Uncomfortable Laughter: An Interview With Doug Stanhope

We all have writers, bands, TV shows that make us evangelise. We don’t know how we got by without knowing them, and we want to let everyone in on the Word.

I found Doug Stanhope in 2009, in the second-worst car I’ve ever rented. Three six-foot guys, a tiny Toyota hatch, and a few thousand kilometres across the northern bulk of Argentina. There were no radio stations. No player for CDs we didn’t have. Only one of those FM broadcast widgets bought via mime at a Salta electronics shop. It didn’t take much highway to learn that this was a piece of shit — it chopped all bass and treble, leaving only a static-wreathed vocal line. We sieved our driver’s mp3s for voice-only recordings. Over seven full days of tundra we listened to The Twelfth Man until we all spoke pure Birmingham, and we listened to every record that US comedian Doug Stanhope had ever released.

These offered a compelling mix of fury, repulsiveness and clarity that jolted me like a wet slap to the head. Between jokes, Stanhope laid down intuitively familiar arguments that were cleaner and clearer than I’d ever heard. No theological critique had the logical potency of, “I don’t think they should be able to teach religion until you’re 18 years old. If none of your friends had ever heard about Christianity and you just found a Bible in a used book store, you’d jump right on that, wouldn’t you? ‘Oh, this sounds so logical, yes! The cave, and the ark, and — oh, yeah! Hey Donny, I think I found the meaning of life here.’”

That’s clean for a Stanhope quote. He’s routinely described as raw and caustic and uncompromising, all the words used to describe every comedian who’s ever dusted off a swear word or made a fisting joke. When I meet him via a phone interview five Novembers after that car ride, he’s surprisingly polite and accommodating. He’s coming over shortly for his first Australian tour, and half the time he’s grilling me for information.

“Do you guys hate Americans over there? I don’t wander into pubs in the UK, because you see that look and I can’t fake the accent. As soon as I open my mouth it’s all over. I’ll go to a bar right by the venue with people from the show. And no Friday or Saturday nights. I’ll do Sunday through Thursday, just to avoid that incredible drunkenness.

“You can understand it, they have these sedentary lives cobbling shoes or whatever they do, then they have four hours to get so wildly maniacally drunk they can’t stand up in public.”

This is Stanhope, a man for whom drinking excessively is part of his show, slinging good-humoured acidity around in a way that guarantees someone will get offended. Captain Hook could count the number of fucks given on one hand. Being offended is something he promises as an equal opportunity experience: “I go on stage, it’s like I’m leading you into battle. You’re not all gonna be here at the end.” He fights with audience members, he ventures through territory so inventively puerile that it tests even the iron stomachs of the internet age: Mississippi dildo raids, train toilet misadventures, melon-fucking trips to Alaska. Then, without breaking stride, he can turn attention incisively to the larger social systems in which we live. Not, he says, that he’s trying to teach you anything by contrast.

“Very little is by design. I don’t set out to convey a message. If I have a point, I’m starting with it. If I have a nice, loose shit joke to break up the monotony, that’s what makes me laugh. As a byproduct, if you learn not to take me too seriously, that’s a good thing. But the main point would be to do a shit joke. A wet, throaty, emptying-of-the-bowels sort of joke.”

Shart jokes aside, Stanhope’s social harshness slips into some cheap shots along the way. This stalls the evangelising urge – let’s say I’d be hard pressed to promote the gender politics of some routines. But then generating outrage with handpicked quotes would be easy and pointless. The subtler route is disagreeing with and valuing the same person, something we constantly manage with family and friends. Stanhope can make anyone wince. He can also slice through a topic like a radioactive machete through the brain of a Walking Dead extra, leaving every synapse and nerve ending exposed and glowing and twitching.

His finale to Deadbeat Hero, filmed in 2004, is the quintessential statement on modern America and the broader concept of nationalism. Over a dozen savage minutes, he tears apart an entire political structure and the way we relate to it, laying out each glistening entrail for our appraisal.

It’s the most worthwhile thing you’ll watch in your next hundred gigabytes.

“It’s all just sports,” he tells me, of nationalism. “But then I’ve never had to take that dullard life of working 40 years at a job and having nothing in your life. Your sports team and political party and religion, that’s your life. If I had to work on a combine in Nevada maybe I’d buy into Jesus, just because reality would be much more tragic.”

He has no illusions that comedy is a solution – you can accuse Stanhope of a lot of things, but sentimentality isn’t one. Instead he sees it as a comfort for those who need it.

“As much as I’ve wanted to quit stand-up a couple of times, I would miss being around likeminded people. That’s the best part of doing this. It almost feels like an anti-church, and that’s the only time you feel you’re making a difference – not that you’re out there changing minds, but you go to some town and you get some kid who’s thought this stuff up by himself but never said it out loud, and you’re giving someone a sort of safe haven.”

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Doug Stanhope’s Australian Tour

Byron Bay: Monday November 10 @ Byron Bay Brewing Company — tickets here

Brisbane: Tuesday November 11 @ The Greek Club — tickets here

Canberra: Wednesday November 12 @ Ainslie Football Club — tickets here

Sydney: Friday November 14 (sold out) & Saturday November 15 @ UNSW Roundhouse — tickets here

Adelaide: Sunday November 16 @ Capri Theatre — tickets here

Perth: Tuesday November 18 (sold out) & Thursday November 20 @ Fly By Night Club — tickets here

Melbourne: Saturday November 22 @ Dallas Brooks Centre — tickets here

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Geoff Lemon is a writer, radio broadcaster and editor of Going Down Swinging.