My friend Kevin Avery is fucking hilarious, and you ought to know his name (as well as his comedy.) He’s making a short film about singing thugs. It will feature David Alan Grier, Margaret Cho, Prodigal Sunn from the Wu-Tang Clan, Rachel True, Baron Vaughn, Kevin, and me. If you aren’t already on board with this idea, I want you to take a good long look at yourself in the mirror and ask aloud, “When did I become a fucking monster?”

Help the man make the movie. Read on, and then go here and donate some coin if you’ve got any to spare. This is art.

Sara Benincasa: What is “Thugs: The Musical?” Is it an actual stage show, or a film, or what?

Kevin Avery: Thugs, The Musical is a short film about a play.  It’s about this black actor, “Michael Gardner” - this kind of a non-urban, “Carltonesque” black guy who is frustrated that he’s not considered black enough to get any of the roles his fellow black actors are getting hired for, like the gangsta, or the streetwise, fast-talking partner in the cop movie, or the token black guy in the horror flick.  So he decides to write, direct, and star in his own stage production about street life and living in the hood, in order to show Hollywood and all his peers that he can “act black”.  The film is a faux documentary about the production of this play and how the whole thing, from the casting, to opening night, just completely unravels into a disaster.

SB: So when the hell did you come up with the idea for this thing?

KA: Well, the idea for the film came out of my experience as an actor auditioning for certain parts but not getting them because basically, as a light-skinned black guy with freckles who grew up in the suburbs and went to Catholic school, I wasn’t usually the black guy they were looking for. 

I went on this audition once where they said they were looking for someone to play a gangsta rapper type.  I was like “I used to rap (yes, even in Catholic school).  I got this!”  I showed up at the audition in my finest gangsta rap apparel - I’m sure my football jersey was too tight, which was mistake one - and I looked around and realized none of these dudes were actually acting.  Maybe one other guy, and he looked as scared as I did.  But the rest of these dudes were genuine thugs.  Meanwhile I’m walking into the audition trying to put on my best “black guy voice”.  And that’s basically the whole plight of the main character in Thugs.  Except his problem is also that he’s not that great an actor.

So I just started talking about that experience in my act, and how, if I played a thug, it could really only be in some kind of theatrical, West Side Story-type of production.  The next thing I knew I was belting out these weird gangsta showtunes onstage, and Thugs, The Musical was born.  When I started doing the bit in San Francisco and on the road, people were like “You need to actually make this a thing,” so I sat down and wrote it.

SB: You have a rather impressive cast slated to appear in this magnum opus, pending funding. Tell me about how these people came to be involved with your project.

KA: You have no idea how proud I am that you referred to this as a “Magnum” and an “Opus”.  But, yeah, I’m really excited about the cast.  David Alan Grier is the one who really lit a fire under my ass to write this in the first place.  I work with him a lot on the road doing stand up, and he always said he’d appear in it from the start.  Margaret Cho and I had met through our management.  I sent her the script one afternoon on a whim, and she wrote back in, like, 15 minutes and was like “This is hilarious!  I wanna do this!”  Totally blew my mind.  Ultimately it was through Margaret that I met Liam Sullivan who’s directing the project.

I didn’t actually know Rachel True personally, but had been a really big fan of hers for a long time - since The Craft.  It just luckily turned out that we happened to have mutual friends (and Twitter).  And Prodigal Sunn and I had worked together on TV show earlier this year and both just hit it off and cracked each other up, which was kinda weird.  No one ever wakes up and imagines they’re gonna make a member of the Wu Tang Clan go into hysterics.  So, I just sent them both a script and asked if they’d be in it.

W. Kamau Bell and Baron Vaughn are comedian buddies of mine.  Kamau and I have been friends and partners in comedy for awhile, and even roommates at one point, so I kinda had to put him in it. *sigh*  But he’s also hilarious and a brilliant comedian, so I win in the end.  And Baron Vaughn, who a lot of people know from the Awkward Comedy Show on Comedy Central, happened to hear about “Thugs” and contacted me, which was really flattering and cool - just that there was enough buzz around this project that he actually had heard about it and wanted to be down.  It’s just crazy to have people that you’ve admired or been a fan of take something that you’ve written and go “Yeah, I’d love to be a part of this!”  And the cast is still growing.  We’re talking to some more really cool people who I’m keeping my fingers crossed for.

SB: In an ideal world, what happens with this project upon completion? Dream big!

KA: Well, the plan is to take Thugs, The Musical to film festivals and really to just get the film out there for people to see, which is the reason why we’ve said anyone who donates to the film on Kickstarter gets their own digital copy of the movie.  I just want people to see it.

The larger plan is to make the Thugs, The Musical feature film.  Story-wise, it’s there.  There were a lot of things that the director, Liam Sullivan, and I talked about that we thought were really funny and really made the story bigger, but that we just couldn’t fit into the short.  So making the feature will give us a chance to do all that and see even more of David’s character and Margaret’s character, Yvette, and all the other characters in the movie that are trying to make this horrific play happen.

And all this film stuff aside, I also really want to do an actual live theater version of the play Thugs, The Musical in all it’s bad theater glory.  How awesome would that be?

SB: Most important question: may I be a background player? I’m not asking for something crazy like an Under 5 or anything. I just want to walk through the party, or pick up my coffee in the background, or open the door for Baron, or wordlessly sell Rachel a fun chapeau, or something. I will fly the fuck out just for that shit.

KA: I am waaaay ahead of you on this.  I think this is not only desirable, but necessary.  So let me be the first to announce to your readers and the entire known universe that Sara Benincasa is the latest addition to the cast of Thugs, The Musical!