Friday, August 15, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Instant Fame

'Last Comic Standing' winner Dat Phan turns up in Vegas as host of a four-week comedy show

Dat Phan's hectic schedule since his Aug. 5 victory on "Last Comic Standing" includes four Mondays at Harrah's Las Vegas Improv. "Even though I've been getting five hours of sleep a night, I love every moment of it," he said backstage in the club's green room. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

"I'm not jaded yet," Dat Phan proclaims.

Far from it. His backstage vibe in The Improv's green room is less that of jaded stand-up comic than the contagious euphoria of a lottery winner.

Which isn't far from the truth. If the 28-year-old comedian isn't literally an overnight success, he's the modern era's two-month, TV-reality definition of it.

Monday's show at The Improv still wasn't quite a full seven days since the Vietnam-born Phan stood on the stage of Paris Las Vegas, learning he was the surprise winner of NBC's "Last Comic Standing" on Aug. 5

His 35 percent vote from viewers, announced by producer-host Jay Mohr, surprised Phan as much as everyone else who thought the winner would be 300-pound Ralphie May.

And as he stood onstage with May, waiting to hear which of them won, "I was about to cry in the sense that, this is the pinnacle moment for me." He was telling himself, "I should be thankful for the exposure I've gotten so far because this is as high as I will get."

Instead, his six-day victory lap included late-night TV time with Craig Kilborn and Jay Leno, and a meeting with Warner Bros. executives to discuss a potential sitcom.

But Monday's "Dat Phan and Friends" was the most important as far as his pants were concerned.

The four-week stint of hosting the Harrah's Las Vegas comedy club on its normally dark night was hastily arranged by club owner Budd Friedman, the idea being to have Phan anchor a revolving showcase of "Last Comic" contestants.

As such, it's the first real paycheck for Phan, whose hand-to-mouth existence as a struggling comic became part of the TV show's drama. "These are the same pants I've been wearing for the last four months," he confirms. "I still haven't been paid by NBC," quickly adding that the statement makes him "sound like a loser."

Phan had, in fact, been making enough money for his car payment and a studio apartment, which he -- famously, thanks again to "Last Comic" -- shares with a roommate and sleeps under a desk.

"With the money I got (so far) I bought a laptop," he says. "I'm trying to save up money because I want to not be stupid and spend all my money and then have to borrow money from my parents."

Friedman was close to the well for Phan's victory, because the comedian had worked as a doorman at Friedman's Hollywood Improv and answered phones for the club owner by day.

"I was homeless with my mom when I was a kid, but I was never homeless again until I did comedy," Phan says. When he was an infant, his family escaped the Communist takeover of Saigon.

He and his mother eventually reunited with a sister who became the owner of a Southern California beauty salon. ("How did we (Vietnamese) end up with this job?" he asks in his act. "Did (the refugees) get together and decide, `We take over one foot at a time!' ")

Phan went to college and had a job with "the full-on 401K plan; medical, dental, the whole thing." But eventually, "I was so bored I just snapped, I lost my mind. I can't do this anymore. I would rather live on the streets doing stand-up than to spend another minute doing this."

By spring of last year, he was living in his car for two months. Things began to turn around when he found work at the Improv, but not before he was robbed at gunpoint one night while working the door.

"When that happens to you, you go: `Am I doing the right thing right now? Am I going down the right path of life?'

"And I went: `Yeah. I believe I am doing the right thing with my life right now. If you shoot me, I have no regrets.' That's the real awakening, right there."

But, he reminds people, "I told America, `Don't vote for me because you feel sorry for me.' I want them to vote for who they feel deserves it."

Still, he only had to turn on Comedy Central's "Last Call With Colin Quinn" to know what they were saying. Fellow contestants Cory Kahaney, Dave Mordal, Rich Vos and Rob Cantrell "talked smack about me," he notes.

When Quinn asked, "Do you think he got so much abuse" that he won out of sympathy, Kahaney answered with an eye-rolling, "No, It's because he was really the funniest comic."

Phan was the target of a "coalition" during the phase of the show where the comedians had to live in the same house, a la "Big Brother."

"I was like, `I hope America sees what I'm seeing,' " he says.

He compares the veteran comedians to a politician "who is corrupt but has experience out in the field. And then you have this new young guy who has heart and believes he can make a change. So who is entitled? The guy who is more corrupt and has more experience?

"I think a comic who represents the `Last Comic Standing' in America should represent honor and integrity along with humor."

But he's quick to add that most of it was fun. "We're like kids. The big kids, they're OK when they're one on one with you. But when there's a whole group of them they kind of become a pack of wolves. But I forgive them."

Now his challenge is to use the Comedy Central special he gets as first prize to convince the skeptics he deserves it. Monday's early crowd was in his corner, but Phan broke his material into two brief sets and yielded the headline spot to the more experienced Mark Cohen.

Phan wants to update the already familiar part of the act to bring his saga full circle. "I want it to be a complete story," he says of one where there is only one way to improve the ending:

"I'm going to save a burning church with some nuns," he jokes.