Comedian set to strike gold

LAST year’s Ambassadors Against BDS Conference at the United Nations isn’t the typical stomping ground for most comedians, but when Elon Gold performed a stand-up routine impersonating an Israeli, the comedian was right in his element.

“You can’t get a word in when you are talking to an Israeli because they always repeat words and phrases … They will take a Hebrew word and say it about eight times and then its English translation about fifteen more times,” Gold explains.

In his Netflix stand-up special, Elon Gold: Chosen And Taken, Gold points out that every language has a weird relationship to one letter.

“Sometimes [the English over-enunciate] the letter t. And sometimes, they ignore the le-er completely. It’s like wha- happened, where did the le-ers go? And there are two t’s in the word le-er and yet they’re nowhere to be found … The Russian accent, it’s the letter y. They take the letter y and they put it between every other letter.”

It seems the only thing missing from Gold’s suitcase of accents is the Australian one, which, for those who have seen the comedian’s side-splitting impersonations, is hard to believe.

“I just wind up just doing a version of the New Zealand accent,” Gold tells The AJN by phone from New York, where he spends the summer months before moving back to Los Angeles, where his wife and four kids reside.

But according to the comedian, we should be thankful that he hasn’t yet perfected the accent, since imitating people to their faces generally isn’t appreciated on the receiving end.

“Everywhere on the planet that bit about the English accent just kills,” Gold remarks.

“But then I go to England and I think ‘okay they will really appreciate this because I’m talking about them’ and it was almost dead silence.”

For this reason, Gold, who is also an actor and starred in the sitcoms Stacked and In-Laws, doesn’t buy into the notion that impressions are the sincerest form of flattery.
He insists, instead, that they are the sincerest form of mockery.

Give the comedian just a few days though, and Gold reckons he will have the accent down to a tee. “I need it in my ears all the time, wherever I go, then I’ll just absorb it and fully regurgitate the accent,” he says.

This fine attention to all sorts of minute details that us non-comedians may overlook is a key component in stand-up success. It’s something that Gold calls “the comedic observational eye”.

“The minute I land my mind will be in overtime absorbing and observing everyone and everything around me,” comments Gold. “When I do performances I will do jokes that I have thought of literally three minutes before I hit the stage.”

Trying out such new material does carry some risk, though. “You never want to be up there for five minutes with new jokes about the event or your trip so far and then you’re just eating it,” warns Gold. “It’s kind of like being resuscitated – you can be unconscious for a few minutes, but once you hit a certain point you are dead.”

At that point, just like in CPR, “you take out your comedy defibrillator and yell ‘clear’ and go to the old classics, or you comment on how poorly it’s going in the funniest way you can,” says Gold.

Fortunately, for Gold and his audiences, the comedian isn’t required to perform CPR often, since his golden oldies tend to strike the right chord with audiences, particularly when the crowd is packed full of Jews.

In his stand-up skit at a gala dinner in Israel for StandWithUs, a pro-Israel education and advocacy organisation, Gold delivered an in-depth explanation of ‘why the Jews are better off without Christmas trees’.

“There would be a chapters and chapters of rabbis arguing about how you schect [the tree], when to shect it, if it has a blemish, can you even schect it at all? What kind of tree can it be? Well, it cannot bear fruit. But it must emit sap. Can a goy cut down the tree? … When decorating the tree, you must string the lights right to left, but light them left to right,” says Gold.

Jokes aside, comedy carries much greater significance for Gold than just delivering laughs.

“[These stand-up shows for MDA] are not just gigs, they have a deeper and larger purpose that is bigger than me and bigger than all of us,” says Gold. “I love when it’s not just for the sake of having fun, but when there is a cause behind the gigs.”

In this particular case, the worthy cause is raising money for MDA to establish Israel’s first mother’s milk bank. “I admire the organisation globally and I’ve been to all the events in LA where I live,” says Gold.

And for the last few years in LA, the annual campaigns for the American Friends of MDA have been graced with the presence of one of comedy’s greatest – Jerry Seinfeld.

MDA’s main campaign event, titled “Big Laughs for Little Lives” will be held on Sunday, August 12, with a young MDA event the following evening.

The younger crowd may even be privy to Gold’s new favourite comedic skit. “I have so many favourites that I can’t pick one. More specifically, my new favourite bit is about the difference between married guys and single guys and it uses a parking analogy,” he says. “That will probably be in the second show where I get to be a little looser [than the first MDA event].”

Gold’s foray into comedy – indeed his entire comedic persona – initially rested on the shoulders of his incredibly well-crafted impersonations.

“Being able to do impressions is a little talent that I always had and just discovered at age 12 or 13 when I started doing impressions of my teachers,” remembers Gold. “I just loved the attention. Once you get laughs like that it’s so addictive.”

By the time Gold was 16, he was performing at comedy clubs in Manhattan. “I was fortunate in that I had a very lucky killer first set and mostly that is attributed to the fact that my whole first set was mostly impressions and they are an easy crowd pleaser,” says Gold. “From there I did it all through college … I became a regular at all the local clubs in Boston like Stitches, and that’s where I really started becoming a professional. By the time I graduated [from Boston University] I was a working comedian.”

It’s all well and good to impersonate others, but how would Gold feel if a comedian got up on stage to impersonate him? Finding his own distinctive voice in comedy is a key focus for Gold at present, so “the coolest thing would be if someone would do an impression of me,” he remarks.

In eager anticipation of his Australia trip, Gold comments, “I’m very excited to do these shows and I’m looking forward to checking out Sydney in all of its wonders.”

Even Gold’s wife and kids are coming along for the ride. “No one has a negative opinion of Sydney and that’s why I went all in and am taking the family, so I know that Sydney won’t disappoint. The only question left is, will I?”

That seems most unlikely, particularly given that Gold – as talented and hilarious as he may be – is yet to perfect the Aussie accent. It seems his work in the Down Under is cut out for him.

For more info and bookings: www.magendavidadom.org.au or (02) 9358 2521

SOPHIE DEUTSCH