Greg Giraldo Interview: New York, 1994

Greg Giraldo 1965-2010

Greg Giraldo wasn't technically a Boston comedian. He came up through the New York scene, where he was a staple for most of his career. But he was smart and sometimes rough, and he studied at Harvard Law, and we tend to accept or even claim comedians like that as our own.

When Giraldo died last week of an accidental overdose, I wrote about him for TVSquad.com. I spoke to a Boston comedian named Jessie Baade for that piece who had known Giraldo briefly while they were both comedians starting out in New York. She had an interview with him she intended to be part of a documentary on comedy in New York that never got made. It shows a young Giraldo being charming and not taking anything seriously, which is a fitting tribute to the man's approach to his comedy.

The interview is below, with introduction from Miss Robles.

From Jessie Robles (aka Jessie Baade): Greg let me interview him when I told him him I was working on a project about comics while we were hanging out at Chuckles in Mineola, Long Island NY around late 1994. It never got finished because his was the only thing that didn't turn out to be in the dark. Jim Gaffigan is there off camera which is why Giraldo kept making cracks about him. He did not, in actuality, think Gaffigan was a hack.