First, Kevin Quinn wants to lower your expectations. That’s why his show, “Off The Cuff,” begins with a segment called The World’s Worst Monologue. “If it bombs,” he said, “nobody’s expecting much anyway.”
Quinn, a Shawnee Mission Northwest and Kansas University alumnus, plays host to the 30-minute online talk show out of his living room with Chris Girten playing the Andy Richter to Quinn’s Conan O’Brien.
The two take their show to a bigger stage Wednesday with “Off The Cuff Live,” 7:30 p.m. at The Mission Theatre, 5509 Johnson Drive ($15). They’ll host a comedy night that features five national and local comedians, interspersing segments like The World’s Worst Monologue and taking questions from the audience between sets.
The show premiered in March, the product of many nights spent by Quinn and Girten riffing at a Westport bar near Quinn’s home. Quinn has a writing and editing background having spent each year at Northwest involved with the school’s radio and television program before majoring in theater and film studies at KU. He also spent two years co-hosting and producing “The Dick Dale Show” on 96.5 The Buzz.
But it took a pair of cellphones to put Quinn and Girten — who went to Shawnee Mission West — on their way to the talk show circuit. It started with eldrunkard.com, a site the two created using a blogging application on their smart phones. They’d snap photos of observations about town that struck them as humorous — two husky women dressed as mermaids, a man wearing jean shorts and a cutoff tee perusing Costco — and post them instantly to the site.
From there they purchased a camera for about $100 and started shooting the show. They both wear suits — Quinn sits behind a desk, Girten taking his place on the couch beside it. Mutual friends make up the audience, supplying laughter to jokes about Charlie Sheen and Osama bin Laden.
Quinn said he could edit and render video of the show and have it online within three to five hours. The show is broken up into three segments and posted to YouTube and their website. All told, the process takes between five to 10 hours a week, Quinn said. Filming for the twice-monthly episodes usually occurs on weekend afternoons with Facebook messages serving as invites for the audience.
Had this been a decade ago, Girten said, they’d more likely be audience members themselves than online talk show hosts. “Everyone has a voice now,” Girten said.
Quinn credits his dad for his interest in comedy. It was his dad, he said, that got him interested in Rodney Dangerfield and Larry Sanders. Once, as a fourth-grader, Quinn memorized a Dangerfield routine for a school-wide talent show, not knowing what half the material meant. Quinn said the two planned to have live shows on a quarterly basis and bring in comedians and a band.
Sponsorship wouldn’t hurt either, he said. He already has his sights set on Miller High Life, his beer of choice since college. Between the product’s onscreen cameos and Quinn’s appearance in a Miller High Life ad campaign — he said his foot was in the door. “Now I want to kick the door open,” he said. “But I think they locked it on me.”