PROFILE 3

ich Hall walks into a bar wearing a drink around here?” he booms as everybody in cowboy hat and a quizzical look. “If the bar does a double take. “Putting people in you really want to hear about it, the uncomfortable situations and yelling at them first thing you’ll want to know is from a foot away with a megaphone is always where I was born and what my lousy funny,” he says with a shrug. Rchildhood was like,” he says in his gravelly These elaborate outdoor routines let Hall ex- voice, the same growl that inspired Matt Groen- ercise his off-the-cuff wit and refine his heckler ing’s cranky barman Moe Szyslak on The Simp- handling; he was so good he was even recruited sons. “I got kicked out of Pencey Prep, this as support act for an art-punk band named school in Pennsylvania with the ads showing Talking Heads. hot-shot guys on horses jumping fences. You “Whenever I go down Rundle Mall in Adel- probably heard of it.” aide I’m reminded of how good a street per- I have, as it happens, since Hall has just para- former I was,” he says. “They [living statues] phrased the opening of Catcher in the Rye. “OK, stand there painted all day with their dad in the so there’s my 17 years of methamphetamine crowd, weeping, saying ‘Don’t pretend it’s not abuse, nine rehabs, four marriages, 16 kids and you, that’s paint from my garage, you’re killing short stint with the Los Angeles Lakers,” he tries, your mother …’ I mean really. What is the least which isn’t true either. The comedian, heading amount of performance you can possibly do?” to Australia next month for the Melbourne Anyway, then came New York and Comic International Comedy Festival, can’t help it: Strip Live, where comedians such as Larry Mil- Hall, 61, has carved an award-winning comedy ler and Jerry Seinfeld ruled the roost. career out of making things up. Open spots led to regular slots, and then to We’ve met in east London, the other side of writing material for the David Letterman show town from where the North Carolina-raised (for which he won two Emmys). There were Hall lives (since 2004) with his English wife, regular appearances on American networks in- Karen, and 10-year-old daughter, Dixie-Rae, to cluding in the satirical comedy series Not chat about 3.10 to Humour, the stand-up show Necessarily the News, where he popularised the he is bringing to Australia this month. He’s ar- neologism “sniglet” to describe newly created rived 45 minutes late, unable to phone since he words, and indeed Saturday Night Live, for doesn’t own a mobile, all apologies and twinkle- which he also wrote. eyed humour. The curmudgeon stuff is an act. By the late 90s he’d become a popular fixture An act that has won him such gongs as the at comedy venues and festivals everywhere Perrier at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Barry from Belfast to Boston, Manchester to Mel- at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, and seen bourne (“I became a street performer and him in demand since he first stepped on to the eventually a comic so I could go places,” he told stage of Comic Strip Live in New York in the The Seattle Times in 1994). He still breaks up his 1970s, armed with a megaphone, a hoop of fire show with musical interludes. and a candle shaped like a giant toad. His obser- Also, he still lampoons each town and coun- vational humour is acerbic, frequently absurdist Rich Hall has try he visits, saving his harshest witticisms for and evolves on the fly: random audience mem- built a career his homeland. That he does so with a poker face bers become subjects of country-and-western from making only makes him all the funnier. songs. Topical issues — gun control, the US things up “In comedy there has to be a target, and the election race, Bob Dylan’s late career lameness deadpan schtick helps me articulate that rage,” — are skewered on to walls. says Hall, who first played Australia in 1998 and Time and again Hall’s expertly crafted tira- has returned every other year since, invariably des and cantankerous delivery have proved to sold-out houses. comedy gold, whether he’s guesting on popular “It’s an exaggeration. It’s theatre,” he says. BBC panel quiz shows, headlining festivals in He has written several plays, semi-ironic pie- the guise of his country-music-singing, ex-con COMIC KING ces that tell of right-wing talk show hosts and uncle Otis Lee Crenshaw (a character he retired oil-divining religious cults (2006’s Levelland) five years ago) or playing a pub on one of Scot- and the owners and residents of a Montana land’s windswept Orkney Islands, which he did hotel about to be razed to make a freeway last week. OF DEADPAN (2007’s Best Western). “I just wanted to go to the Orkneys so I put a Both were consecutively staged at the Edin- date in the [3.10 To Humour] tour. It’s barren and burgh Fringe Festival. Neither was financially kinda beautiful in a bleak way and the Orkadian yrd”), he went to Washington to study literature viable. people are kind of bleak too, but they loved it. Master curmudgeon Rich and got a job on a newspaper in Seattle, writing “You’d be better off taking your money, sta- Those are the best gigs,” he says when I ask. fluff pieces (which he hated) and opinion col- pling it to the outside of your jacket and going “The ones where you surprise yourself with how Hall, soon to perform at umns (which he loved). for a walk through the dodgiest part of town.” funny you are.” Stand-up comedy was taking off, and Hall He puffs on his vaporiser. “I wanted to write a The younger of two brothers born to a weld- Melbourne’s International wanted in: “Steve Martin was filling stadiums. western drama ’cause I love Sam Shepard and er and a shop assistant at JC Penneys, Hall grew George Carlin and Richard Pryor were on Satur- all that stuff. I got it right in 2009 with Campfire up in the American south watching comedians Comedy Festival, prefers day Night Live. It seemed like the thing to do but Stories, a play I made with [North American such as Jack Benny and Jackie Gleason on TV, I didn’t know how to do it. So I became a street comedian] Mike Lomack, about trout fishing.” reading JD Salinger’s teenage opus (“That book to articulate his anarchic performer, a pretend movie director with a Which somehow brings us to that famed had a profound effect on anyone of a certain megaphone, claiming I was making a cheap Jap- trout farmer, Roger Daltrey of the Who, and the age”), shrugging off religious studies and want- rage with a straight face, anese monster film and needed crowd scenes.” small ranch cum writing retreat Hall owns in ing to be a journalist. After two years at Western He puts a fist to his mouth, sideways, and tips Carolina University (“majoring in Lynyrd Skyn- writes Jane Cornwell his head back. “Whaddya have to do to get a Continued on Page 4

theaustralian.com.au/review February 27-28, 2016 V1 - AUSE01Z01AR