Last fall when Hawaii comedian and TV show host Andy Bumatai found himself in a creative slump, he turned to the roots of local humor: pidgin English.
An’ jus’ la dat, inspiration wen slap da braddah upside da head.
The 62-year-old Bumatai transformed an online search for ideas — a daily writing experiment, really — into a new TV show, “The Weekly Daily Pidgin.” The show is a 30-minute collection of riffs about local culture hosted by Bumatai, who does everything in pidgin — commentary, news, pop quizzes, Hawaiian-language lessons and skits that tap local archetypes, such as Akama Dating Service, which promises women who can help you cook pig and back you up in one scrap.
It airs at 7 p.m. Tuesdays on KFVE The Home Team.
“There will be something in there for everyone who is interested in hearing pidgin explanations of things and Andy’s inimitable explanations of how things work locally,” said KFVE General Manager John Fink. “The show is a great opportunity for Andy to showcase, in a humorous way, a lot of local life.”
Bumatai’s most recent shows, “In the Car” and “Toolin’ Around,” have done well on KFVE, but despite four years of hard work, he was unable to break into national markets. So on Oct. 19 Bumatai decided to throw new ideas onto YouTube and see what fans thought.
“I said to myself, I will create a video every day until I figure out my groove, and I will put them on YouTube and I don’t care if it sucks,” he said. “Every day I will get up and make one. And I was saying in these videos that I am looking for my groove.”
If he was lucky, 150 people watched.
None of Bumatai’s videos were all-out pidgin until his 42nd video, when he riffed on the U.S. Census Bureau declaring pidgin a language. It had subtitles in standard English because Bumatai stood too far on one side of the camera when he shot it.
It went up at midnight, and by morning Bumatai’s pidgin news had 100,000 views. Three days later he had a million views.
“I hit a chord,” he said. “It’s because of the migrated Hawaiians, the people who are all over the world who can’t afford to live here and miss Hawaii.”
Enthusiastic fans posted comments with the videos. Some haven’t spoken pidgin in years, but the videos bring it back. Last week a Chicago woman said her aging mother, an Alzheimer’s patient who had stopped speaking, began laughing at Bumatai’s pidgin routine on YouTube, the comedian said.
Bumatai has continued to produce the roughly eight-minute videos every day. (Barring technical glitches, No. 77 will post today.)
Bumatai brought his idea to KFVE in December. Fink agreed to 20 shows over the next 12 months.
“This gets him back to the niche he is best known for, local comedy,” Fink said. “Andy is arguably one of the two or three funniest comedians of all time in Hawaii.”
Bumatai is a one-man production. He does all the work himself at his Mililani home: producing, writing, acting, recording, editing.
Bumatai, who has made local audiences laugh since 1978, hopes the show will resonate with viewers, but he isn’t exactly sure who will watch.
“I think it will be local people who miss local comedy on television,” he said. “I’m at the point where I have to throw it out there. If everybody starts spitting coffee, then I gotta change something.”
AND that’s a wrap …
Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.
