You’ve probably seen Carlos Alazraqui as Deputy James Oswaldo Garcia on Reno 911!—but you’ve probably heard him, too. Alazraqui is a prolific voice-over actor, having performed as Néstor in Happy Feet, the Taco Bell Chihuahua, Rocko in Rocko’s Modern Life, Winslow T. Oddfellow in CatDog, and Goofy Goober in The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie. But in addition to acting, Carlos is also an accomplished stand-up comic. We spoke with Carlos before his run of shows this weekend at the Cap City Comedy Club about his history in comedy and his approach to stand-up.

Is this your first time performing in Austin?

I’ve been here before. Last year I did the Alamo Drafthouse in April. They were screening Reno 911: Miami, and I did a little stand-up after the first screening of the film and before the second screening of the film. So it’s actually my second time, although officially, in a comedy club, it’s my first time.

Photos courtesy of Carlos Alazraqui.

Carlos Alazraqui
Friday and Saturday, 8pm & 10:30pm
Cap City Comedy Club [map]
[tickets]

Did you get to go out and see anything while you were here the first time?

Yeah. We mistakenly went to Hippy Hollow or the Hippy Hollow beach or whatever. That was frightening. I thought it was going to be Girls Gone Wild and it was Men Gone Pathetic. It was like a horse studding farm. What are you guys doing? Knock it off.

So we went there, and we went to 6th street. That was a lot more fun. It was a good time. Oh, and I ate at that restaurant at the top of the lake, too.

So you guys finished filming season five [of Reno 911] in April?

Yeah, last April. It’s been in the can for a while; we don’t know when it’s going to air. In mean time—I’m the only comic on the crew—I’m going out and doing my comedy show which is something that I’ve done for years and years. I laid off when I was doing voicework and Reno 911. So before the show airs again or while it’s in syndication, I’m out on the road. I do about an hour of stand-up and five minutes of Garcia.

Do you like doing stand-up?

Yeah, it’s pretty fun. I get to work with feature acts that I get to bring, and that make it a lot more fun on the road—you’re not always by yourself or working with strangers. So that’s a cool thing to be able to bring your friends and to be able to afford to bring your friends. And you get to go to some pretty cool places.

Do you view stand-up as something to do in your down-time, or could you ever see yourself doing stand-up full-time?

No, I did it full-time—it’s what lead to voice-over and acting and Reno 911. And it’s something that I’ll probably do for a long time, but I won’t do it full-time again. Those years are gone. I always say that stand-up is a young man’s game—to really want to travel and work at it.

I really like voice-over and acting because you get to stay at home. But occasionally you miss that live appearance, so to mix it in is great. I like mixing it in in small doses.

Can you get burnt out doing a stand-up tour pretty easily?

Yeah, and so far I’ve avoided that. I try to go once a month or twice a month at most and do a Thursday, Friday, Saturday. But yeah, to do an extended two-week tour I’d be really burnt out. I couldn’t do that.

I imagine one of the most fun things you could do as someone like yourself, having come from a stand-up background and gained notoriety through a show like Reno 911, is to do a one-off stand-up set, unannounced, at a stand-up club in Hollywood.

Yeah, sometimes I’ll go into the Hollywood Improv on Melrose to do a test-set, and everyone will say, “Oh, it’s the guy from Reno 911,” and that’s fun.

It’s actually fun at a regular club, too, because people don’t know that I do more than Garcia. They’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t know you did the Taco Bell Chihuahua,” “Oh, I didn’t know you did all of those cartoon voices,” “Oh, I didn’t know you did stand-up.” So that’s a fun surprise for people.

Do you sometimes wish that people recognized—and I guess it’s not anything you can control—but would it be more satisfying for people to have known you as a stand-up and all of those other characters?

No—like you said, I think the converse is more satisfying. Because it’s a surprise. It might help my career if people knew that I was always a stand-up—if I was like a Carlos Mencia, it might help me fill clubs a little easier because people see him as a stand-up all the time. But people see Garcia and they’re not sure—they think, “where’s the rest of the Reno 911 crew?”

But there is some intrigue when they see Garcia because they wonder if he’ll be any good—they wonder if he’s one of these guys that started as an actor and is trying to get into stand-up. So when they find out it’s the reverse, it’s a cool feeling. But I think if I was known as a stand-up, like a Chappelle or a Mencia, it might get them into the clubs a little easier.

But at the other end of that “what-if,” you also could have trouble getting roles because people might type-cast you as a stand-up that can’t act.

Yeah, exactly—as just a stand-up comic. Now—I just filmed a guest-spot on Pushing Daisies—stuff like that is fun. I can play anything in voice-over, and that stuff’s cool.

That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about—what happened to the Mr. Weed character. That was probably my favorite character in Family Guy.

I guess Peter moved away from the toy factory and that was it for me. My character choked on some food, and that was my experience on Family Guy.

When you started doing this improvised scene-work on Reno 911, were you able to carry over any of the skills that you had developed as a stand-up?

Oh, yeah. Definitely. Being quick on your feet on stage definitely helps in those situations. And as a stand-up, you’re the writer, producer, and director, and you’re creating your character in your head. And that’s basically what Garcia was. We all created our characters—we went home and named them and thought about them.

Being a stand-up helps you to react to certain things and certain comments that people make. It definitely has made Garcia a stronger character—or made me better at improv.

How easy is it to let Garcia evolve on the show? Is it just something that you can bring to the episode, or is it something that you have to run by everyone?

Especially entering Season 5, there are a lot of changes and things that pop up. It’s really just things that pop up in rehearsals, like what if Garcia did this or Dangle did that. Some things we run by each other and some things we just find out while we’re filming.

What could someone expect from your stand-up show?

A lot of characters, a lot of voices—but I don’t set them up. I’ll just toss voices into a bit where I have a point of view about what’s going on. I will do George Bush, Clinton—but they all sort of just pop in. They’re neatly woven into what I’m doing.

So it’s a lot of characters, some impressions, some political stuff, some dark stuff. I can get kind of dark. Not Doug Stanhope-dark, but dark enough. I mix it up. There’s a lot of variety.

Do you ever find it hard to put together a stand-up act that incorporates all of that, or is it just whatever you think is funny when you’re writing? Are you trying to fit a template?

Just whatever I think is funny or have a point of view about. I was very passionate about the Michael Vick stuff because I have two dogs and was just livid about the way people were reacting. And that turned into a lot of stand-up for me.

Is it hard to mix that in your material? Is it hard to mix bits that have an underlying relevance to current events with bits about going to 7/11? Is it hard to interweave those?

If the audience doesn’t know what style you are, they can find it hard to follow. But that’s who I am in real life—I have a short attention span. Sometimes I’m going to be funny and goofy, sometimes I’m going to get serious, sometimes I’ll be poignant, and sometimes I’ll just be silly. And I think that’s who we all are. My comedy reflects that. I’m going to talk about what I want to talk about.

I’m going to talk about Texas not being able to handle their air-conditioning. How about medium? I just need the room to be colder than it is outside—I don’t need it to be a cryogenic locker.

I try to put on a really good show. People may not get or like everything that I do, but I always try to perform a show. So people coming to the show can expect that it will be well-performed and that I’m really trying in every show to get you to see things my way.