There’s no denying that laughter can unite even the most different humans.
Comedian Felipe Esparza has been experiencing this firsthand throughout his career as a comic. He began his comedy career in 1994—and has selling out shows since winning Last Comic Standing in 2010. He’s performed in front of everyone from drug addicts and ex-cons to families and children, and his focus on the struggle of Mexicans in America has led to a successful career as a one-of-a-kind jokester and a voice for la cultura.
Esparza is set to perform at Fantasy Springs at 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 27.
“I wanted to be a standup comedian since I was a kid,” Esparza said during a recent phone interview. “I used to watch Spanish television at my mom’s house, because they would control the television. Mexican-American kids who grew up with parents speaking English, at the same time they were watching the cool shows like Dukes of Hazzard, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man or Superman, we were watching Spanish shows. We’re watching El Chapulín (Colorado), Los Polivoces—anything Spanish that my mom and dad were watching. It was kind of sad, because I had friends talking about that Bruce Lee movie that was on at 8 o’clock on Channel 5, and I had nothing. I had to talk to the lunch lady and ask her, ‘Did you see what happened to Maria? She got pregnant by Jose.’”
Standup comedy was crucial to a young Esparza—even if it was hard to come by.
“I loved comedy from that time, but where I grew up, there was no cable yet. There was no HBO,” Esparza said. “Nobody had it in the housing projects, so if you wanted to get cable, the whole project had to get cable. One day, somebody loaned me a VHS tape, and it was a three-hour tape, but … we knew how to break the tape to make it six hours, so on my tape, there was six hours of standup comedy. I saw a Paul Rodriguez one-hour special, a Robin Williams one-hour special, Howie Mandel, Richard Pryor. I saw a lot of comedy on that tape, and I said, ‘If I can memorize this, I can do standup comedy.”
Dialing in on a career of making people laugh didn’t immediately solve all of Esparza’s problems.
“When I decided to be a standup comic, at that early age of 12, that’s where my life got darker,” Esparza said. “A lot of bad stuff started happening. I didn’t know that all the bad stuff that was happening in my life was going to lead me to be a standup comedian anyway, so I guess it was meant to be.”
To hear more about Esparza’s multiple border-crossing attempts, check out a clip from an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast. During our conversation, Esparza explained how he recently realized why his weight fluctuated as a kid.
“I was thinking about when I was a chubby kid, and then I wasn’t a chubby kid, and then I was a chubby kid again,” Esparza said. “I didn’t realize that it had to do with my dad not having a good job and having a better job. When he had a bad job, or no job, I was hella thin, but when he had a good job, I was fat.”
“People always say, ‘Do you change your standup comedy because you’re in Toledo or the Midwest?’ And I say, ‘No, because no matter where I go in America … I find Latinos who drove seven hours from their hometown to come to that show.’”
Felipe Esparza
Comedy has served a therapeutic purpose for Esparza. His brand of Mexican-American-focused humor has gained support from thousands of others, even in the most unusual of places.
“I meet people, like, in Toledo, Ohio, for example, and people always say, ‘Do you change your standup comedy because you’re in Toledo or the Midwest?’ And I say, ‘No, because no matter where I go in America, even if I go to a place where there’s no Mexicans or Latinos or Puerto Ricans, somehow, I find Latinos who drove seven hours from their hometown to come to that show,’” he said. “There might be a big bunch of white people who know me from being a guest on a podcast, so they show up, but usually the loudest people in the show is la raza. They clap; they understand everything, and they love to laugh.”
Esparza finds that a wide variety of people relate to his jokes about growing up poor.
“My wife, she’s from Dayton, Ohio, and they grew up real poor in the trailer park,” Esparza said. “I was thinking, ‘Wow, that’s like a housing project for white people,’ except when we go somewhere, we just lock our doors, and they set a car alarm.”
After almost every show, Esparza stays behind and meets fans until the venue kicks him out. Through this dedication to his supporters, he’s learned that his comedy has been helpful to people who have been struggling in life.
“I had a guy one time in Pittsburgh, and he said he found my comedy when he was a crackhead and when he was going to rehab, and my standup comedy on YouTube really made him happy,” Esparza said. “I can relate to that myself, being a drug addict.”
Drugs were another struggle Esparza dealt with in his youth. He stated in an interview with Vulture, “I didn’t have any goals, structure, anyone to lead me or tell me how to live my life when I was a teenager. I went into a gang. They jumped me in. I was a gang member. I sold drugs to people. I sold drugs to myself. I was an addict. The drugs they gave me to sell, I took.” Comedy helped lift Esparza from the struggle, he said.
“I told another drug addict this,” Esparza said. “He said, ‘When I’m sober 30 days, somehow I always go back,’ and then I asked what kind of music he listened to when he was fucked up, and I said, ‘Don’t listen to that music; listen to different music. Find another type of music you like.’ I remember when I sobered up, I started listening to old country music, and that’s something I would never listen to before. I have no memories when I listen to that. Sometimes you have a song, and you think about it, and it takes you to a time where you had a girlfriend, or when your dad was alive, or it triggers something else about the past. So I started listening to Hank Williams, because I’ve never listened to him, and I have no memories with the music. That guy stumbled upon my standup, and it was something he’d never heard, and it started moving him.”
Esparza ended our conversation by mentioning another way in which his jokes have changed lives.
“I met a woman who said that her son brought the family together for the first time, and they were all watching me on Last Comic Standing together as a family, and then they all went together to a show, but then the son passed away,” said Esparza. “They were telling me the story about how he’s the one who brought the family together through my standup. They stopped watching television together years ago, and everybody would be on their phone or eating, but when they started watching my standup, it was, like, the first time they were all eating again and laughing again and talking about it afterward.”
Felipe Esparza will perform at 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 27, at Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, in Indio. Tickets start at $52. For tickets or more information, call 760-342-5000, or visit www.fantasyspringsresort.com.