Speaker 1: Will Anderson is one of Australia's most experienced comedians, and
Speaker 1: his wisdom and understanding of his craft reflects that he's
Speaker 1: become so accustomed to the stage that he now writes
Speaker 1: his shows not on paper, but live in front of
Speaker 1: an audience. After more than twenty five years in the business,
Speaker 1: Will has trained his mind to filter pretty much everything,
Speaker 1: his thoughts, his feelings, and his day to day experiences
Speaker 1: through the lens of comedy. In fact, he can't even
Speaker 1: look at the bookshelf in my recording studio without turning
Speaker 1: it into a bit. Will shares how his process has
Speaker 1: developed over more than two decades of practice and explains
Speaker 1: why the nights when he's not in the mood to
Speaker 1: perform are the most important ones. My name is doctor
Speaker 1: amanthe Immer. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of
Speaker 1: behavioral science consultancy Inventium, and this is how I work
Speaker 1: a show about how to help you do your best work.
Speaker 1: In Will's new book, he talks about two distinct states
Speaker 1: of stand up comedy, creation and recreation. So I asked
Speaker 1: Will to define both of those states and how he
Speaker 1: approaches them.
Speaker 2: Thank you for asking that. By the way, I appreciate
Speaker 2: that because to me, that's the most interesting bit of
Speaker 2: the book, and I don't think it's something that anybody
Speaker 2: else is going to ask me about it really is.
Speaker 2: I may have come to the right place just for
Speaker 2: this question alone, because to me it is the most
Speaker 2: compelling idea in my life, which is I constantly wrestle
Speaker 2: with this, which is I So I'm not sure that
Speaker 2: I have a strict definition. The way that I describe
Speaker 2: it in the book is I talk about, you know,
Speaker 2: stand up comedy is the example that I use. I
Speaker 2: think it has broader ramifications, and I think you know
Speaker 2: what we'll do is we'll explore that a little bit more.
Speaker 2: But for me, just do your stand up comedy as
Speaker 2: the starting point our way into it. I talk about
Speaker 2: the idea of creating stand up comedy. When you're first
Speaker 2: working an idea, presenting it to an audience, getting the
Speaker 2: feedback of it. That's a state of creation. You are
Speaker 2: coming up with the idea, you're exploring the idea, you're
Speaker 2: seeing where the idea might go, and then eventually stand
Speaker 2: up comedy a lot of the time becomes a process
Speaker 2: of recreation, which is essentially it's the equivalent of focus
Speaker 2: grouping your material being a stand up comedian, because the
Speaker 2: more you do it, instead of being in the moment
Speaker 2: that night and trying to make the joke work there
Speaker 2: for that audience, what you tend to do is start
Speaker 2: a process of going, well, this is the wording or
Speaker 2: the way that I've said this joke the most times
Speaker 2: where it's worked the most time. So therefore, coming into tonight,
Speaker 2: if I word it that way and I present it
Speaker 2: in that way, it is most likely to work tonight
Speaker 2: based on the previous information that I have. So for me,
Speaker 2: the process of creation has always been so much more
Speaker 2: interesting than the process of recreation. And as I have
Speaker 2: developed as a performer, developed as a stand up comedian,
Speaker 2: what I've really tried to do is how can I
Speaker 2: keep that process of creation alive when you are by
Speaker 2: the very nature of having done the thing a lot
Speaker 2: of times, Because it's not like you can constantly be
Speaker 2: if you are doing the same show, if you're trying
Speaker 2: to present this story, this routine, this emotion, this journey
Speaker 2: for the audience, it's not like you can do it
Speaker 2: completely differently every night. That would make no sense at all.
Speaker 2: There is some process of recreation that is entirely necessary
Speaker 2: to that process. But how do I engage with the
Speaker 2: creative process, the process of being in the moment and
Speaker 2: creating on the spot and having that one on one
Speaker 2: conversation with that audience from the night. How can I
Speaker 2: infuse that into the necessary process of recreation.
Speaker 1: You describe yourself as an observational comedian, and I would
Speaker 1: imagine that your powers of observation and listening in terms
Speaker 1: of what is going on in your world has changed
Speaker 1: over around twenty five years of doing stand up comedy.
Speaker 1: What does that look like for you now when you
Speaker 1: are creating new material.
Speaker 2: I think that probably early on it is something that
Speaker 2: you are consciously doing, and then there is a time
Speaker 2: when it becomes unconscious or subconscious, like you know that
Speaker 2: you're not really thinking about the process of creation. Twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago, that creative process might have been I'll
Speaker 2: get a whole bunch of newspapers, I'll sit it down
Speaker 2: at my desk, I'll read the newspapers, I'll write jokes.
Speaker 2: My creative process doesn't look like that anymore. How do
Speaker 2: you write your book? How do you put together you show?
Speaker 2: How do you write a show? There is no answer
Speaker 2: to that, however, it needs to be done. That's how
Speaker 2: I do it.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 2: Some of it happens in my head, some of it
Speaker 2: happens in stage on stage. Some of it happens in
Speaker 2: a process of writing in the first place and then editing.
Speaker 2: Some of it happens in coming up with an idea
Speaker 2: and then going and researching and finding information. Some of
Speaker 2: it comes up with writing a routine on stage and
Speaker 2: then realizing that it's not working, so then taking it
Speaker 2: off stage where it's never been written down, writing it down,
Speaker 2: and then rearranging it. There is no consistent creative process.
Speaker 2: How does it get done. It gets done, and then
Speaker 2: at the end I can tell you how it got done,
Speaker 2: But there is I don't have a process to get
Speaker 2: it done. And in fact, what I've learned over the
Speaker 2: years is the closest I would get to having a
Speaker 2: process is they used to say about michelangel I think
Speaker 2: it was who said that the sculptures already inside the
Speaker 2: piece of stone, you just need to know which bits
Speaker 2: to get rid of, right, And that certainly probably is
Speaker 2: as close to a process that I have, which is
Speaker 2: that everything is examined through that critical eye. You know,
Speaker 2: my brain is constantly looking at every single thing that
Speaker 2: I do and picking it apart. But it's not all
Speaker 2: necessary for what I'm making. I have to work out
Speaker 2: which bits to get rid of to, you know, so
Speaker 2: the show will emerge, or the book will emerge, or
Speaker 2: the idea will emerge from you know, the clutter that
Speaker 2: is there. So constantly examining things is the process, but
Speaker 2: it is not a formal process anymore. It is a
Speaker 2: process that is just intrinsic to my being.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I was struck by something you wrote
Speaker 1: in your book I'm Not Fine, Thanks, where you talk
Speaker 1: about you've essentially trained your brain to process your thoughts
Speaker 1: on life and the world through the lens of creating
Speaker 1: a show or creating comedy and I and it sounds
Speaker 1: like a lot of that process is now unconscious. But
Speaker 1: if you were to unpack it, like what does that
Speaker 1: look like day to day? I mean, does it look
Speaker 1: like being in a cafe in mull and Bimbi and
Speaker 1: just making notes on conversations that you've had with these
Speaker 1: eccentric people that you write about in the book, for example,
Speaker 1: or do they just come back into memory at the
Speaker 1: right moment, Like, what does that look like day to day?
Speaker 2: Most of it comes back into memory at the right moment.
Speaker 2: Occasionally I'll make a note, and I tend to write
Speaker 2: every day, but like sometimes that writing isn't I most
Speaker 2: of the time I write without intention. It's observation without intention,
Speaker 2: and then it's choosing what parts of that that you
Speaker 2: need for particular projects. So I often have a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of writing, like I mean every like so like
Speaker 2: an average stand up show. And this is something I
Speaker 2: wrestle with in the book, which is the idea that
Speaker 2: I have trained my brain for, Like April twenty twenty
Speaker 2: was going to be twenty five years in a row
Speaker 2: of me doing new show, which means that every year
Speaker 2: my brain would have to process the year. And as
Speaker 2: I say in the book, you know, what does the
Speaker 2: world look like and what does my place in that
Speaker 2: world look like? That is essentially what my process is.
Speaker 2: That's what my shows are about. Every year. It is
Speaker 2: some variation of that. And certainly when that went away,
Speaker 2: my brain did not stop doing that. You know, my
Speaker 2: brain has been trained for a quarter of a century
Speaker 2: to work like that. It's your average show. If you
Speaker 2: want to do the math on it, you know, to
Speaker 2: kind of make it a little bit less airy fairy
Speaker 2: and a little under easier for people to understand. The
Speaker 2: average stand up show for sixty to seventy minutes, I
Speaker 2: am on stage written down on a piece of paper.
Speaker 2: If you wrote down every word would be somewhere between
Speaker 2: seven and eight thousand words. And I mean I could
Speaker 2: write seven or eight thousand words in a week really,
Speaker 2: Like it's not not a lot of words for me
Speaker 2: to be able to create. But generally when I go
Speaker 2: into like writing what I think the show will be,
Speaker 2: I will have a document that probably has more like
Speaker 2: seventy or eighty thousand words on it, and that will
Speaker 2: be where I start, and that will be the most
Speaker 2: interesting ideas that I've had in the last year, or
Speaker 2: the most interesting themes that I've explored in the last year,
Speaker 2: or a lot of the time it is just what,
Speaker 2: you know, what what is top of my mind? What
Speaker 2: am my most interested in? Like when I look at
Speaker 2: back at the things that I've made notes about or
Speaker 2: thought about during that year, what are the things that
Speaker 2: I find most compelling to talk about to share? And
Speaker 2: then so you start with a document that's that size,
Speaker 2: and then I start chipping away those bits of stone
Speaker 2: that don't need to be there, and then the show
Speaker 2: starts to reveal itself. You often find that you might
Speaker 2: think that you have seventy thousand words of completely, you know,
Speaker 2: non connected ideas, but once you get rid of the
Speaker 2: stuff that's not meant to be there, you realize that
Speaker 2: what you're left with is often incredibly thematic, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting with the book, you know. To
Speaker 2: use an example, I did not name the book. It's
Speaker 2: called I Am not Fine, Thanks, but I did not
Speaker 2: name the book. I handed it to the publishers and
Speaker 2: I said, I am happy for you to call it.
Speaker 2: You're the people who are experts in selling books. You
Speaker 2: tell me what you think it should be called. And
Speaker 2: they came back very quickly and they said, we want
Speaker 2: to call it I Am not fine, thanks. The truth
Speaker 2: is that it's a good name for the book because
Speaker 2: it is infused in every part of that story. Is
Speaker 2: this idea of that on a personal level, I explore
Speaker 2: being not fine, thanks, But when I talk about the world,
Speaker 2: it is very much through the perspective of I don't
Speaker 2: think that things are fine, thanks, And here is why
Speaker 2: I don't think these things are fine. So I did
Speaker 2: not sit down with that theme. I didn't have a
Speaker 2: piece of paper that said I am not fine, thanks,
Speaker 2: and then wrote a book that was thematic to it.
Speaker 2: I wrote a book, and this theme revealed itself from
Speaker 2: the book, and that is That is a very good
Speaker 2: example of mostly how my work tends to create itself.
Speaker 2: I write what I'm interested in and that I look
Speaker 2: at it, and it tends to have it often tends
Speaker 2: to have a cohesive theme that emerges from it. But
Speaker 2: I let the show tell me what it is rather
Speaker 2: than me try to impose on the show what I
Speaker 2: think it should be.
Speaker 1: I got to say, I love the title. I remember
Speaker 1: I read that in your book, that it was the
Speaker 1: publishers that named it, and it's such a it's a
Speaker 1: perfect title, Like having read it, I can't imagine a
Speaker 1: better title for it. So I think that that is great.
Speaker 1: And gosh, I know how much obsessing goes into the
Speaker 1: naming of a book. I think it's one of the
Speaker 1: hardest parts of the project. I want to delve a
Speaker 1: bit deeper into the editing. So you're essentially cutting ninety
Speaker 1: percent of the material to get to your show. How
Speaker 1: do you know what is what is worthy and what
Speaker 1: is going to elicit the best real action from your audience,
Speaker 1: because I imagine largely you're creating this first draft of a
Speaker 1: show in a bubble instead of, you know, regularly doing
Speaker 1: test shows throughout that process. Like, is that a fair assumption?
Speaker 2: So the real answer is I don't know. That's the
Speaker 2: real answer. I don't know. I'm guessing. I absolutely am guessing.
Speaker 2: I'm constantly guessing, And anybody tells you that they're not
Speaker 2: guessing is lying to you, because everybody is guessing in
Speaker 2: the world. Now. Sometimes you have been guessing enough in
Speaker 2: your particular industry that you get better at guessing about
Speaker 2: how things might work than people who have not been
Speaker 2: guessing as often as you are guessing. But the truth
Speaker 2: of it is that I am aware that I am
Speaker 2: always guessing, and particularly with stand up comedy or comedy
Speaker 2: in general, it is a process of guess work, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you guess wrong and you dust yourself off, and
Speaker 2: next time you try to guess better. I don't know
Speaker 2: what's going to work. I absolutely don't know what's going
Speaker 2: to work. And I often say to people, if you
Speaker 2: want to see what I thought the show was going
Speaker 2: to be, you have to come on the first night.
Speaker 2: So This comes back to this idea of that process
Speaker 2: of creation and recreation. In the process of creation, I'm
Speaker 2: guessing at what I think the show might be. And then,
Speaker 2: of course, by then doing the show, you go through
Speaker 2: this process of the audience telling you, yes, that is
Speaker 2: what the show is. No, that is not what the
Speaker 2: show is, and then it becomes a collaboration between you
Speaker 2: and the audience what the show is. By the time
Speaker 2: I get to the end of the tour, the show
Speaker 2: is not the show that I started the tour with.
Speaker 2: So you know, you could look at that and go, well,
Speaker 2: I was wrong. I was wrong a lot. I needed
Speaker 2: some external feedback to shape, you know, what the show
Speaker 2: was going to be. It becomes a collaboration, a two
Speaker 2: way conversation between me and my audience. But that's not
Speaker 2: entirely how I write now, So that would be an
Speaker 2: unfair or misslee weight, because a lot of how I
Speaker 2: write now is through the process of these improvise shows
Speaker 2: that I do, where I very much go on stage
Speaker 2: with Will I will have perhaps written that seventy thousand
Speaker 2: word document and I'll have a sense of what's in there,
Speaker 2: but I certainly haven't. You know, he's gone this is
Speaker 2: a joke, or this is a routine, or this is
Speaker 2: you know where, how the structure of this piece will be.
Speaker 2: It's very much that idea of here are some themes
Speaker 2: that I'm interested in, or some topics that I'm interested in,
Speaker 2: and then I will go on stage and do these
Speaker 2: improvise shows, which are what it says on the ticket.
Speaker 2: They are completely made up on the spot. I talk
Speaker 2: to the audience, I open my mouth, I see what
Speaker 2: comes out. The way I describe it is like jumping
Speaker 2: out of a plane without a parachute and then trying
Speaker 2: to learn how to fly on the way down. But
Speaker 2: that is it connects with a different part of my
Speaker 2: creativity than sitting in front of a computer or sitting
Speaker 2: in front of a notepad in a cafe would, because
Speaker 2: there is an engagement with your creative brain that is
Speaker 2: unleashed by the necessity of an audience being there needing
Speaker 2: to be entertained. It is very easy to convince myself
Speaker 2: sitting in my office in the comfort of my own
Speaker 2: space that something is amusing. But the minute that you
Speaker 2: are out there in front of an audience, armed with
Speaker 2: nothing more than your imagination, in that moment, needing to
Speaker 2: entertain them, then your brain, by necessity, engages in a
Speaker 2: different way. So a lot of my creative process these
Speaker 2: days happens in that furnace of walking out unarmed in
Speaker 2: front of an audience and seeing what happens now, Then
Speaker 2: what will happen after that is I will then take
Speaker 2: those ideas back to the drawing board and play with
Speaker 2: them and structure them and see what worked or what
Speaker 2: I unlocked that I hadn't thought about, or a way
Speaker 2: that I attacked an idea that wasn't how I thought
Speaker 2: I would attack it, Or I'll find in the moment
Speaker 2: a connection between two ideas that wasn't obvious to me
Speaker 2: when I had them written down in front of me.
Speaker 2: So there is a structural creative space that I have
Speaker 2: signed myself up to. You know that some people, I imagine
Speaker 2: would find quite terrifying, but I find actually invigorating. It's
Speaker 2: my favorite part of the process. Again, I like the
Speaker 2: creation more than I like the recreation, and so for me,
Speaker 2: that's the purest of the creative state, you know, like
Speaker 2: I'm just there, me, a microphone, my ideas and audience
Speaker 2: and no nothing to lose. Yet I guess that's the
Speaker 2: other thing too. I mean, I think that audience, there
Speaker 2: would be people listening to this who would think that's
Speaker 2: terrifying you you know, Like, no, I'm much more terrified
Speaker 2: when a joke I think is good doesn't work, as
Speaker 2: opposed to at that point where I don't have any
Speaker 2: attachment to anything because I don't have a plan. You know,
Speaker 2: this is just purely you know, me working it out,
Speaker 2: like you know, being in the space where it's fun.
Speaker 2: You know, this is my brain is firing and I'm
Speaker 2: testing myself and I'm exploring my imagination and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to push myself to go to places that I haven't
Speaker 2: gone before. It's actually much more scary as you're then
Speaker 2: trying to structure something and put it together and road
Speaker 2: test it when it's when it's not working. When when
Speaker 2: something that you've just made up on the spot doesn't work, well,
Speaker 2: I had no attachment to it anyway, so I'm not
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't destroy me that it's not working now.
Speaker 1: So will when you're trying to create a joke, how
Speaker 1: loosely or tightly are you scripting that? And the you know,
Speaker 1: the key points or things that you need to land on.
Speaker 2: I mean, eventually tightly, not at the start. I try
Speaker 2: to keep it very loose at the start. As I said,
Speaker 2: that process of picking apart an idea. So okay, So
Speaker 2: on the bookshelf behind you, I love it. By the
Speaker 2: way that obviously not everybody can see this, but there's
Speaker 2: a bookshelf behind you. There's what I'm looking at at
Speaker 2: the moment. Is my first observation is that, like me,
Speaker 2: you color code your books as opposed to alphabet ties
Speaker 2: or or you know. So I love that. So that's
Speaker 2: the first thing that I noticed. I also noticed that
Speaker 2: the bookshelf is different shapes, you know, there's different shapes
Speaker 2: and sizes like on that bookshelf, like you know, which
Speaker 2: means that there's only certain books that you could put
Speaker 2: it on different shelves because of the sizes of them,
Speaker 2: which affects the way that you would check the stack
Speaker 2: those books. I wonder if there's been a choice in
Speaker 2: the way the colors are arranged, if you've like designed
Speaker 2: it with the rest of the room, whether you like
Speaker 2: you know, there is a procession from like blue to
Speaker 2: red to orange to yellow. You know, you've got a
Speaker 2: doctor Seuss quote up there on the corner, like you know,
Speaker 2: and and you know, so for me, my brain just
Speaker 2: starts to look at all these things and pick them
Speaker 2: apart and just think, there's plants in the corner. I
Speaker 2: wonder if they're real plants. I wonder if in a
Speaker 2: room where you've got carpets, you've got plants on the shelves,
Speaker 2: are you're watering those? Like do you have to make
Speaker 2: sure that there's something under those plants that you don't
Speaker 2: have a spot there on the carpet that's going to
Speaker 2: get damp? Like what is this room? Like is this
Speaker 2: a place that you actually come to read or is
Speaker 2: it just like an office where you record that? Like
Speaker 2: is this the place where you read those books? Are
Speaker 2: those books they're in the background because you're trying to
Speaker 2: send some sort of signal when you do this podcast
Speaker 2: that like, look at me, I'm a person who reads books,
Speaker 2: and this is like my background, Like these are just
Speaker 2: I don't mean those any of those things as like
Speaker 2: anything other than trying to give you an example of
Speaker 2: these other thoughts that are constantly happening in my brain
Speaker 2: while we are, Like I'm having this conversation with you,
Speaker 2: but all these things are also happening in my brain
Speaker 2: at the same time. So initially that's how everything gets examined.
Speaker 2: So if I am looking at, you know, my observations
Speaker 2: of what it's like to live in the anti VAXXS
Speaker 2: capital of Australia at the height of a global pandemic,
Speaker 2: originally I have thousands of thoughts about that. It's about
Speaker 2: trying to get through the noise to try and work
Speaker 2: out which of those thoughts are compelling or interesting or
Speaker 2: even just a place to start.
Speaker 1: So I want to ask, like, on the on what
Speaker 1: you've been observing in the backdrop? Where where then would
Speaker 1: the humor come in?
Speaker 2: Not sure yet, Like maybe it would be something like yeah,
Speaker 2: if I was going to say this, it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: just for example, like and we're really just early on
Speaker 2: here as going, is it mean to put, you know,
Speaker 2: plants so next to the thing that plants are destroyed
Speaker 2: to make books, Like is that rude to the plants?
Speaker 2: Are there? Plants very just nervously there in the corner
Speaker 2: going I hope I never turned into a tree and
Speaker 2: then somebody's going to chop me down and turn me
Speaker 2: into one of these books. It's really like, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, this feels a little inappropriate to these plants,
Speaker 2: like making them seem so close to these books. You know,
Speaker 2: it might be something dumb like that, or the idea
Speaker 2: that like literally on the other side you have you know,
Speaker 2: there's doctor SEUs, there's paintings of plants that match the
Speaker 2: pots on the other side, and I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: like I mean to me the comedic idea of how
Speaker 2: that was arranged, Like the idea that That's one of
Speaker 2: the things we say I'm growing all the time is
Speaker 2: assume everything's on purpose the first time that you do something.
Speaker 2: Assume that every decision that someone has made, the fact
Speaker 2: that your jumper that you're wearing today matches the books
Speaker 2: that are immediately behind you, is that on purpose? Like
Speaker 2: imagine if it was on purpose, what would that mean comediically? Now,
Speaker 2: that might absolutely go nowhere, right, But it's just about
Speaker 2: exploring that idea, thinking about how can I tear this
Speaker 2: apart to see if there's anything interesting in there that
Speaker 2: I can then rebuild. So that firstly, it's about finding
Speaker 2: the ingredients, seeing if anything just appears to me, what
Speaker 2: is the most compelling thing to me, what is the
Speaker 2: most compelling idea that I am observing here, and then
Speaker 2: trying to get rid of some of the other stuff
Speaker 2: so that you can concentrate on that more and then
Speaker 2: try to create something humorous out of the observation.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Will soon talking about what
Speaker 1: he does when he has a bad day but he
Speaker 1: still has to get on stage to perform that night.
Speaker 1: If you're looking for more tips to improve the way
Speaker 1: that you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that
Speaker 1: contains three cool things that I've discovered that helped me
Speaker 1: work better, ranging from software and gadgets that I'm loving
Speaker 1: through to interesting research findings. You can sign up for
Speaker 1: that at Howiwork dot code. That's how I work dot co.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about recreation because when I was reading
Speaker 1: your book and you know, you're obviously so passionate about
Speaker 1: the creation stage, thinking how do you maintain your enthusiasm
Speaker 1: for recreation? And you know, once you've got the show
Speaker 1: sort of iterated to a point where those jokes are
Speaker 1: scripted in their finest, how you maintain your enthusiasm? But maybe, like,
Speaker 1: let's let's work through that iteration, Like what do those
Speaker 1: first two weeks of a stand up show look like?
Speaker 1: For example, you're recording every performance and listening to it
Speaker 1: or watching it back, and what are you listening or
Speaker 1: looking for? What does that look like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I record every performance and I would say
Speaker 2: ninety nine point nine percent of those have never been
Speaker 2: listened to. What I have them, I have them all.
Speaker 2: The truth of it is that I know, like it's
Speaker 2: rare that I don't immediately know what worked or what
Speaker 2: didn't work. It's it's I guess that's just having done
Speaker 2: it long enough that I really have to go to
Speaker 2: the video replay to work out why something worked or
Speaker 2: did not work. Occasionally, if something works, it like it's rare.
Speaker 2: If it goes wrong, I almost always know why it
Speaker 2: went wrong. Sometimes. The thing that is harder to reconcile
Speaker 2: is sometimes people will laugh at something that you hadn't
Speaker 2: really intended to be funny, and that is more interesting,
Speaker 2: like on the night when you get a laugh on
Speaker 2: a line or a way you said something, if you've
Speaker 2: said something in a way that you've never said it before,
Speaker 2: and it works so much better than it's ever worked before.
Speaker 2: So that in part answers the question that brought us
Speaker 2: into this was how do I keep that process of
Speaker 2: recreation in it. I now get to a point where
Speaker 2: I will structure a joke or a routine in a
Speaker 2: way that so, for example, if I am going to
Speaker 2: tell the story of like moving to the anti VAXs
Speaker 2: capital of the world at the height of a global pandemic, say,
Speaker 2: this is going to be yeah, So I want to
Speaker 2: introduce this idea because this I need to This needs
Speaker 2: to be the premise at the top. So I need
Speaker 2: to have a joke that sets that's that up. Now,
Speaker 2: how do I set that up? What do I want
Speaker 2: to do with that? So here's what's interesting to me.
Speaker 2: I'm a man who believes in science and the scientific method.
Speaker 2: So this is how I'm just trying to run you
Speaker 2: through how I would explore this idea. Because what I
Speaker 2: don't want to do is start I know that at
Speaker 2: some stage I'm going to be making a little fun of,
Speaker 2: at least the ideas of some people in the community.
Speaker 2: I hope that I'm not making fun of the community itself.
Speaker 2: Like I very very much like to stress the idea
Speaker 2: that I separate the person from the idea that good
Speaker 2: people can have bad ideas and bad baboo can have
Speaker 2: good ideas. That's the worst one. But I want to
Speaker 2: set something out so Firstly, I want to make a
Speaker 2: joke at my own expense. This is just structural stuff, right,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to talk to you through how I would
Speaker 2: structure this. If I know I'm going to be making
Speaker 2: fun of other people later, what I want to do
Speaker 2: first is make fun of myself first, so that people
Speaker 2: are aware that I am first willing to laugh at
Speaker 2: me before I am willing to laugh at other people.
Speaker 2: So this is when I talk about structure. This is
Speaker 2: very important. If I flip them around the other way
Speaker 2: changes the entire tone of the show, tone of the joke.
Speaker 2: It's important that I structure those two things in that way.
Speaker 2: So the joke that I used in the in the
Speaker 2: show and the book is like, you know, I'm a white,
Speaker 2: middle aged Australian man. I've never been a minority before, right,
Speaker 2: So like, great, okay, people immediately get a real sense
Speaker 2: of who I am as a person. But be that
Speaker 2: I have an awareness of what the context of where
Speaker 2: that joke lives, of my place in the world. That like,
Speaker 2: the idea that I've never been a minority before is
Speaker 2: a privilege, is a luxury? Right, Like that's all inherent
Speaker 2: in that line. Then after that there is a period
Speaker 2: of like, there is a line that could be like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, I've never been a minority before. I
Speaker 2: didn't like it. It's no good good ten out of
Speaker 2: ten would not recommend. Don't know how the rest of
Speaker 2: you've put up with it for so long. You know,
Speaker 2: I've never heard a word about it. Why don't you
Speaker 2: complain more? Whatever that might be. That line won't be scripted.
Speaker 2: It will be however it comes out on the night.
Speaker 2: It will be some variation of that. But in that moment,
Speaker 2: I will be listening to the audience, leaning into the
Speaker 2: if they really get that I'm you know, they get
Speaker 2: that I'm completely taking the piss actually out of white
Speaker 2: middle aged men in that joke rather than them, and
Speaker 2: they're on board with that. That could go for thirty seconds,
Speaker 2: forty five seconds. I could really lean into that. So
Speaker 2: that's the difference or how I try to combine both,
Speaker 2: like the idea of how I need something structured, here
Speaker 2: is this thing that I definitely need to do, and
Speaker 2: how I would like to keep that process in creation,
Speaker 2: which is I leave this next bit loose to be
Speaker 2: in the moment I know the intention of what I
Speaker 2: will do. There will always be some sort of riff
Speaker 2: off the back of it it But depending on the
Speaker 2: feedback I'm getting from the audience, it might be quite
Speaker 2: a short rift or it might be quite a long
Speaker 2: rift that I explore in the moment. So it's about
Speaker 2: having the thing, the structure of knowing this is the
Speaker 2: beat that I want to talk about first, This is
Speaker 2: the important stuff that needs to be said, And now
Speaker 2: here is a little room for improvisation, for icing, for flavor,
Speaker 2: for making it very unique to this night. If you
Speaker 2: came on this night, you saw this joke in this order,
Speaker 2: and then you saw the next joke in this order,
Speaker 2: but the little bit that you saw afterwards would have
Speaker 2: been different last night, and all be different again tonight.
Speaker 2: It will be in the same zone. It will have
Speaker 2: the same intention, but it won't be worded the same.
Speaker 2: It won't like so that I know that's hard maybe
Speaker 2: for people to get their head around, but it is
Speaker 2: a way I structure something is I think about what
Speaker 2: the important tent poles will be, and then I try
Speaker 2: to leave some room in that to make it unique
Speaker 2: to the experience that people are having on the night,
Speaker 2: so that I am trying to connect both with my
Speaker 2: recreative state, but also with my creative state in that
Speaker 2: moment and engage that.
Speaker 1: When you're well into a tour of a show and
Speaker 1: you're having a day or days where you are just
Speaker 1: not feeling like getting on stage and making people laugh
Speaker 1: for an hour, how are you getting into the state
Speaker 1: that you need to be at.
Speaker 2: I think it's might sound weird to people, but it's
Speaker 2: actually the opposite. It's the easiest when you're not having
Speaker 2: a hard when you're not having a good time. They
Speaker 2: people think that, I mean, look that this is an oversimplification,
Speaker 2: of course, because but life is hard more often than
Speaker 2: it is easy. I think for everybody. Really. You know,
Speaker 2: if you can only perform in perfect conditions, whatever your
Speaker 2: job might be, then it's probably a hobby not a job.
Speaker 2: You know, Roy and HG. You know, I learned something
Speaker 2: from them very early on. They were telling me a
Speaker 2: story that said they would often have you know, someone
Speaker 2: come up to me and say, O, my mates when
Speaker 2: they get together are funnier talking about sport than you
Speaker 2: guys are. And they said, yeah, that's probably true. We're
Speaker 2: just good at doing it when the red light comes on,
Speaker 2: And that is absolutely true. Everyone listening to this will
Speaker 2: have a friend who's funnier than me because they know
Speaker 2: all your stories and they can reference that time that
Speaker 2: you know, you got too drunk, or you know, whatever happened,
Speaker 2: and they're hilarious. The job of the professional comedian is
Speaker 2: to be able to be funny when the red light
Speaker 2: comes on, and so I often think the job is
Speaker 2: it's not about creating perfect conditions, for it is about
Speaker 2: your capacity to do it when the conditions aren't perfect.
Speaker 2: That separates the people who are hobbyist from the people
Speaker 2: who are professionals. And so, if anything, I find it
Speaker 2: Barry humphreyes it's a bit unfashionable, unfashionable to quote Barry
Speaker 2: Humphreys these days, but I think this is a great insight.
Speaker 2: He was once asked about, you know, what's it like
Speaker 2: to walk out on stage in front of three thousand people?
Speaker 2: What thought is going through your mind? And he said, ah,
Speaker 2: alone at last? And I think that's right. It's not
Speaker 2: entirely true, but there is something about being on stage
Speaker 2: in that moment where you cannot be thinking about anything else,
Speaker 2: you know, the very nature of having to do your
Speaker 2: job in that moment, you can get lost in the
Speaker 2: communication that you are having with the audience doing the show.
Speaker 2: You can't be thinking about whether you left the iron on,
Speaker 2: or the problems of your day, or what's going on
Speaker 2: in your life, or even the world in a way,
Speaker 2: and it's such a safe space, you know. Like Mark
Speaker 2: Maron quotes this, I don't think he was the person
Speaker 2: who originally says it, which is comedians become comedians so
Speaker 2: that they can control how people laugh at them. And
Speaker 2: I think that there is we all are aware that
Speaker 2: people are going to laugh at us, but when you're
Speaker 2: on stage, you're in control. I could be talking about
Speaker 2: the darkest things or the most desperate state of the world,
Speaker 2: but I'm in control of it. You know, for at
Speaker 2: least that hour, I am in control of it. And
Speaker 2: so the idea of whether you've had a bad day,
Speaker 2: or whether your life is falling apart or terrible, or
Speaker 2: whether the state of the world is particularly terrible. In
Speaker 2: some ways, they're my favorite times to do stand up
Speaker 2: and I think it's probably why I missed it so
Speaker 2: desperately when the world was going through such hard times,
Speaker 2: is that I didn't have that. I didn't have that
Speaker 2: hour a day where you know, I guess you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know if it was Rummed Us or you
Speaker 2: know Oasis who said be here now. But the very
Speaker 2: process of being a stand up comedian is this idea
Speaker 2: that it is mindfulness. I mean, you know at least
Speaker 2: that idea of you have to one hundred percent be
Speaker 2: in that moment, and you are at your best when
Speaker 2: you are in the moment. It's a conversation between you
Speaker 2: and the audience. I'm doing them majority of the talking,
Speaker 2: but I am constantly listening to the audience for what
Speaker 2: it is that they're engaging with. And it absolutely from
Speaker 2: night to night. This is the major variant that you
Speaker 2: will find in the show. The majority of the content
Speaker 2: is the same, but the way that it's presented can
Speaker 2: be incredibly different. Like, you know, the way that you
Speaker 2: would present the show to a Wednesday night audience in
Speaker 2: a beautiful theater, Say you're at the Art Center in Melbourne.
Speaker 2: You know on a Wednesday night. You know, people are
Speaker 2: sitting in comfortable chairs. They've paid, you know, a decent
Speaker 2: amount of money. There might be half of the crowd
Speaker 2: who own the everc shows at the Art Center. Is
Speaker 2: very different to the way that you would present those
Speaker 2: exact same jokes to a Saturday night, you know, basement
Speaker 2: comedy crowd, because the audience is different. The jokes aren't different,
Speaker 2: the presentation is different, the conversation you're having with the
Speaker 2: audience is different. You know. I use the analogy in
Speaker 2: the book about the audience being the ocean and the
Speaker 2: performers are the surfers. And you know, you can be
Speaker 2: a great surfer, but you can only serve to the
Speaker 2: conditions that are presented to you. So yeah, so the
Speaker 2: bad day thing when life's tough. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: you know, they always say that comedy is tragedy plus time,
Speaker 2: although you know what did I think mel Brooks said?
Speaker 2: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. In comedy is
Speaker 2: when you fall down an open seer and die. But
Speaker 2: I like, bad things most often lead to good comedy.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what the book is, right, Like, it's
Speaker 2: been funny to me that, like some people who've read
Speaker 2: the book have come to me with this attitude of like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's quite emotional and it's quite harrowing in parts, and
Speaker 2: it doesn't really feel like that to me. I thought
Speaker 2: it was funny, like all the things that are in there. Yes,
Speaker 2: there are some heavy topics that are discussed, and some
Speaker 2: tough things that I'm reconciling with. But the reason that
Speaker 2: all those things are in the book is because I
Speaker 2: thought I had a funny take on those things. There
Speaker 2: are things that happened. The book is dedicated to Irene
Speaker 2: and Winnie. Irene was my nan who died during COVID
Speaker 2: and I was not able to see her to say
Speaker 2: goodbye because of the restrictions. And Winnie was our dog
Speaker 2: that died very prematurely. And look, if I'd wanted to
Speaker 2: write a book where I wanted people to sit at
Speaker 2: home and you weep and you feel sorry for me,
Speaker 2: and like pull it people's heart strings, I have the
Speaker 2: skills to have written those two stories in a way
Speaker 2: that would have been absolutely tear jerking. And you know,
Speaker 2: I could have manipulated the people reading the book to
Speaker 2: have a reaction to that, you know I mean, and
Speaker 2: I'm sure the publishers would have loved it, you know,
Speaker 2: the big emotional kick in the book. But that wasn't
Speaker 2: my intention with the book. I didn't find either of
Speaker 2: those things funny, and so they're not in the book
Speaker 2: because I didn't have a funny take on them. I'm
Speaker 2: a comedian, like I'm a stand up comedian. But also,
Speaker 2: you know, when I'm writing a book or presenting things,
Speaker 2: I'm looking at, can I take this bad thing and
Speaker 2: have a comedic take on it? And so that is
Speaker 2: the way that I am trying to process these things.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think a lot of good a lot
Speaker 2: of good comedy comes from, you know, bad situations. And
Speaker 2: I think it can be quite frustrating if you are
Speaker 2: the loved one or friend of a comedian, because quite often,
Speaker 2: I think we have an incapacity to sometimes recognize or
Speaker 2: deal with the inherent shitness of a situation, because there
Speaker 2: is a part of us that the O is going, well,
Speaker 2: this will this will serve me well later I'm trying
Speaker 2: to put you know, my doctor's telling me that I
Speaker 2: might have skin cancer and I'm like, okay, great, I'm
Speaker 2: taking notes, will be great.
Speaker 1: Now your book I am not fine? Thanks, is out now.
Speaker 1: I read it over the weekend. It's brilliant. It's so funny.
Speaker 1: I was I was on holidays over the weekend and
Speaker 1: it was my weekend reading book and I was sitting
Speaker 1: on the couch. Well my partner was also reading, and
Speaker 1: I'm just laughing out loud and feeling, you know, at
Speaker 1: feeling like that that weird feeling when it's like, is
Speaker 1: my partner wondering why I'm laughing out loud so often?
Speaker 1: But it was it was so great. How else can
Speaker 1: can listeners connect with you? Well, aside from going out
Speaker 1: and buying the book?
Speaker 2: Yes, I have a show on the ABC Car Question Everything,
Speaker 2: which is a new show where we're trying to put
Speaker 2: new comedians or people that haven't been seen very often
Speaker 2: on TV on TV. So all the old episodes of
Speaker 2: that are on ABC I Views, so people can go
Speaker 2: and check those out. That'd be really cool. Ignore last
Speaker 2: season because we had to make that in a lockdown,
Speaker 2: but this season has been really fun and great. We've
Speaker 2: got a studio audience again, so it's it's really fun.
Speaker 2: I'd really love people to check that out. And yeah,
Speaker 2: I have a bunch of podcasts. If they go to
Speaker 2: toe FOP t O f OP dot com, tofop dot com,
Speaker 2: then you can find links to all podcast that is
Speaker 2: the home of where they all are.
Speaker 1: Amazing. Will thank you so much for your time. I've
Speaker 1: just loved chatting to you and understanding your process. Having
Speaker 1: been a fan for many, many years, so thank you.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's all right, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: I found it fascinating to hear Will's process for creating
Speaker 1: comedy after watching him on my TV and on stage
Speaker 1: for the last two decades. I really loved the moment
Speaker 1: in this interview where he took me through how he
Speaker 1: was processing or observing my zoom background, which is a
Speaker 1: wall and a bookshelf in my studio. And since that interview,
Speaker 1: I've been trying to take moments during my day where
Speaker 1: I apply that same level of detail and analysis to
Speaker 1: simply observing what I can see around me. It hasn't
Speaker 1: led to jokes that are as funny as Will's, but
Speaker 1: it's been an interesting exercise and has also been quite
Speaker 1: good at keeping me in the present moment. How I
Speaker 1: Work is produced by Inventing, with production support from Dead's
Speaker 1: Set Studios. The producer for this episode was Liam Riordan,
Speaker 1: and thank you tomt Nimba, who does the audio mix
Speaker 1: for every episode and makes everything sound so much better
Speaker 1: than it would have otherwise. See you next time.