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?
What do you think of Ryan J. Ebelt’s new Kill Tony book?
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.
(All photos by Rick Kosick; 2018)
Comments