Nick Thune with Todd Barry and Rory Scovel
The Pyramid Scheme, Grand Rapids
March 7 and 8, 8 and 10:30 p.m.
$25
pyramidschemebar.com, (616) 272-3758
Nick Thune may have the honor of holding the strangest IMDb credit of all time. Search under his latest movie Johnson, and there he is, credited as the main character's disembodied penis. Thune embraced the role, and went out of his way to make sure he got it right.
"I had to cancel a bunch of stand-up gigs and just live in Chicago and try and be an actor and ask, 'What would it be like to be a penis?'" Thune said.
Of course, Thune isn't new to acting – he's had cameos in movies such as Knocked Up and Extract. And he's definitely not opposed to picking up more acting gigs, though he admits such projects take a backseat to his stand-up, and serve more as a means to get his name out into the zeitgeist.
"When you get those gigs on TV, it will drive more audience, which means you're pulling in bigger venues," Thune said. "And you've got to take those opportunities to expose you to more people to make your stand-up bigger."
Proof of that is Thune's recently released one-hour special, "Folk-Hero," on Netflix. Not one for falling into a rut, Thune is already revamping his set, taking it in a more personal direction. He attributes much of his recent change in stand-up to the birth of his son.
"I'm really excited for what's to come this year with my stand-up and acting because I think there's just something with becoming a dad," he said. "I'm more conscious of who I am and a little bit more passionate about exposing that rather than hiding behind some false indie singer-songwriter character that I've kind of fallen into onstage.
"I think this year is going to be a kind of rebirthing for me," he added. "I finished that stand-up special and I don't really relate to that material anymore, so I'm glad that I'm done with it. ... I'm already doing material that's more true to myself."
As for what this new direction will embody, he offers this description:
"I want to be honest, I want to be vulnerable, I want to find humor out of the parts of my life that stress me out rather than just creating ideas that are funny."
