Shorts’ supply of the risque
Stella, a New York-based alternative comedy trio, has a few dirty little secrets on its website (www.stellacomedy.com) that are too good to keep under wraps. Look closely in the “Video” section, and you’ll find the familiar faces of Sam Rockwell, Julie Bowen, Bradley Cooper, Janeane Garofalo and Paul Rudd, who probably keep these credits on the down low.
Created by troupe members Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter and David Wain for a run of weekly appearances at the Fez Under Time Cafe in Greenwich Village, the shorts are sublimely funny, but certainly aren’t for the faint of heart. Recurring thematic elements of Stella’s shorts include fistfights, fake male “appendages” and sing-alongs.
“[We’d] throw together a new short for the audience at Fez,” says Wain, “and shoot the day before or the day of a show.”
He admits that when it came to filming, they kept their famous friends in the dark about the subject matter. “We usually wouldn’t tell them what it was about until they got there,” Wain says, “or else they probably wouldn’t come.”
In one segment, Rudd foraged in the woods for frankfurters; in another, Bowen and Cooper assisted the boys in raking leaves while playing Mother Nature and Beelzebub.
But of course, these tasks were performed Stella-style. Wink. Wink.
Black, Showalter and Wain have a history of off-putting humor. They were part of the comedy collective the State, which had a brief run on MTV in the mid-’90s.
Black also gained notoriety as the snide Phil Stubbs on NBC’s “Ed,” while Wain and Showalter worked on the film “Wet Hot American Summer” as co-producers/co-writers, with Wain as director. Each Stella member has also contributed “commentary” to VH1’s “I Love the ‘70s” and “I Love the ‘80s” shows.
Having just finished a brief California tour and the taping of a Comedy Central special that airs May 15, Wain says the Stella stage show differs from the videos.
“It’s like watching the Smothers Brothers or Marx Brothers,” Wain says of the triumvirate’s onstage banter.
But by the looks of Stella’s video shorts, better throw in a touch of the Three Stooges for good measure.