Surfing the Waves of Pop Culture

When the avant-comedy duo called Premium Bob bursts onto a stage, one can’t help but think of the glossy gift catalogs that regularly clog mailboxes.

At a time when most stand-up comedy is drably drooping in relaxed fit, pre-washed taupes and teals, the fully accessorized comedy of Premium Bob strides smartly in form-fitting, dense-woven action wear, daring to sport the hint of aqua, the tease of lilac and, yes, the flash of cranberry.

They are the spicy summer sausage on a table groaning with holiday cheese logs. From material as supple as it is distressed, Premium Bob fashions comedy for those on the go, for those who know what they want and how to look good while getting it.

More to the point, in their current show, “American Style,” the two New York-based performers slice, dice and julienne the insistent, omnipresent meta-language of advertising, infomercials, politics and entertainment hype into a remarkable, inspired hash of pop culture absurdity.

Plunging headlong into the realm of nonstick frying, pine-scented freshness and festive honey mustard glazes, Premium Bob--otherwise known as David Latham and Paul Boocock--gathers up the consumerist messages that fill late 20th century heads and twists them into comedy that’s smart, sharp and unrelentingly hilarious.

“When you have presidents being elected on the strength of easily digestible slogans, it’s worth taking note of what’s happened to our language,” explains Latham, who writes the pair’s material. “That sort of advertorial phrasing is everywhere now, it floats around our products and movies and TV and media in general. Anybody who’s selling something has some tag line they use to try to connect with people. Basically we just take piles and piles of these tag lines and bend them just a bit, enough so that people can laugh at them.”

“American Style” has the two taking the stage in brown utilitarian uniforms to present a heady stream of characterless characters and sketch-free sketches, breaking up bits with almost preternaturally precise stage movements, lighting changes and musical cues. New Age affirmations morph into an overheated soap opera, which breaks off into updates from “The George Michael Sports Machine.” Tips on great hair color slowly twist into a pantomime of scenes from “Shaft.” A fine gourmet restaurant offers high colonics during the meal, and two yokels mark their territories in an earthy fashion to the tune of “Dueling Banjos.”

Latham and Boocock, both in their early 30s, teamed up four years ago when they were both active on the downtown theater scene in New York. Working with director Gary Schwartz, they began to forge their unique comic sensibility, performing in theater spaces and at alternative comedy venues. The first full-length Premium Bob show, the unpromisingly titled “Poop,” received an enthusiastic enough response to persuade the pair to pursue their emphatically skewed comic vision.

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The pair’s rapid pop-culture-in-a-blender style evolved, Latham says, when they decided to do away with traditional setup and punch line rhythms and go for pure punch.

“You present image after image with minimal narrative,” he explains, “and a subterranean logic starts to emerge. There’s an audience that’s grown up with remote controls in their hands, juggling 50 narratives at once on a TV: You watch three minutes of ‘Mannix,’ a minute of the Miss America pageant, a replay of the bombs dropping on Baghdad, and you have your own way of making sense of that onslaught. Our shows use the same process of tuning in and tuning out to this endless stream of pop culture ideas and images.”

The excesses of pop culture and the spiels of hucksters have long been comic fodder, but Premium Bob approaches its targets with an almost giddy sense of uplift. There’s no mean-spiritedness or overt judgment in the laughs the two engender.

“We don’t want our humor to be condescending, and we don’t look down on our subject matter,” Latham says. “Instead, we ask, ‘What can we do with this pile of messages around us? What can we make out of it?’ ”

“You could feel nasty about being sold to all the time,” Boocock says. “You could feel like you’re being force-fed something. Or you can embrace the force-feeding. We embrace.”

Last week Premium Bob brought its odd embraces to Los Angeles for a pair of industry showcase performances at the Hudson Theater. On Tuesday and Wednesday evening, Latham and Boocock performed an abridged version of “American Style” for a crowd packed with network executives and A-list writing and producing talents, including Larry Charles of “Mad About You,” George Meyer of “The Simpsons” and Maya Forbes of “The Larry Sanders Show.”

The performances, designed to elicit industry buzz, did the trick, and the A-listers were duly impressed; Jamie Tarses, beleaguered president of ABC, enjoyed herself enough to spend half an hour after the show talking to Latham and Boocock about television possibilities.

The showcases were put together by Gavin Polone, former mega-agent, now partner in the Hofflund/Polone management company. Polone saw one of Premium Bob’s West Coast debut performances at the HBO Workspace in May and was wowed enough to sign them on as clients.

“They’re doing something so fresh and distinctive. I laughed from start to finish, and I couldn’t be more excited about their work,” Polone said. “They made me laugh, they made me think and they made me uncomfortable. That’s a great feeling.”

Polone hopes that on the strength of the showcases, he may be able to develop a film or television deal that will bring Premium Bob to a broad national audience. But he says he realizes that distinctive talent is often at a disadvantage in Hollywood.

“The success of ‘different’ shows like ‘Larry Sanders’ or ‘King of the Hill’ hasn’t made it any easier to pitch something different,” he says. “You talk to a studio executive or network executive who has one of these breakout shows and tell them how great it is they took a chance. Then you tell them how you want to take a chance, and they say, ‘That won’t work. It needs to be more mainstream.’

“Keeping Premium Bob distinctive, while making it digestible to the marketplace, is going to be the biggest challenge. But I think they can do it. Their comedy works on so many levels, it’s like Beckett for the masses,” Polone says with a laugh. “Network Beckett.”

The immediate challenge in Premium Bob’s future will take place on a theater stage; in the fall the two have their first off-Broadway run in New York. (“We’ve been off-off-Broadway,” Boocock says, “and we’re slowly shedding ‘offs.’ ”) But they say they’re also ready for whatever opportunities may arise from the Hollywood buzz.

“Every opportunity presents a danger,” Latham says. “So, yeah, we’re nervous. But whether we get offered a part in a movie or a TV show or a cruise ship spectacular, we welcome the challenge of making our stuff work in some other medium.” He pauses for a thoughtful moment. “I suppose it would be strange to end up as wacky neighbors on a sitcom. . . .”

“But,” Boocock jumps in, “I’m sure we’d find some way to make the wacky neighbors different from the way wacky neighbors have traditionally been wacky.”

“Yeah,” Latham says with a shrug. “Our question wouldn’t be, ‘Isn’t this beneath us?’ It would be, ‘How wacky do you want?’ ”