Jim Gaffigan, family man, food lover, and comedian is heading our way for the first time to perform at Sydney’s Just For Laughs. the AU review’s Perri Cassie caught up with him as he anticipates hsi first visit down under, and the release of his eagerly anticipated second book ‘Food: A Love Affair’
You’re touring a little bit with Oddball Festival at the moment, which is such a unique event; I was over in The US last month and got to go to the New Jersey show. How have you found it so far?
I haven’t actually done one yet! I’m doing all of the ones in California, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this week! What were your thoughts on it? Did you love it?
Yeah it was great, I’m a huge Louis CK fan and it was great to see him but everyone that was on the lineup like Michael Che, Sarah Silverman, and Hannibal Burress were all great acts. I loved it. Have you ever performed with such a large selection of big names before?
Yeah I’ve done big benefits where I’ve gone on after Bill Cosby and then Jerry Seinfeld went on after me. So I’ve done a bunch of big shows. There’s like this crazy homecoming show at the University of Florida where you perform to like 60,000 people or 40,00 or something. So I’ve done crazy shows before.
Well you’ve got some of the big names with you on your dates.
Yeah I’ve got Louis and Sarah and a bunch of people, but I have no idea. Maybe Chris Hartwick and Aziz. As a comedian the whole “outdoor venue” thing seems a little counter intuitive, but I’m just going to go with the flow.
Do you think comradery is necessarily a big deal in comedy, or do you think it can be done on your own? When you were coming up as a comic did you have a lot of comedian friends on the scene?
I think there’s a huge comradery coming up, but comedians, in my experiences, are a bunch of oddballs. We’re all kind of loners. There’s something very appealing about going on stage, like I love acting, but the appeal of stand up is you go up there and you’re the writer, director, and performer, you’re in control, but obviously there’s the possibility of bombing. Stand ups are a very social group, but I definitely think there’s that loner mentality. Or an outsider mentality, I wouldn’t say loner, because they’re usually quite collaborative with other people.
I’m a little bit curious about your writing process. Tell me what kind of environment you tend to write a stand up show in in?
I’m probably on my fifth hour now, so sometimes I look at old notes, and I try and improvise on stage, I hang out with my wife and we write together. Just hanging out and having a beer and writing down some ideas. I wish I could just sit at a computer and write. My process has changed so many times, I definitely still hook into a topic and want to expand on it but there’s some topics, being on my fifth hour, that I’ve already touched on, I’ll try and choose a story that’ll occur to me or some kid of observational take, I like longer chunks. I’m definitely not a one liner kind of guy.
You have five kids, how difficult is it to balance such a travel-based job with having a family? I mean five kids is a lot of kids… is that why you’re coming all the way to Australia for the first time? Do you plan on ever going home?
[Laughs] I think that five is a enormous amount of kids, and here we are the first week of school, so it’s a pretty crazy period. The balancing act of doing stand up in some ways is ideal, my October is pretty crazy but I can usually manage how much I’m gone. I’ll usually try and do two weekends a month where I’m travelling or out of town and then the other shows they’ll be ones I can drive to and come back that night. If something really appealing comes through I’m not going to turn it down. There are sometimes where I take the whole family with me, we do a spring break bus tour where I do a show a night and they’ll come and watch. We usually do that in the summer too. At the end of the day I don’t want to suck at being a dad.
Australia is a very hot country, and as a fellow pale person I suggest that maybe a week before you leave you head to Duane Read, and ask them to plug an IV drip of sp50 sunscreen into your bloodstream.
[Laughs] I never even really considered that. I’m not a very outdoorsy person, it’s not like I’m going to be heading to the beach, I’m just there to do the shows, but we’ll see. We had a very mild summer this year. If I didn’t have little kids, I’d never go to the beach, but they’re weird, they like going outside.
The thing that amazed me about New York is that for such a big city, the building gives off zero shade. It was just sun constantly hitting the back of my head.
[Laughs] the whole idea is that you’re meant to leave the city in the summer. Of course you have to be a billionaire to do that but there is something about escaping the city that is very appealing. There’s all the communities where you just go and stay in a shack.
So, are there any particular Australian cuisines that you’re looking forward to trying?
I’m looking forward to a meat pie. I’m pretty ignorant, I don’t know what’s cliché or what’s something I’m going to encounter. Where should I go? If there’s one place in Sydney I should eat where should it be?
Are you just coming to Sydney?
Yeah, just Sydney.
Why all that way just for one city?
Well, here’s the thing – probably 10-15 years ago, I was asked to do Melbourne, they asked every year, and my wife who was my girlfriend at the time, they were like we’ll get her a coach ticket and you a business class, and I was like “I can’t go and leave my girlfriend in coach, but I’m not going back to coach!” and the problem is I put it off until I had five kids and when I had four kids I was like “I’ll take my whole family to Australia” but when I had five kids I was like “I’m not taking my whole family to Australia, it’ll cost me a billion dollars” and then Just For Laughs asked me to do this and I accepted it thinking I would be doing Melbourne, but it happened to coincide with the release of my second book in the states and so I have to be back in New York for that, I’m starting a book tour that week. But yeah I know it’s silly to come all that way and hit one city.
Well that’s disappointing… Anyway, whenever I head to Sydney I keep meaning to try this place called The Pie Tin, and they’re supposed to do a pulled pork pie and it’s meant to be amazing.
Hang on I’m writing this down. Is it open late? Maybe I’ll go there for lunch.
So tell me a little about your show “The White Bread Tour” and what topics you’ll be covering?
I’m kind of in the middle of it, I have about 50 minutes for an hour and fifteen minute show and I would say I’m a little nervous always talking about the topics because they end up reading like a grocery store list but I talk about binge watching of television and I tend to romanticize laziness and gluttony, I also talk about going out to dinner. I do these food jokes and now people always bring me food at shows, like I used to do these jokes about donuts, and now people will bring me boxes of donuts. I never know what to say, it always makes my act sound horrible [laughs].
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Jim Gaffigan will perform at the Sydney Opera House on the 15th, 16th and 17th of October as part of the Just For Laughs festival. For tickets and more details, head here: http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/jfl14_jim_gaffigan.aspx
