Harith Iskander-The values in Harith’s life and comedy

Harith Iskander is one of Malaysia’s pioneer stand-up comedians and has an established a name for himself in the art form. A soon-to-be father and with various projects under his belt including an overseas comedy festival, Harith is about to embark on another chapter of his journey.

Early Years
Malaysia’s funny man was born in 1966 to a Malaysian father and British mother. “My first memory of a place I stayed was when I was four or five years old growing up in the Ministry of Defence camp where you cannot wear clothes that ‘poke eye’. My father was in the army and I grew up in one of those old single-storey long houses with a big garden,” recalls Harith. He moved to Hillview in Jalan Hulu Klang when he was seven where the Highland Towers were situated.
“Strangely enough, my father was not a disciplinarian and did not force me to join the army. My parents were very unlike most Malaysian parents because they didn’t pressure us,” says Harith. During high school, Harith had a bunch of best friends who played in a band with him. “We used to go to Pertama Complex and jammed at a studio called Do,Re,Mi. For RM10 an hour, we played Deep Purple, Scorpions and the blues,” Harith reminisces.

After finishing high school, Harith was sent straight to Perth, Australia to do his Year 12 before entering university. Naturally, being seventeen and rebellious, he first refused and was determined to dislike everything in Australia before finally succumbing to his parents’ wishes. In 1984, he gained entry into Curtin University of Technology and majored in Journalism. Once again his parents were supportive of his choice of study. “Other usual Malaysian parents would usually go, ‘Can make money ah?,” jokes Harith. He was enjoying journalism as he was given the freedom to call up anyone and write anything as Australia was a country that practised freedom of speech. Realising that this freedom would not be possible in Malaysia, he decided to minor in Journalism and major in Film & TV instead.

 

For Harith, studying overseas meant immersing himself in the culture and people around him. “For example, when I was in Australia, I saw other Malaysians hanging out among themselves, eating their own food, going to their own parties and living along the same street. I made it a point not to do that because I could do that at home. So what opened my eyes was the experience of being open to everything else which became most valuable to me,” says Harith. He also joined a band with four other guys and played at live proms in Australia. “We used to play U2, The Cure and Simple Minds. After that, ten years ago I had another band here in Malaysia with some of my friends where we would play at bars and clubs. If I had not pursued stand-up comedy I would have been in a band now. I haven’t played in awhile and I still have four or five guitars lying around somewhere,” grins Harith.

Discovering Comedy
Armed with a degree in Communications from Australia, Harith landed his first job at advertising agency Leo Burnett. He started working in the production department producing television and radio commercials. Along the way, a friend who was the PR person at the Subang Airport Hotel invited him to a Merdeka Eve celebration at the hotel lobby lounge to stand-up on stage and tell his funny stories. “We didn’t know it was called stand-up comedy in those days. The only stand-up comedy I had been exposed to at that time was Eddie Murphy which I had seen on VHS video tape. Those days, any programme we wanted to watch came in the form of VHS and you had to ask friends to bring them back from overseas. There was no Internet those days,” says Harith. He had no idea that stand-up comedy was an art form as well. He did that one show and a few months later he went to watch a guy named Rafique Rashid who played the guitar and changed lyrics to songs. “During his break, someone told him that I did stand-up comedy and he invited me on stage and I did 10 minutes. He then told me to come back the next week and do that again. Someone saw me at that show and invited me to perform at their function and that was how the offers started rolling in,” says Harith.

At the same time, Harith was not happy with his job at Leo Burnett. He knew that it wasn’t what he really wanted to do even though he was on the right path to securing the Creative Director position one day. He was more interested in directing movies and working in commercials but the fear of leaving kept him in a dilemma. A movie soon helped him make the decision that would change his life. “I went to watch this movie called Dead Bone Society played by Robin Williams at the Central Market cinema. He played a teacher who encouraged his students to seize the day Carpe Diem and it was inspirational enough for me to leave. I went back to Leo Burnett and handed in my resignation. I don’t know where I was going to go but I had to seize the day,” Harith proudly declares. Coincidentally, luck was on his side as a lady whom he had met before, Linda Chong, called for his help to produce a TV comedy show. That programme became “Jangan Ketawa” which aired in 1991 and was the highest-rated TV show in Malaysia. Harith was initially brought on as a writer and director but eventually joined the cast because they couldn’t pull it off. That was the beginning of his comedy career.

“People still come up to me after twenty years later and say, ‘Hey, when are you going to do Jangan Ketawa again?’ So it made an impact,” beams Harith. No one in Malaysia knew what stand-up comedy was as they had never seen one person on stage with a microphone telling jokes. It took Harith five to ten minutes to educate his audience on what he was doing. “It was a learning curve for myself and the audience,” says Harith. He only took stand-up comedy seriously two years later and requested friends to bring back more VHS tapes. That was when he discovered other acts such as Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly and Jerry Seinfield. His sense of humour came from his mother as her dry British humour influenced him when he was young.

Perfecting Comedy
For the first twelve years, Harith was the only stand-up comedian in the country before Douglas Lim came along. With the Internet and Comedy Club KL organising open mics, young aspiring comedians now have a platform for them to try out and perform on stage in front of an audience. “The problem with stand-up comedy is you can only do it in front of an audience. It’s different from singing because it does not work in front of one person or yourself. It relies on the audience’s laughter and is actually like a conversation. When I say something on stage, the audience laughing is equivalent to the audience replying to me. So whether they laugh softly or loudly determines what I say next,” says Harith. He says that comedy is hard because the harder you try the worse you get. Thinking about what didn’t work and trying to come back and make it work is just like someone punching you and you’ve got to get back in the ring to punch back. Most stand-up comedians copy just like singers before finding their own voice.

For Harith, every audience is different. “My strategy is during my first minute I find out what type of audience they are and then I strategise on stage. My trick is I start with story A and if you like A means you will like B and then I get to B and you’re not interested so that will tell me you don’t like C but you might like E. So how do I get from B to E? While I’m telling B I’m already figuring out how to get to E. I don’t have a script and my style is more freeflow and it looks freeflow but it’s not,” says Harith. It’s easy to go to the Internet and come up with a stand-up comedy set but for Harith that’s just copying. “It’s only funny if it’s real. It has to be real and what everyone has experienced before.”

Inspiring Others
As a comedian, Harith used to compare his job to doctors and lawyer’s which have value in them. He often asked himself what value does comedy bring other than entertainment? Six years ago, he came to a realisation of the value comedy brings when a fan stopped him and was going on for ten minutes praising his shows. “He told me that he and his friends would get together during lunch time and re-tell my jokes and look forward to my shows. The man turned out to be a doctor and I realised that this guy actually saves children’s lives. For the past ten minutes he had been telling me how important I was to Malaysia and that humbled me. What struck me was here was a doctor dealing with death everyday and what he looks forward to everyday is that half an hour of entertainment to just laugh and release that sadness with his other doctor friends. And I realise that’s value to what I do. That’s when I said to myself that no matter how much I earn I deserve it. You can hold a comedy competition and 100 people will show up but 99 will be utter crap. So I do something that’s difficult and I make it look easy,” says Harith.

Marriage and Family
Being married for over a year now, Harith is happily expecting his firstborn with his wife Jezamine Lim. As he married late at the age of 44, leaving his bachelorhood behind was something he had to get used to. “For 22 years I lived for myself and was used to doing things my own way. Now it’s a shared life. That’s the biggest challenge for me. My most important possessions were my DVD and magazines, things that I had collected over the past 22 years. My wife came in and she told me to sell them to get rid of them. The first initial reaction was shock, then I looked at the bigger picture. Other than sentimentality, there is no use for it. I’m living for two people and soon to be three,” says Harith. His wife is his biggest fan, as she pushes him to do better and wants him to be bigger than he is now. He initially rejected his Australia tour because he doesn’t want to be away when the baby arrived but his wife was adamant that he proceeded with the tour as it would be his biggest show to date.
The baby’s name has been decided but Harith prefers not to release the name because decisions and feng shui can change over time. They both initially wanted a baby girl but would be more than happy to welcome a  boy into their family. Harith admits that he will be a lenient parent as he is a softie at heart while his wife will be the disciplinarian.

Being Malaysian
“When I was growing up, there wasn’t the perception of being Malay, Chinese, Indian which there is now in Peninsular Malaysia. We have this 1Malaysia concept which if you think about it is a sorry affair which we have to force upon ourselves because there is such a definite separation. In school, I didn’t feel different and the only difference I felt was my English was better than the other Malay boys because I spoke English at home,” says Harith.

Asked what he is most proud of being a Malaysian, Harith says he’s going to steal from Douglas Lim. “We just happened to be born here because our mothers happened to be here when we popped out. That’s not your effort. It’s better to be proud of something you did. I’m proud of Nicol David who is the world champion and she is a Malaysian. As a Malaysian, what I would like to be proud of is to be remembered one day as the person who brought comedy to a different level,” says Harith.

The Future
Harith’s biggest show will be the Best of Malaysian comedy happening in Brisbane in March, with 52 stand-up comedians at the two-week comedy festival. Representing Malaysia together with Harith will be Kuah Jenhan and Douglas Lim. They will also be doing shows in Melbourne and Sydney as well as after the festival.

Cuci the Musical 2 will also be playing as Harith is once again involved in directing and scriptwriting the play. Besides that, Harith will also be performing alongside Maharaja Lawak’s winners Boboi, Zizan and Johan at Istana Budaya for two weekends on Feb 3-5 and      Feb 10-12.
Harith would like to collaborate with Jerry Seinfield one day as he relates to his comedy because it is non-confrontational and about everyday things in life. As a pioneer in the comedy scene in KL, Harith dishes out some advice for aspiring comedians. “It has to be true to be funny. Keep it true to yourself and find your own voice. If you have it, then do it because we all need something to laugh about,” says Harith, smiling.