A touch of Basile

Basile explains to Neos Kosmos how venting about a 1996 trip to Greece launched an international comedy career


Basile has been touring Australia with his new show Comicus Erectus for months now, and he will be back in the middle of the year to do it all again. I wondered how he copes not seeing his family, and not being with them on one of the most sacred times in the Greek Orthodox calendar, Easter.

“I remember being in Australia once for Thanksgiving and I was ‘jonesing’ – which means I was missing turkey, and I called up room service at about 5:00 am and said “I don’t care if it’s chicken, give me any foul you have”. And I was in my room watching American football calling my family every ten minutes asking them what food they were eating,” says Basile about celebrating holidays away from his family. For Basile, a holiday away isn’t so much about missing the family, it was about missing the leftovers.

Basile is a striking man, it’s hard to be anything but being six foot two, but there’s the the height of his hair too – which is the envy of his fellow comedians who he is touring nationally with Comicus Erectus who are… hair-challenged. There is no way this man could have ever had a career in anything apart from showbiz, he could never be a wallflower.

But it’s not just his height, it’s his personality, so larger than life and so sincere at the same time.

“Even though I am six foot two, 250 pounds and I look like I am going to tear the head off someone, there is a certain softness that people get sucked into, that work’s fine for me,” says Basile of his comedy.
I have to say, seeing Basile perform you are taken aback as soon as he enters the arena. There is an apparent difference between Australian and American comedy, a brash, bold and bigger style that confronts you straight away but once he starts, you are laughing along with him as his sensitive side emerges.

But it could have all been a different life for Basile, who before he even entertained the thought of becoming a comedian, was studying law and international government with the hope of one day getting into politics. Then there was his American football career that was cut short due to injury, he worked on Capitol Hill, worked for a congressman but one year into studying law, he was bored. To cure this boredom, he would frequent comedy bars and an innocent dare by his brother to get on stage would change his life forever.

“It was a thing between us to dare each other and he dared me to enter an amateur comedy night… and I won. Then I got up next week and won again, and won again, then little by little I was getting stage time and people like what I did,” says Basile about his beginnings in comedy. Basile made a name for himself as a general comedian who at that stage hadn’t tapped into the diverse world of ethnic comedy. A trip to Greece in 1996 would change all that.

“I didn’t like the way we were treated,” explains Basile about being a Greek American in Greece. “Just because I get my tenses mixed up now and then when I speak or I say words like hoteli.”

Basile was angry, but decided to retaliate by writing down all his observations and after that trip heand noticed he had quickly filled three legal pads with notes and jokes.
“As you grow up you mature so I would write my anger down in joke form, so instead of putting my fist through their face I would take my fist put a pen in it and write down my anger,” says Basile.
It was a performance that he organised for the Pan-Icarian Brotherhood of America that would change the way he performed comedy. On stage one of his aunts yelled out “tell us about your trip to Greece” and that opened the floodgates for Basile to vent.

“I purged every piece of anger I had, I talked about the water pressure, the sapouni that would drop in the toilet, I vented about everything and the place was going nuts,” Basile explains of his first foray into ethnic comedy. This then spawned the Growing Up Greek in America franchise.

“I will be damned if it wasn’t the most craziest, Greek, comedy experience that’s ever been out there and I am proud of it because, I am doing it in a way that’s not offensive, I do it in a way that we can laugh at ourselves without making us look stupid, it’s not my style to belittle Greeks.

“That’s why I never curse in my shows. I want the kids to come to my show, to realise that their parents, their grandparents, even their great-grandparents, went through the same hell they are going through. And that we understand.”

In his fourth visit to Australia, Basile expresses a love for what is fast becoming his adopted country, to the point he is considering filming his next instalment of his DVD series Growing Up Greek in Australia and filming it in Melbourne.
Audiences have taken to his performance in Comicus Erectus with open arms.Alongside comedians George Kapiniaris, Tahir and Joe Avati, the funnymen have created a show to celebrate the evolution of ethnic comedy but more so the evolution of ethnics of the diaspora.

“We wanted to do something that people could identify with and something peopel would really enjoy – and we did that,” says Basile of the success thus far of the show.

But even though the shows are selling out around Australia, peforming night after night, the media attention on the show has been somewhat lacking.

“Here in Australia I have realised that even though the show is as successful as it is, we may not get the same attention because it is ethnic humour and perhaps there is some type of backlash. I think there is some backlash from people thinking ‘oh it’s the wogs’.

“Well let me tell you something about the wogs, Australia was built on the back of those wogs, there the ones who did all the work, there the ones who made Australia what it is today, I am talking about all the ethnics that came here Chinese, Japanese ,Polish, Greek, Italian you name it, they all came here for a better life and that came through working hard,” vents Basile for the last time that day.

The show Comicus Erectus: the evolution of ethnic comedy is touring nationally now. To find a show in your city visit comicuserectus.com/ For more information on Basile, visit opabasile.com