Hecklers are the bane of every performer's existence. Usually, they're just obnoxious egoists who can't stand anyone else getting the spotlight. They can usually be taken care of with a sharp retort.
Actor-comedian Jamie Kennedy had one especially memorable encounter with a heckler, "in Canada when a guy came onstage and tried to tackle me. Security guys got him and were going to throw him out, but I decided to let him stay. Then he tried it again and again. Each time, I relented until I finally just let him come onstage and we hugged it out."
Heckling is very much on Kennedy's mind as he comes to Reno for his first time, playing at the Grand Sierra this Saturday. He co-produced, with Michael Addis, the documentary "Heckler," which screened at both Tribeca and AFI festivals. It's now out on DVD.
"It's all about heckling, obviously, and how heckling is very common and how people deal with it all the way from onstage to what we call online heckling," he says by phone from Los Angeles.
The film includes commentary by a wide range of personalities, including Bill Maher, George Lucas, Mike Ditka, even Rob Zombie.
It's just part of life for Kennedy, who seems to have his fingers in as many pies as Marie Callender's has on its menu. Chalk it up to his varied experiences in show business, from being one of the young extras in "Dead Poets Society" to his breakout – some would say scene-stealing – exposure in "Scream" and "Scream 2."
He's been a street hustler in "As Good As It Gets," Sampson in Baz Luhrman's "Romeo + Juliet," and a wannabe cinematographer in "Bowfinger."
"And now I'm in 'Ghost Whisperer,' " he announces, joining Jennifer Love Hewitt in the CBS series' new season, "playing a new character, taking me back a little to my 'Scream' days, a guy who basically is a psychologist and professor who can see and hear dead people and is learning to cope with his powers."
Kennedy is now mostly pursuing his stand-up career, taking characters from his television series "The Jamie Kennedy Experiment" and translating them to stage "along with stories of my life, all comedy and definitely for ages 18 and up. I'm not down and dirty, but I am adult."
Kennedy recently visited the Los Angeles Laugh Factory and heard a comedian named K-von. Kennedy liked his act and asked K-von to tour with him.
K-von says, "He's (Kennedy) not very social when you first get to meet him, and he asked me what I was doing for the next four weeks. He was going on tour to Arizona and Florida and other places and told me to check his Web site and figure it out, so I bought a ticket to Tempe, and when I found him backstage he told me to 'Get up there. You're here to host the shows.' "
K-von says his name is a phonetically accurate version of his real name, but he won't spell it out. He says only that it's Persian ("I'm half Persian, half Scottish, Hairy Pottish, a good name if you know many Persians").
He was born in Reno, where he lived until he was 10, when his parents moved to Las Vegas. He returned to Reno to get a degree in business at the University of Nevada.
"People hear and see my stage name and they think I'm a rapper. Then they hear me and realize I'm boy band," K-von says.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Jamie Kennedy and K-vonWHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday at Grand Sierra
TICKETS: $25, $35; (775) 789-2285, grandsierraresort.com or ticketmaster.com.
GOOD EATS: Dining options at the Grand Sierra run the gamut, but the audience for this show may be most happy at Johnny Rocket's, located just outside the showroom, before and after the show serving hamburgers in a '50s-style retro diner, complete with table jukeboxes filled with classic rock.
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