we’re doing it much more on the fly. We don’t have a set route or anywhere we have to be — other than the Thursday night show in Denver. We don’t have our hotels set up beforehand, so everything’s just being figured out as we go. That’s why my wife (Lauren Cook) is with me, helping me out with that stuff.
What’s the butt made from? I’ve read it’s paper mache, but that seems like an awful lot of paper mache.
Comedy central made that up. Originally it was going to be paper mache, but it just wouldn’t hold up. So now it’s 1,000 pounds of foam, 500 pounds of metal struts and 100 pounds of coating to make it waterproof.
I can imagine it looking quite majestic in a rainstorm. Has anyone objected to it yet?
What’s cool about it is that everyone’s who’s passing us on the highways, half of them are just filled with joy. They slow down to take photograph, laugh and give us a thumbs up. We also keep worrying that when we’re parking somewhere legally and security shows up, they’re going to chase us off. But no — they’re just there to take a picture.
I’m sure the giant tattoo helps sell it.
Originally the tattoo was going to say “Mom,” but it’s flatter than we anticipated, so from certain angles it doesn’t exactly read as a butt. So we labeled it “butt” as well, and now the heart just says butt — which incidentally bumped it up to a whole new level of stupid. It’s a giant butt that loves butts! I might get that tattoo on this drive. And yeah, it would be on my butt.
Is there a Comedy Central crew with you?
We’re actually filming this part of it. The whole pilot is based around making the idea of “waiting” suck a little less, so what we were originally planning was to put this butt on a freight train, so that anytime people were waiting for one of those 15-minute-long trains going by in a small town, all of sudden this butt flies by and makes peoples’ days a little bit more enjoyable and less random. But at the very last minute the freight line refused the butt and wouldn’t give us a reason. So now my wife and I are stopping, setting up the camera, filming, and then taking it back down again. The whole idea is doing a show all about inserting absurdity into strangers’ lives and hopefully making their day a little better.
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