If you are a Brandeis student, then you have probably laughed along with your peers at the "Sh*t Brandeis Students Don't Say" video on YouTube, or perhaps you've seen the video of a Brandeis student interviewing admitted students under the mask of a horsehead. But who is the man beneath the horsehead, and how does he manage to continually catch us off guard with his satirical wit and absurdity?
His name is Paul Gale '12, a recent YouTube comedy success story whose roots as a comedian date back to his antics as an undergraduate at Brandeis.
Gale is a growing sensation ever since he took his comedy to the Internet and used his sardonic humor to not only entertain the Brandeis community but also to connect them with one another.
During his time at Brandeis, Gale, a Film, Television, and Interactive Media major, was a member of the comedy troupe Boris' Kitchen, a member of the improvisation group Crowd Control, a writer for the now-defunct Blowfish satire newspaper, and a coordinator for a monthly comedy showcase at Cholmondeley's. It was during this time that Gale also began to direct and star in his own YouTube videos, on his channel's webseries "anxiety [the show]."
He also took part in Brandeis Basement, which he formed under the parent organization Campus Basement, a venue for college students to broadcast humor related to their individual schools.
Since graduating, Gale interned at the New York Television Festival and took classes at Upright Citizens Brigade improvisional theatre.
Gale's work aims to faces the hardships of life head on and examines them with the sarcastic approach of humor. His work deals with existential themes of loneliness and our quest to add meaning to our existence. He also examines how technology plays a role in our experiences, specifically in romantic relationships.
Recently, Gale's comedy channel has gained popularity because of a video titled "The Truth About Being Single," posted just in time for Valentine's Day. The video, he said, was inspired by his experience as a single man living in New York City and the "self-inflicted misery" that ironically unites singles holding out on love for obscure reasons. "It's an incredibly busy city," Gale said, "but everyone seems to be sort of isolated ... with all this technology we're the most connected we've ever been and you can talk to anyone at any time ... and still not feel fulfilled."
The video, which is only about a minute and a half long, took an estimated 450 hours to make and reached over 1,500,000 views in just two weeks. Though the praise hailed by the video exceeded Gale's expectations, it did not occur overnight. Gale spent many weeks marketing the video and communicating with different journalists. Eventually, College Humor posted the video, and later Funny or Die released it on their website for Valentine's Day.
When asked about his creative process, Gale said that he collaborates with a team of comedians, including friends and fellow Brandeis grads, Adam Lapetina '12 and Hanna Wellish '12, as well as a "comedy tutor" of sorts from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City, where Gale studied post-Brandeis.
Gale is more humbled than elevated by his recent success. "The fact that I could have this idea on my couch about this video and get maybe 10 people and execute it and it could be seen by a million people ... it's not to say 'look at this amazing piece of art that I made', but it's to say, 'isn't it so crazy how our infrastructure allows this to happen,'" he said.
The theme of unification prevails throughout Gale's works. In his popular video "Sh*t Brandeis Students Don't Say" Gale unites Brandeis students through their common experience. Gale attributes the success of these videos to the fact that students can easily see themselves in them. "Brandeis University, like any small community, loves to talk about and make fun of itself."
In regards to the videos' inspiration, Gale said, "We wanted to make people think a little bit and in terms of our experiences as writers, to have more fun with it" and add a twist by taking the opposite angle on a typical experience. The success of the videos encouraged Gale to pursue comedy as a career, "to do something that resonated as well as that [did] affected my confidence in creating work that resonated with people," he said.
In regard to his increased fan base, Gale said that "success in some ways is very limiting" because there are more people to answer to. He has not compromised his own creativity for the sake of the outcome, however.
"There are some people who do things that purely make them laugh...I guess the way I process comedy is not only to make people laugh. It has to have accessibility," Gale said.
Gale also said it is a struggle to "churn out content [that often] because you can't do anything crazy in terms of feasibility."
If he did not have to follow the strict model of YouTube posting-frequency, he believes he could do more with his videos.
Gale says that he would love to someday write for a television series, which are now more commonly using Internet as their vehicle of publication. "I would love to do something experimenting with a new format on the Internet". For those aspiring to be comedians, Gale said, "Be ambitious about your projects ... and be deliberate and proud of your work and don't be afraid to say things that will piss people off."