Unlike pigs, time does fly; or, unlike Travis Pastrana, Johnny Knoxville does not backflip. Yes, unbelievable though it may seem, 10 years ago, maybe not to the day but close enough for idiomatic horseshoes and hand grenades purposes, our fearless leader rose to the Evel Knievel occasion and, well, fell considerably short, you could say. But not only did he fall short, a motorbike basically fell on his crotch in the stunt gone rightly wrong process. Typically this would be considered gold—at least in the footage sense—but it also resulted in a lot of blood as well. Not just any blood, mind you, but dick blood! Jesus. What a horrifying thing to type, much less happen for real, but happen it did and thus did Knoxville supply the closer to an oddball release that supplemented the kick-off of the unfortunately short-lived "jackassworld" site in 2008.
If you're unfamiliar with anything I'm talking about, it all began in very late 2007, when BMX legend Mat Hoffman pitched the idea of a “Tribute to Evel Knievel,” where a bunch of guys came together to break all sorts of hairball records with daredevil panache. Since this couldn’t be done live in New York City during the coordinated 24-hours-of-bad-ideas-on-MTV launch of jackassworld.com, a separate production company was hired to film a pre-taped special all unto its own on location in Oklahoma with Mat, Travis Pastrana, Trigger Gumm, Allen Cooke, Scott Palmer, Midget Mike, Mini-bike Spike, and a few others hell bent for bike leathers.
Of course Knoxville is never one to sit idly by on the sidelines of fun, so it wasn't long before he was getting a crash course on how to backflip a motorbike. The one thing Pastrana sternly advised him NOT to do under any circumstances, though, was to let go of the bike. But that’s exactly what Knoxville did once he finally made it to the dirt jump. Up, up, up the bike went, and then down, down, down it came straight onto his pee-pee. One pair of scary bloody long johns later, he was taken to the hospital with a torn urethra and rewarded with his very own piss-bag and catheter combo. And boy oh boy did he have lots of fun with that in the weeks (and years!) to follow, perhaps more fun than one man with an injured penis ever could… or should? Anyway, it was from this fateful accident that the wheels were set in motion for what would eventually become Nitro Circus, or at least the Dickhouse-partnered version that would leave one hell of a carbon footprint on MTV throughout 2009.
Want to know more? Buy the book! Or for pennies on the dollar you can own the DVD.
Do you to the YouTubes? If so, be sure to check out Jukka's new show Ultimate Expedition, debuting today on the YouTube Red label (not to be confused with John Lucero's Black Label). But that's just part of what you can read below, where Rick Kosick went into the depths of Dudeson psychology and the worldwide monster it grew into from its Finnish house party origins.
Rick Kosick: So what’s the life of a Dudeson like nowadays?
Jukka: Being 37 and being a Dudeson, you still have the same mentality and attitude you are born with that you do first and think later. Just kidding, but I still live off what always was my passion—to create something new, original, and unique and have fucking fun in life. Never forget that inner kid. I’m 37 and I think I’m the most childish person in my family and I've got a 5- and a 3-year-old.
So you’re always trying to out do your kids?
Jukka: I try to out do my kids and I always tell them that playing is a kid’s most important job. That’s my job, too. Actually, right before I came here, I spent the morning with my kids building a Batmobile out of cardboard boxes. So being a Dudeson there’s two sides to me: I’m going to constantly keep pushing my limits, keep learning new things and skills in life, and keep walking into every situation with the confidence I've always had. You know, I got this, and when I get to the place and I don't, I say, "Oh, I so didn’t have this." Haha... but that’s where humor comes from.
The other thing is, I’m running Rabbit USA here in the US, so we're producing a lot of shows. In Finland, we're the biggest independent production company. We do 15 shows a year. Outside the original and unique Ideas we do, we produce Saturday Night Live, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and Shark Tank Hollywood Game Night. Everything else is something we created and I take those shows and try to sell them here. We-re in post-production for the biggest non-scripted YouTube Red series, a show called Ultimate Expedition that will air in January.
Why did you decide to move to America, is this something you always wanted to do?
I’m from a small town in Finland that only has 500 people. My dad can’t read or write. I’m from a very poor family and I had never traveled before I was seventeen. I had this ambition inside me to do something big… I wanted to inspire people to live their life to the fullest and push their limits, and that’s what drove me to America. First of all, I’ve been traveling back and forth for 15 years now, and I spend more time every time I'm here. I just wanted to make something happen, because Finland isn't big enough for four crazy Dudesons. So I decided to move to the US and spearhead the Dudeson’s brand, running Rabbit USA here. You know, what’s actually scary, is you have a certain status, a successful company, great people working for you, and then leaving that all behind to come to the US and start from scratch and you take your family with you. But it’s worth it.
You were a big fish in a small pond in Finland and now you're in America.
It’s a fucking ocean and I’m not even a shrimp! Even though I have a shrimp—but not anymore. In Finland I had a shrimp, because it was so damn cold. Haha… but I love America. You know why? Every place has a good and bad side, that’s obvious, but I always concentrate on the positive. You come here, the dream still lives on, and it’s so freaking inspiring. Everyday you might meet somebody that can change your life. There are people who are self-made and had their dreams come true. You got Netflix, Google, and everybody in entertainment is out here. What I want to do is to make miracles. I want to preach about positive anarchy, so that the kids will know how to live their life and believe in their dreams. I think that comes from a skateboarding background. Skateboarders are so critical—that’s the biggest thing I got from being a skateboarder. Whatever somebody tells me, I don’t believe it. I challenge it. Until I see it myself, then I'll believe it. There’s so much BS people are trying to shove down your throat.
I always thought skateboarders were more creative, because they've always been on the forefront of fashion and what’s hip in today's culture. It always trickles out from there.
I think so, too. First of all, it’s a lifestyle. You go hang with your friends and you bust balls everyday skating at a mall. You constantly keep trying a trick and pushing your limits. You get hurt, but you get up and go again. That’s the mentality in life, because life will throw you down but you've just got to get up. Sometimes I thought skateboarders were a little too cool for school, but I see why. They don’t take shit. That’s what Iove about it. I had a blessing to grow up with one of the best skateboarders I know, Arto Saari. He was my next-door neighbor when I was thirteen. Later on, he bought a house for his mom across from my house. It was funny, he came over and knocked on my window like seven years ago. He goes, "Hey Jukka, I got a place for my mom across the way." Obviously he had way more skateboarding skills than me, but I was pretty good about falling off the board.
Let’s take a step back. How did the Dudesons get started?
The Dudesons have a similar growth story like jackass. We were a bunch of friends that all met in elementary school, but it’s the same cultural background we had coming from skateboarding and snowboarding that sort of made us film all the stuff were doing. We wanted to film and make something cool, like, "Look, this is what we're doing: we're blowing up mailboxes, we're pulled 80 mph behind a bus on a sled, pulling backside 360 flips on a snowboard, doing something at a ditch on a skateboard." So it’s a combination of all of that craziness and lifestyle. We were like the Power Rangers and needed all four of us to make that magic happen. Jarno filmed and edited all the footage, and every Friday when I was in high school we would throw a house party and get everybody around to show them what we did last week. That was our audience until '97 when we put out our first movie. We did it all ourselves and mailed the VHS tapes to all of the sporting stores, begging them to put it on their shelves, and ended up selling a few of them. Luckily enough, Jarno applied for a job at this small underground cable channel called Moon TV. It doesn’t exist anymore, but at the time he was like, "We've got to make our own show." So he threw out the idea, we sold the show, and it premiered January 2001.
Wow, that’s really cool. And then it snowballed into something bigger?
Yeah, the fun thing is, all these people started reaching out to us. These big producers in Finland said they wanted to produce the show. We were like, "No, we don’t want anybody to touch this," because we all came from that skateboarding background, saying, "No, we don’t take any advice. We're going to do it ourselves, because we know what the young kids want to see." When we first did the show, we thought, "Okay, it won't be the worst show on the network," and all the sudden it was a success on that little cable channel. The second season, Channel 4, the second biggest commercial channel in Finland, reached out to us and said they wanted the second season. From there it snowballed into where we should do something international. We started about the same time as jackass on TV in Finland, and we were like, "Jackass is doing this in English. We can speak good enough English. We should do something worldwide." The funny thing is, nothing was ever sold from Finland outside of Finland before—like nothing international had ever been sold. We were the first show ever to be sold outside of Finland. So we went to the biggest TV market in Europe and walked around with a trailer where I put my balls into a mousetrap. We would walk into Disney and I’m looking at a Mickey Mouse Club trailer playing in the background as I’m showing my trailer to the Disney executives. When they saw me put my balls in a mousetrap with all the aftermath and how much it hurt, right then they said, "We might not be the right home for this, but you should go talk to Viacom and MTV." So we just went around. We didn’t know what we were selling, but we wanted to get something out there. After a year, we sold the first season to Australia and 150 other countries.
How did you meet Jeff Tremaine?
First I meet Steve-O. And we knew Bam, because he loved Finland. We were doing live festivals at the same time, where we had a band playing in the background and I was shooting a shotgun with a bulletproof vest and other big, crazy stunts onstage. Steve-o was on his world tour then and he was coming to Finland, so I got ahold of him through his management. When Steve-O came to Finland to do press, we met up and shot a couple of things. We bonded and really liked each other. We were supposed to do a show the next day, but before doing that Steve-O flew to Sweden to do a show and was bragging about how he swallowed bunch of weed in Holland. The Swedish cops busted him and put him in jail, so the show never happened. We had all the footage we filmed with Steve-O, but I didn’t have any appearance release forms and we really wanted to put this in our new Dudesons movie. So I flew to LA and hit up Steve-O to show him what we wanted to use. He came to the motel I was staying at and he was like, "I love it, but I can’t really call the shots. It’s a Jeff Tremaine question." At the time, Jeff was editing a video for Turbonegro at Hollywood Sound and I had a DVD with me. I was like, "Can we go meet Tremaine?" This is how it felt for me being a 19-year-old little boy from Finland. So I came in and Steve-O introduced me to Jeff. I told him what I do and Jeff is like, "Let's watch the DVD." So I’m trying to make it play, but my DVD is in PAL mode and not NTSE, so it’s not working. Tremaine is standing on his ivory tower saying, "Time is money, boy." Finally I got it working and it’s a seven-minute presentation reel. When it was finished playing, Tremaine was like, "Hell fucking yeah. I love you guys, and go ahead, Steve-O." That’s when we got to use Steve-O in our DVD, and then we met Bam. Ever since then, Tremaine has become a dear family friend. He has definitely been a big inspiration, and it all started by meeting Steve-O. I love Steve-O. We’ve been friends for fourteen years now. I’ve seen him change and how he’s got that burning will to live and evolve as a person.
Now that you’re living in Los Angeles, do you miss seeing your fellow Dudeson brothers?
We all own the company together, so the Dudesons come here all the time. Jarppi just left, and Jarno was here just before that. So the way we look at is, I’m filming the Dudeson vlog for YouTube from my point of view, being the spearhead, and we try to have each guy come here for ten days throughout the year. So we still get to do things together, because it’s obvious we grew up together and can count on each other. There’s definitely a chemistry every time they come here. I do miss them a lot, but thank god I have the pleasure of having them come here as well.
That’s great. And it’s a good thing for them, too, because it’s warm.
Yeah, it’s warm. Palm trees, sunshine. Jarno lived here for a year. He came to help launch all this with me, but he moved back to Finland for family reasons.
So how gnarly is too gnarly? Are there any limits as to how far you will take a stunt?
You know what, it’s tough to judge beforehand… usually that’s a call I make too late. Haha... I don’t give up, I just always want to go at it. And if something is ridiculously stupid and will just kill you, you’re not going to go at it, but you’re going to change it in a way that you can do it. The most important thing is, whatever I’m going to do I believe in myself 100-percent, like "I got this." And rarely do I have it. Also, I think it's more about having a unique perspective or an original idea that you just freaking love, to go out there and do it in real life. Sometimes the funniest bits are the ones that won't end up breaking bones. Some of the things we’ve done, like during Dudesons in America, when Knoxville and Tremaine introduced us to bulls and bull-riding—walking into a bullring on stilts while wearing a red shirt was such a blast. You hear Gary Leffew, the legendary bull rider say, "Release the beast!" and you can see it eyeballing you. You can tell it’s thinking, "I’m going to take you down." Then it swept the stilts right out from underneath me and I fell on the ground. I could see the bull circle, and I’m like, "All right, here it comes." I just jumped a little bit, so he could give a little bump on my butt, but he ends up hammering me. I do a backflip over the bull and end up on my feet. If I didn’t end up landing on my feet, I would have been screwed—the bull would have done a headstand on me.
There are two things I love to do: one is where you need some kind of skills, like this year I set my goals to learn a double backflip and a full twist backflip on a trampoline, and I learned them at Tempest. So I love the things you need some skill, but I love also the fear factor, like on jackass 3D when I did the stunt with Johnny Knoxville where we climbed a huge tree while Jarppi and everyone else were sawing the bottom. We were waiting to fall down with the tree and I’m talking to Knoxville and I'd never seen him so scared. I asked him, "What are you afraid of?" He’s like, "Jukka, I don’t like heights. I like the kind of stunts where it’s not up to you if you screw it up, it’s just luck." So I love to go out of my comfort zone and take that leap of faith to do something crazy.
I also like to do creative builds. We duct taped an inflatable mattress on the side of a van and then I wore double-sided duct tape and I’m jumping on the trampoline waiting for the van to pass. Then I jumped on the mattress on the side of the van to see if it sticks, and it freaking stuck! That’s always crazy. Can we build a trampoline out of Saran Wrap and then jump from the roof onto the trampoline? There are certain times you are fucking scared, but then there’s that whole process of building it and seeing it come together and you're like, "All right, I’ll go for it."
With YouTube as big as it is now and kids creating content, making their own shows, how much can you make from doing this?
It's stupid money. If you’re successful on YouTube it’s ridiculous. First of all, I love YouTube in a way that I can shoot something today and post it tomorrow and everyone around the world will get it and the fans will comment on it. So I think the YouTube viewers are more engaged than anyone else. Plus, you get to see your product come out with a fast turnaround, rather than shooting a movie or a show and have it come out in nine months. Like you get to react to what you do and what people like and what you like. At the same time, so many people are doing it to be pranksters and I fucking hate the pranksters. They're just shocking the world for the sake of shocking and most of the shit is fake. What I love about jackass and how I grew up is let's keep shit real. Some of the YouTube videos aren't like that. I’ve heard people say things like, "Big influencers, why would we even try to do it for real, because fake shit does so much better for us." I was like, "Who said that and who do I punch in the face?" YouTube used to pay a thousand dollars per million views, but they want to become the next Netflix, so they went from paying not per view but minutes watched. So let's say you make a ten-minute video and 80-percent of your audience watches eight minutes of it. You’re going to make two- or three-thousand dollars per million views. So if Jake Paul did 400 million views, that’s almost a million dollars per month. That’s not bad for being a YouTube kid. I would say the rule is like if you get 50 million views a month you get between 50- to a hundred-thousand.
Maybe it’s because I’m older, but I just don’t think these new generation of YouTubers have a tangible quality and come off a little cheesy.
I think so, too. There are a lot of people that have potential, but there are even more people who have no charisma ad are used to talking to their cat. That’s the beauty of you and our upside, the strength in Rabbit USA and The Dudesons, we come from the 20th century of making content. We know how to tell stories from the beginning, middle, and end. We respect working with the crew, but we also understand how you have to do the digital content for the millennial audience, where you have to be intimate and talk directly at them. Whereas TV, you go directly to a lot of people, so how do you put those two things together? That’s the magic of it. I think a lot of these people have grown up with nobody telling them what to do, they just do their thing and found a niche audience and they're not willing to make any comprise. But they don’t even know how to work with a crew. They are very black and white, like TV is dead and YouTube is all there is. But they're also anal and going through the comments, looking at what somebody said negative and deleting. That becomes their whole little hamster wheel of living in that world and they’re not happy. They’re stressing because they have to put out content daily and the worst life they are living. I’m worried about that, all of the sudden, you have to tell a story in two or five minutes and the way you cut the footage in the first six seconds you have to have a cute butt and the next six seconds you have to have a funny face, where we're used to telling stories and giving something time to breathe. So I’m determined to find a way to make this work, and I think we just cracked it with this new YouTube show I did called Ultimate Expedition. I respect TV and the silver screen, and I know if you can reach that level of charisma you can have something successful. You’re set for life. These YouTubers will have an audience for a few years and then go away if they don’t have the charisma to step up to the next level.
So what can we expect to see from you in 2018?
We have a killer show coming out called Ultimate Expedition on YouTube Red. It’s a very organic show, where I take eight celebrities—all from the traditional world to digital influencers—to this mountain that’s 20,000-feet high. Eight people died trying to summit the mountain in the past, and all these celebrities have zero skills in mountain climbing. We got Steve-O, Chuck Liddell, the former UFC champion, Gus Kenworthy, the first openly gay athlete who is competing in the Winter Olympics… all of them trying to climb this mountain from zero to a hundred and every day only gets tougher. You’re so high up everybody is struggling with altitude sickness and running into the danger of getting liquid lungs and evacuated off the mountain. There are crevices and the possibility of avalanches.
This is the biggest non-scripted YouTube Red show they’ve ever done. It’s produced and shot in Peru, in the mountains called Tocllaraju, and I think that combines the filmmaking look. We have Emmy award-winning camera guys, a sound guy that sounded Mount Everest, and a great digital team that are building videos for Steve-O. They made 22 videos just for his channel, like getting choked out by Chuck Liddel to whatever, so he can have his own story. Throughout the ten weeks that each episode is coming out, the cast members are going to be uploading content on their own channels as well, so when you’re watching the show you can learn more about Steve-O and see what else he did during that episode. So it’s like this new ecosystem with the existing fans and the cast members feeding into the show and the show feeding into the cast members and collaborating with each other. It’s the first time YouTube has done something like that and I’m really excited on how the show looks.
I am a Dudeson for life and I believe in positive anarchy, but I also want to be the modern Indiana Jones that takes these people and keeps it real and pushes their limits with my own example. It was none of that Bear Grylls bullshit where he takes Ben Stiller to a jungle on a helicopter for a day and then they go back and stay at a 5-star hotel and then take a helicopter back the next day. On our show, everybody stays at the basecamp at 14,000 feet, struggling with sickness and everyone pooped at the same hole. What’s great about the show, we isolated everyone because there’s no cellphone service. You get away from today's noise and hecticness, you start asking yourself what you really want out of life. It really focuses you. You start asking yourself, "Am I happy?" Steve-O is battling with his addiction. Chuck Liddell, who’s retired from the UFC, needs a mental reset and wants to know what to do next. Then there’s Furious Pete, who had testicular cancer six months earlier and didn’t know if he was going to be alive. Then all of sudden he’s trying to summit a mountain, one of the most beautiful places Mother Earth has to offer. So the show is going to be quite an adventure.
On top of that, I’ll use the Dudeson’s vlog to set an example on how not to forget your inner kid. You can be 37-years-old and running a business, but stay fun! Laugh at yourself. You don’t have to become too serious, but at the same time push your limits. Learn new skills. I want to learn how to fly a plane this year and go diving with sharks. So I’m using my vlog as a vehicle to share the cool shit in life. At the same time, when kids are watching it, hopefully they get inspired and want to do something special with their life. I always say in my vlog, "What’s your Dudeson’s goal for the year. Say it out loud. What’s your dream? Say it out loud. What are you doing this week to get yourself close to your dream? How are you going to surprise yourself today or this week?" When they say, "I want to become a soccer player, or I want to learn how to play the guitar, or I want to put together a heavy metal band, or I want to learn a backflip," when they say that out loud, they are already part of the Dudesons and you're part of the family. You say, "What is a Dudeson?" A Dudeson is a feeling when you achieve something and feel alive—that’s what a Dudeson is.
I’ve been going to the Comedy Store for a couple of years now and it’s seriously my favorite place to go and hangout. You can catch me there just about every Monday and Tuesday night, and it all started because I would go and watch the Roast Battle. There’s something about these comedy shows that can be very captivating, like how these comedians have the ability to connect with the audience via their witty joke writing skills. At times, the energy in the room reminds me of a punk rock concert, but non-violent; or, maybe I’m just attracted to this world because everything I’ve done with my career has been about humor and making people laugh. It seems like a natural fit, right?
As time went on, I slowly started making friends with everyone who works at the Comedy Store. That’s what led me to meeting Tony Hinchcliffe, but our friendship didn’t really start until he moved into my building where I live in Hollywood—what are the chances of that happening? But it did, and I would see him walking around the building and in the courtyard. I would say hello and strike up a conversation—you know, small talk, being a friendly neighbor—but as time passed I'd see him sitting on his patio smoking cigarettes, kicking back, and that’s when we started getting to know each other. I'd walk over and talk to him through his wooden fence on the patio, just like on the TV show Home Improvement. He would always invite me to come see his Kill Tony show, and I eventually accepted his invitation. From the moment I first started going to his show, I instantly liked it. It’s a really funny! So I go just about all the time, and now that we’ve become friends, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity for you to learn about Tony Hinchcliffe and his world of pure imagination. —Rick Kosick
Kosick: How did you get started as a comedian, was this something you always dreamed of doing when you where growing up?
Tony: I was always being a class clown, making fun of people—not really being a bully, but making fun just trying to make everyone laugh—and it’s probably from not having a dad growing up. He was around—in fact, I knew he was in the same city as me, he was just with another family. So it probably wired me to want more approval and acceptance from people… to be liked and loved or whatever. So I would always try to make people laugh as far back as I can remember, but I really found out about standup comedy between the 8th grade and my freshman year. Well, I knew about it from watching David Letterman and all of the amazing appearances from people, but between 8th grade and freshman year I saw the movie Man on the Moon. I love Jim Carry and I loved everything he had done up until that point, so when I saw that and the scene in the beginning where Andy is at the Improv and he’s getting fired, I was like, wait… I started putting it together through that movie that you can get paid to perform all the time and get better at performing while getting paid. I still didn’t think it was possible to do or how to become a comedian until I had already been out here in LA. I didn’t know you could just go to an open mic and perform just to get better. We didn’t have open mics where I was from.
When did you actually decide to try doing it?
I was like 21 and living with my brother out here in LA. I had a script and a half sort of written, but wasn't doing anything with it. Then one day at a Starbucks coffee shop I struck up a conversation with this old wizardly-looking man with a gigantic beard and big Afro hair. I told him that I’d written a movie and a half and how I always wanted to do standup comedy. He’s like, "You should do standup comedy." "Yeah," I’m like, "how do you do that?" He said, "You should go to an open mic at the Comedy Store." Turns out that wizardly old man was Shia LaBeouf’s crazy dad. So I’m like, if that’s Shia LaBeouf’s dad and his son went and performed at the Comedy Store like five or six years ago and just signed a five-picture deal with Steven Spielberg… trust me go to the Comedy Store, do it. I had no other guidance or any inspirations, but this wizardly old man sort of jolted my stomach and really made me get to it.
So I did. I started out at the Comedy Store instead of a smaller open mic somewhere. That’s a pretty big deal, because I built my entire foundation out of there and worked my way up for a decade and used that place as the backbone for all the work I do. It all comes right out of there on Sunset Blvd. where he told me to perform. But before I did that, I hyped it up and prepped for months for a single three-minute open mic spot, and when I got up onstage I blanked out. Completely. After all that prep and everything, I ended up saying, "Hello. Yep, I’m Tony Hinchcliffe, and I can’t remember anything I was going to say to you. Um, this is my first time onstage and I’ve been prepping for literally two or three months, sitting at parks, writing and editing stuff for this moment right now, and here I am and I don’t remember any of it." I was getting chuckles and laughs, because everybody had done jokes up until that point and I was completely different. It broke the wall of the entire room, because I was being so honest. I had nothing else. It was either say what was on front of my brain, or don’t talk at all. And so I talked and that’s what came out. The host, Ryan O'Neal, who's hilarious to this day and one of the funniest fucking people, loved it. He goes, "Wow, that was that guy's first time onstage tonight and he did better than everybody else that went up." I was like number 14 out of 16, or something like that. I couldn’t believe it. It was crazy. My brother was there and he was like, "Dude, you fucking did it." We didn’t know how the business worked—or how anything worked—so it was a celebratory type of night, because to me it was the world, crushing the Comedy Store. But I spent every set after that for months trying to get back up to that level of funny again, in the moment, raw and real.
When did you become a doorman at the Comedy Store?
I probably started 3 to 4 months later. At that time there was only one way to get a job at the Comedy Store and that was getting hired by Tommy, the talent coordinator trained by Mitzi Shore to make the lineups and do what she did. He would go to her house every week, get advice and tell her things or whatever for work, and they would talk about stuff. She was very sick at the time, so he would go to her house every week to get advice and tell her things or whatever for work. He was the last link to Mitzi. Tommy hired me, stuck by me, and gave me an incredible chance to expand. He had me start hosting the original room, making fun of comedians after they did three minutes of material, and sometimes throwing in a quick trick to fix their joke or give them a good piece of advice. Three or four years after that, I started my show Kill Tony. Tommy is almost completely responsible for the creation of Kill Tony, because he wanted me to be a host—he saw a host and he was right, because I love the chaos. I love moving pieces around and acknowledging what’s in the moment, which is exactly what happed on that first set.
So did you make a lot of sacrifices to make this work for you? Was it pretty tough?
Oh yeah, very tough. When I started, it was just my brother and I, and he had a really hot girlfriend at the time, so I always remember feeling like the third wheel. I was always just hanging out taking bong rips in the living room. Once I started standup, though, it was a race to get out of there. Two or three months later I moved in with a bunch of comedians… me, Matt Edgar, and Sandy Danto. They each had a bedroom and I was in the living room. We all wanted to pay less rent, because we were just door guys at the Comedy Store, so we moved in another roommate, then another roommate—there were three people in the living room and one in each bedroom. I moved out after six months to move in with a girl, and we lived together for a year in a studio apartment. Then I moved into a studio apartment with two comedians and one of their wives, so I was in a top bunk in a studio apartment with a couple underneath me, and another guy living on the other side of the room. That lasted about six months until I decided, "Fuck this. This is insane. I’m sleeping in a fetal position on a top bunk, and I’m working at the Comedy Store continuously doing spots and it’s all a machine." So I ended up sleeping in the backseat of my car during the summer. I would wake up in the back alleyway at the Comedy Store, because there was nobody there at the time, amd take a shower in the main room. I had everything folded up, saved up a bunch of money from doing that and working continuously until 5 or 6am. It was the craziest summer ever! Don Barris was going until six in the morning in the original room, we were doing a lip sync rock 'n' roll band called the Barris Kennedy Overdrive, which we did continuously for years, but during this time we were at our full phases. The Comedy Store doors would lock and we would play air instruments over the loud speakers and rock out to all of these different songs and Don had all of these tracks. That’s when I learned to improvise and learned comedy Jiu-Jitsu during those late nights. We would go eat food at 6am, get back to the Comedy Store at 7am, fall asleep for four hours in the backseat of my car, then wakeup and start answering phones all day at the Comedy Store. Once 4pm came around, I'd go shower, eat something, and then go work the door and try to do some spots or maybe try and hit an open mic before my spot at the Comedy Store started.
What year was this?
It wasn't that long ago… 2009–2010. I put all my focus, money, and energy into writing and performing, period. If it wasn’t that crazy the night before and I didn’t sleep in late, I would go get a newspaper, bring it back behind the Comedy Store, and start writing monologue jokes, which I've never written before professionally but it created the habit in me of writing, being able to do it when I was uncomfortable. So by the time 2010 came around, I was hosting and writing crazy jokes and making fun of the comedians when they weren’t doing good. When Jeff Ross approached me on the patio after seeing me do all of that, and I told him that I can write roast jokes, that it’s a dream of mine, and I’ve been making fun of people my whole life. He’s like, "Maybe you can help me with something," and we started writing jokes together for the roast of Quentin Tarantino.
So people were starting to recognize you and taking you under their wing?
Yeah, there wasn't that many people; in fact, there’s an interesting thing a lot of those guys that I was living with in the apartment… a lot of them had powerful mentors when they were coming up. This guy's got Jeff Garlin; this guy's got Pauly Shore. Man, I didn't get to open for anybody. To me, I was this white trash kid from an Italian gangster neighborhood in Ohio with a good fight but nobody backing me at all. So to look back and see how that storyline switched… it's incredible. It just goes to show you that sacrifice and keeping your head moving forward, to keep grinding and staying positive and not look at what everybody else has, because if I'd done that back then I would have been done. I would have quit. First it’s Jeff Ross, then it’s Joe Rogan… it’s incredible, I think when you love comedy you have a good eye for who else really loves it and who’s hungry. I think those guys recognized that in me.
Who are some of the people you look up to and influence you?
Quentin Tarantino is probably the reason I even came out here in the first place. Him and Roger Waters, learning from them that art was even a thing. I always listen to music and watch movies, but it was something about the way they were doing it, like, "Wow, I want to be able to do fucking that." Like what is that? They’re both pretty dark, and it’s something to create crazy and different, cool, raw, and real, but to sort of like appease someone’s appetite like they did for me when I was fresh out of high school and depressed and not knowing what to do? The big part of me coming out here to live with my brother was because I was depressed and there’s nothing going on in Ohio. I hated school. I was over it.
Didn’t you get the opportunity to meet Roger Waters in person?
Yeah, I got to see him all star-struck by the person I was hanging out with who took me there. Nobody was talking to Roger Waters, like it’s not a thing. Then some security guy came up to us and said someone would like to speak with you and took us into another fancy green room where I got to tell him, "Thank you. I’m an artist because of you," and he said, "Well, thank you, that’s very nice." It was crazy! Especially after watching this mind-blowing concert. His other two concerts I paid for and I was completely broke. I made a point to see him at the LA Coliseum in the very back at the top. Complete garbage seats. I remember the plane that comes in at the beginning of The Wall was hanging on top of a wire over my head where I was sitting. The time before that was in Cleveland, Ohio, seeing Roger Waters, and all I remember is this giant bar in front of me with a big ledge. It was horrible. A blip on the map and even farther then the time I saw him at the Coliseum. But this last concert, we picked up our tickets and just kept walking to the front. It turns out we were in the row he looks at when he’s zoned in when he’s singing, strumming the shit out of his bass guitar, and I was five rows and slightly to the left when the helicopter flies over and he’s like, "You, and yes you," pointing.
So it was pretty much a biblical experience.
Yes, in my own weird way, but I’ve gotten a lot of those already. By working with Dave Chappelle, working with Jeff Ross, meeting Don Rickles—to me, that’s three generations for roasters, a weird art form up until a couple of years ago.
You’re at the point now where you've been doing the Kill Tony show for a few years and it seems to be going really good. Are you happy to see how the show has grown and how its been cultivating some new legends in the comedy scene?
Yeah, I love it. I’m having the time of my life with it. It’s my most proud thing. With Kill Tony I like to think it’s almost a Tarantino/Roger Waters type of experiment, because I am working with a band of people who are all over the place. They’re all goofy, crazy, and creative, but there are also elements of seriousness throughout the show and elements of really funny stuff. Which reminds me of Tarantino, because his movies are so funny and I don’t think people realize how funny they really are sometimes. They are sort of funnier than some comedies, because the tension is built and then it breaks down and then it’s built and then it breaks down again. That’s something we definitely do on Kill Tony. I love it. Everywhere I go around the world, people are listening and watching it. They will come see me do standup and they come up and talk about Kill Tony after the show on their way out. They'll also mention their favorite characters—Ichabod, Aphrodite, Mystery Dan, or whoever it may be, like Tam Pham. We talk about Pat Regan or Jeremiah Watkins or what’s Joel Burg really like, what does Redban smell like?
I love it. It’s my favorite thing in the world. I think everybody should have one that’s ever listened to the show. One of the craziest things about the show is that it’s so fun every single week. It makes it naturally different than a lot of stuff, and I feel like we're always getting better. So when I see Ryan’s book it reminds me of everything we’ve been through and the expansion and it makes me happy because every single form of art flows through that show. It’s also a podcast and video podcast in 360 VCR. There’s all of these different ways it’s being consumed and that’s all art. The book is special, because it's the oldest school version of art, so we have the spectrum covered. I mean what podcast has a book? It’s literally my favorite thing I’ve ever seen.
It seems like you’re pretty hooked up now. You get to hangout with a lot of cool people, attend a bunch of Hollywood parties, and you get to travel around the country opening for Joe Rogan. Do you feel like you’ve made it or is there still room for growth?
I definitely haven’t made it, or what I would like to do at all. I mean I’m having fun, but this is all just growth. Even Rogan is the same way. To us, our mentalities, everything is just growth to another adventure. We don’t know what’s next. As far as old dreams and everyday, that goes on. I get over my old dreams and I’m ready for what’s next. I feel bad for my friends who are showcasing for the Tonight Show. Who’s watching and why there? What grandma do you want to come to your show in Tuscaloosa that you’re not reaching. Again, going back to Joe Rogan, he’s talking to who he wants and what he wants to talk about. He’s created a special way to communicate to comedy fans and his fans of positive living, happy thoughts, and learning. He’s got his thing. I’m also working on other things as well, and I still have some old dreams knocking off the list.
Do you have any plans for a second Netflix special?
I have plans for a second special, but I don’t know exactly where it’s going to go? I’m not a 100-percent positive on that yet… I might try something crazy with that, but yes, locked and ready to go.
So looking back at everything you’ve done so far, are you happy with what you’ve achieved?
Yeah, I’m happy, but not content. Like it’s fun, but I don’t know… I’m inspired by the guys I’m lucky to work with, so happy, yes. Aware, very much so. Everyday I’m reminded in some way about having my clothes perfectly folded in the trunk of my car. I thought about that earlier today, when I was rearranging some shit, going through some old clothes and getting rid of them. I’m still that guy, but I also know a bunch of cool things I want and still have crazy dreams.
