Josh Kornbluth is funny.

• Author: Lewis, Andrea

"Oh, hi! I'm Josh Kornbluth. I hope you're all feeling comfortable."

The unassuming words that begin the film Haiku Tunnel (2001) are much like those that greet visitors to Kornbluth's web site (www.joshkombluth.com) and much like the man himself: straight ahead, friendly, intriguing, and, well, unusual.

For years, Kornbluth was one of those artsy cult figures known primarily in lefty political circles and among urban aficionados of solo theater performance. That was until his film Haiku Tunnel, co-written with his brother Jacob, surprised the hell out of everyone. Who woulda thunk that a film created by, and starring, a strange man who looks like a modern-day Benjamin Franklin in Hawaiian-print shirts would even get made in Hollywood? The Los Angeles Times described the film as a "sly and captivating comedy of imaginative leaps and gently orchestrated pandemonium." And it lauded Kornbluth's "astute comic presence."

Based on what Kornbluth described as his "late-'80s misadventures as a really, really bad legal secretary," Haiku Tunnel at first appears to be a trip through the bizarre corridors of life in the workaday corporate world where bosses give minions stultifyingly long documents about what's expected of them. More to the point, however, the film is an expedition into the extraordinarily peculiar mind of Josh Kornbluth. You don't have to have worked in a corporate law office to enjoy Kornbluth's response to a supervisor's questions about why he's been coming in so late ("I'm having vague personal problems"). And he has a fine appreciation for the absurd nature of corporate speak. ("It looks like a desk in a hallway," Kornbluth's character accurately notes while being shown his new work area. "But she says it's a `room' so it must be a room.") It's one thing for the worker to be gleeful when letters mistakenly sent to the wrong printer are finally tracked down. It's another for the letters to cheerfully respond to being found: "You've come for us!"

At times, Kornbluth's work is reminiscent of Woody Allen's or to a greater extent Spalding Gray's. All three writer-performers let their neuroses loose. But while Allen and Gray are almost apologetic about their "issues," Kornbluth exults in his.

As Kornbluth tells me over breakfast at his "office," a local Berkeley cafe and eatery, his creative journey so far has been an ambling one. Kornbluth was born in New York City in 1959,and his parents split up when Josh was six months old. Like...