Anthony Jeselnik

Texas Travesty: You were in Austin for SXSW, did you enjoy your time in the city?

Anthony Jeselnik: I loved it. I was here before the big music weekend and I had a great time.

TT: I heard there was someone that heckled your act during SXSW for being too offensive. I think it was something about the erase the r-word campaign.

AJ: Kind of. I was talking to these people in the audience and this woman was walking down the aisle to get to her seat and I just like stopped her and I asked her what she did for a living and she said that she helped mentally handicapped adults and we just got into it about the word “retarded” and she was not pleased but it was fun.

TT: Is it hard to maintain your on-stage persona when something like that is happening?

AJ: Not hard at all. It becomes very easy. If someone is trying to tell what I can and can’t say on stage it literally becomes the most fun thing ever and I can be sucked in because I can get away with it.

TT: How much of that is just a persona?

AJ: I would say at this point maybe like 80/20 percent persona to me. Some of it is just like a philosophy that I felt when I was nine years younger. You know, like I wasn’t going to take any crap and I was going to show all these people and jokes about how I’m an atheist and I don’t care what anyone says and break every taboo and now I’m a little more…

TT: Do you ever find your persona restricting with regards to trying different kinds of material?

AJ: It’s very restricting, which is kind of what I like about it because it forces you to thread the needle with jokes and things that I talk about. It’s incredibly restricting. Success tends to restrict you though because now I can’t get away with an absurd joke. I can get away with something really mean and almost repulsive but I can’t get away with silly.

TT: What do you do with the sillier, more absurd material you come up with?

AJ: I try things. I notice that the audience tends to reject things if it’s too weird. It’s fun to do sometimes, but sometimes I can’t get away with it.

TT: Your jokes, as dark as they are, are extremely well crafted. What steps do you take to avoid having all of the laughs come from the shock of the subject matter?

AJ: Well, thank you. The only steps I can really take are to write a lot of jokes. I can usually tell if something is really clever and smart, like if I couldn’t see it coming, then it must be good. I like the dark twist at the end because it gets a bigger laugh. Like if people are laughing at a joke for the wrong reasons, I will try and get that out of my act.

TT: Is it difficult tossing a joke that might be too easy, but is fun to tell?

AJ: Sure. If something’s really clever and I get a kick out of it, then I’ll tell it, but usually for me to get a kick out of a joke, it has to be smart. You know, I’ve got jokes that people do not laugh at all that I know are really clever and I tell anyway.

TT: How long did it take you to put together the material for your album?

AJ: Everyday of my life until I recorded it. The album was kind of done at about eight years in. I started telling jokes the way I do now about a year into comedy, so it probably took about seven years of trial and error. Now I’m trying to turn things over and do an hour special in about a year or so and I’m just trying to write all new stuff. It’s very tough but its good because I have to set the bar for myself and it’s not easy.

TT: Did you just completely dump your old material or are you slowly filtering it out?

AJ: I’m slowly replacing jokes. As a new joke comes in, an old joke comes out.

TT: You mostly tell short jokes, do you ever experiment with longer bits?

AJ: I love longer things and in my act I have longer stories that are usually stories about jokes. Like, “Here’s a story about what I tried to tell this on TV or here’s a story when I told this joke a small town.”I’m always looking for longer and shorter jokes. If I could come up with a two word joke, I would be thrilled.

TT: Is it rare for a joke to come into your head fully formed?

AJ: It happens a decent amount, you know. What I usually try to do is force my mind to craft a joke. Usually I’ll focus on an idea. Let’s say I wanted to make a joke about alligator wrestling and I’ll try to write a bunch of different ones about that topic. Hopefully if I do that and if I try to write everyday for like an hour or so, then my mind will be working in that kind of forward motion and a joke will just pop into my head. If I don’t work at it, then the jokes don’t come.

TT: When pushing the envelope with controversial material, is there a line that you draw or is anything fair game?

AJ: There’s no line. Comedy to me is me being able to say anything that I want. I can literally do anything that I want and it’s under the umbrella of comedy. People still try to tell me that I can’t talk about certain things and it drives me crazy. There’s no better way to get me to make fun of something than by telling me that I shouldn’t talk about it, which I love and that’s the best thing about comedy.

TT: That makes sense.

AJ: I’m in a place now where I can almost get away with anything because I’ve almost become infamous for saying the dirty thing or the edgy thing. People expect it. It’s almost hard for me to do something without rape in it. But there is no line. There is absolutely no line.

TT: Have you ever had a hairy encounter after a show because of your subject matter?

AJ: No. I’ve had people come up to me and say I shouldn’t talk about something, but it’s almost always a friend. People came up a few times when I was younger, because maybe then they thought they could influence me but that never worked out.

TT: You seem to have a well placed smile or laugh that comes to your face some of your darkest jokes. Is that your natural response or is it a conscious way of letting yourself seem human to the audience?

AJ: I don’t do it to humanize myself, I know that’s the effect it has, but it’s not intentional. I get a kick out of these jokes too and I think that what I do is very funny, so when an audience laughs really hard at a certain joke that they shouldn’t be laughing at, it really cracks me up and I have to smile. It’s not like, “Oh this is so funny I can’t help but laugh at it,” but me laughing at the crowd for going so nuts and it’s not intentional at all. If it was, it wouldn’t really work.

TT: Are you a dark person off the stage?

AJ: I’m a dark person and I think I’m fascinated by death and why that makes people afraid and why people get upset. Like, it’s fascinating to me that the word “retarded” has become so taboo almost all of a sudden. You’ll never hear a retarded person say, “Don’t say retarded.” They don’t give a shit. The fact that people get so mad is fascinating. Trying to make people laugh at these awful, awful things is what I like most about comedy. I don’t know if I’m that dark as a person, I think we all have dark tendencies, for sure. But nothing like what I am on stage. That’s the most fun way to make people laugh: through darkness.

TT: Do you take steps to avoid being formulaic?

AJ: My jokes don’t have a formula but I am formulaic. It’ll be like, here’s a harmless set-up and then an awful punchline or like here’s an awful set-up that turns into a harmless punchline. I don’t think you can sit on my jokes and try and guess the punchline, I think people try to and the jokes are almost set-up for people to try and figure them out, but I don’t think you can. I think I avoid formula because the punchline is so unpredictable.

TT: Did you always have this style when you started out doing comedy?

AJ: No. I always liked one-liners the most and I loved guys like Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg and it seemed impossible to do, like these guys were geniuses who were able to pull this off. I couldn’t write those jokes.

I had taken a course in Los Angeles and I talked about my life and I was 23 or 24 years old and just thought I was boring as shit could be. I couldn’t care less about the stories I was even telling and I would tell them over and over again. Then one day, I saw a guy doing an open mic and doing one liners and I thought, oh my god! Those are smart, those are funny, that’s it! So I started doing one liners. I asked myself, “What is the funniest thing in the world to me?” And at the time for me it was Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey. So I bought all of his books and I would just take them with me wherever I went and I would just read through them for like an hour and I would write my own jokes. They were very Jack Handey-esque. And after like a year of doing those, I started finding that the meaner the punchline was, the bigger the laugh and I thought oh, this is it! It was then a question of who do I have to become to tell these jokes. If I want to tell homerun, smart, mean oneliners who would I have to be? So, the persona formed around the jokes.

TT: You worked as a writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Did you ever find it confining working for a show that already had such a defined voice and style?

AJ: It’s funny because there was actually no defined voice and style when I was there. It was more about getting a group of funny, diverse, talented people together and seeing what we come up with. I was there from like the first day. I was one of the first writers they hired so I was there from the beginning to about a year in when I left. It was just kind of a blind panic that first year, trying to see what would stick. As a monologue writer, we’d all just write as many jokes as we could because Jimmy didn’t have a voice yet. We would find out what his voice was based on what he’d say “yes” and “no” to. We were always kind of chasing that and now I think they kind of have their style more set up. But that first year it was all about writing like a million jokes to see what he’d like.

TT: It sounds more difficult having to craft jokes when you don’t know the person’s voice.

AJ: Yeah, you’d figure it out as you went, but I didn’t really care. I wrote about what I thought was really funny. It was always a struggle. I was writing 75 jokes a day and get like 2 jokes on the air. It wasn’t that fun. People were coming into my office saying, “Anthony, we need more jokes about Obama’s tax plan” and shit like that. And I wasn’t sure why would we want to make jokes about that, but we had to talk about the news of the day and today’s top stories, even if it was a tax plan. To me that was murder, because I didn’t care, but after a year of doing that I was a much better joke writer. It was tough not just be like, “Look this joke is brilliant. Everyone’s going to hate you for it, but it’s brilliant.” And then they’d just be like, “No, we don’t want to do that.” And of course they didn’t. Why would they listen to me? It was hilarious.

TT: The theme seems to be that more restrictions make you a better writer. Is that true?

AJ: I don’t know about “better.” I just think maybe more disciplined, more efficient. It forces you to be more creative with language if you only have a small view through which to work.

TT: Aside from timing and a sense of humor, are there any qualities that you think all great comedians should have?

AJ: I think a sense of how to take criticism. No one likes criticism, really. But if I get it from an audience member or someone else at the show, it rolls right off my back. I think it comes from school and from how I was raised. You can take in criticism in different ways like, “Hey, they’re right,” or “Ooh, that’s interesting,” or “Oh, they’re stupid.” The same person not laughing at a joke can mean several different things. Knowing when to stand your ground and when to fold, I feel like is a good trait. I don’t know if it’s inherent or a lesson learned but I think that’s what I’ve noticed in the best and most successful comedians. They know how to take criticism.

TT: What’s next for you? What are you working on now?

AJ: I’m putting together stuff for the next hour, I’m doing the next few roasts and I’m thinking about those. And I’m also thinking about some different TV show ideas so I could develop a show for myself. And that’s really in the process, it’s in the back of my mind while I’m writing these jokes to create my own show.

TT: Do you have any idea of what you’d like or what kind of show it would be?

AJ: No, it would have to be something that doesn’t hurt my stand up. The character would have to be the same whether I was the host or whether it was a sitcom. It would have to be something that would be an extension of my stand up and that I could be as proud of as my stand up. I’m just trying to find someone to work on with it and we’ll see how it goes.

TT: Does your on stage persona affect how people from networks approach you?

AJ: I think it affects people approaching me from the audience after a show. For sure. For sure. I feel like industry people get it as opposed to audience members who sometimes think that’s just how I am. I’ll make a joke at the end of my set where I sell my CDs and I say, “Guys, my CD is 10 bucks, if you want it, great. If not, you can still come and take a picture…10 bucks.” And the crowd laughs and so many people come up after and ask, “Is it really $10 for a picture?” and I have to say, “No.” People assume that there’s something there.

TT: Do you want to say something about your shows at Cap City this weekend?

AJ: I’m just really looking forward to it, you know. Austin is a great comedy town. I feel like Austin really gets it. I got to do half an hour when I was here performing [during SXSW] but I’m really looking forward to doing a longer set and hanging out with the people of Austin this weekend.

Anthony Jeselnik will be performing at the Capitol City Comedy Club from April 20- April 23. Showtimes and tickets can be found at: www.capcitycomedy.com.