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Local comedian and online phenomenon
Jon Lajoie shows his shorts at the
Just for Laughs Film Festival

by MALCOLM FRASER

Born and bred on the South Shore suburb of St-Hubert, Jon Lajoie’s only onscreen role has been as an anglo musician on the Quebecois soap opera L’auberge du chien noir, which has been running since 2003. But last year, Lajoie unexpectedly found himself breaking through on a worldwide scale when some no-budget comedy videos he shot caught fire on the Internet.

Suddenly, the lo-fi funnyman was clocking millions of hits on YouTube and comedy sites like Funny or Die. A short while later, the Just for Laughs Film Festival caught the wave and offered him a showcase this year.

“It started off by me wanting to write skits for a sketch comedy show,” explains the laid-back Lajoie. “I always absolutely loved Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, all that stuff. My ultimate dream was—still is—to be on a sketch show of that nature. So I just started writing some scripts, but along the way, I found it hard to punch the jokes on the page. I wanted to show people what I wanted to do.” After investing in “a cheap camera and some editing software,” the one-man show went up online, and the rest is Internet-era history.

The first videos to break big were “High as Fuck,” a deadpan ballad celebrating stoner thinking, and “Everyday Normal Guy,” in which Lajoie proclaims his averageness in pitch-perfect gangsta-rap cadences (sample lines: “I get nervous in social situations, motherfucker… My parents are really nice people, motherfucker!”).

“As soon as I started messing around with musical comedy, that’s when a lot of the big sites started featuring my stuff. That started around last November/December, where it really started taking off like crazy. Yeah, it hasn’t been very long at all,” he remarks, as though the rapidity of his rise has just occurred to him.

SCREEN TO STAGE

“It’s really cool, but when you see numbers online, it’s sort of weird,” Lajoie muses on his online popularity. “Okay, a million people saw your video, but it’s just a number, and you don’t see your audience. Then when you go on the street and people start recognizing you, that’s when it becomes real: ‘Oh shit, people are actually watching this!’”

In his three Just for Laughs shows—which will be “the second, third and fourth time I’ve performed live,” he laughs—he’ll perform his hits and screen some new videos; the act will be preceded by a program of high-profile comic shorts.

With a live tour on the way and an agent in L.A. negotiating with networks, expect to see Lajoie’s name in lights in the near future. In the meantime, he’s still posting videos on jonlajoie.com. “You never know with the online stuff—people love you one day, and then it goes down,” he reflects. “But I really appreciate it. I come up with these ridiculous ideas, and people want to watch them.”

Other JFL Film Fest picks this weekend include the Canadian production Confession of a Porn Addict, the Rainn Wilson vehicle The Rocker, and the much publicized Pineapple Express, attended by comic phenomena du jour Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, along with the fest’s usual judicious pick of side-splitting shorts.

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