Return to Liam Sullivan

The brains behind \"Shoes\"

By: Toby Nathan
4/3/2008

Perhaps Liam Sullivan is not yet a household name. But if you mention the "Shoes" viral video among YouTube addicts, you’re bound to elicit some sort of reaction, ranging from glee to complete horror. "Shoes" won the 2007 People’s Choice Award for "Favorite User-Generated Video," and has now accumulated more than 14 million views. Sullivan is the comic actor, writer, producer, director and editor behind the Liam Show, a collection of short films (including the "Shoes" video) based on characters he created. He currently has 26 videos on YouTube, and is performing on Margaret Cho’s new national tour, "Beautiful," which plays the Orpheum this Saturday. The Boston native talked with The Muse about his career, his characters, and of course, shoes.

The Muse: How did you get your start in comedy? What inspired you?Â

Liam Sullivan: Well, I have always been a kind of odd kid. I remember always just being interested in comedy and using it, because my family is really funny. My dad has dry wit, my mom is just ridiculously silly and my sense of humor was always encouraged, because that’s how we always communicated. I remember once there was this song called "Fish Heads" in the early ’80s, and we made a video to it. We had these little fish heads bowling and playing baseball, and we shot it on a Super-8 camera. There was no sound. So I’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. I did some theater around Massachusetts, and then I moved to L.A., started doing commercials, and I got into improv and sketch comedy. Â

The Muse: So you’ve been doing this for a long time. Where do you come up with your characters? Your "Shoes" video is an Internet phenomenon in part because the characters are so interesting. Â

L.S.: I was talking to this girl at a party. She started talking about her shoes and how much she spends on shoes, and pointed to her shoes and said, "These shoes cost $300." She had this sort of obsessive voice, and that just started it. I mean, everyone knows about the age-old thoughts on women and their shoes, and I just sort of took that and rolled with it. So Kelly was inspired by the people in L.A.Â

With all my characters, I just really want people to know who these people are. The character always comes first, and then from there I write a song or a skit. Aunt Susan, for example, is someone that I’ve never seen in regular programming anywhere, but everyone knows who they are as soon as you see them.Â

The Muse:Â Do you intend for your characters to be social commentary or a parody of anything?Â

L.S.: If there is any political stuff, [it’s] just really to establish who these people are and what they believe in. Whether or not that’s making a statement [is] up to the viewer.Â

The Muse: Do you have anything you’d like to say to Boston University?Â

L: I wanna give a shout out to Allston. I used to live there.