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J: What do you do now that you’ve been humiliated
like this?
JH: Mainly I’m just really into making eggs the
best way I possibly can. But it’s a reasonable question because –
perhaps not so obviously -- I was joking about the end of the world.
I understood that it was a joke – a sincere joke, in the sense that
I started thinking about the end of the world when I turned 40.
That’s when most humans start thinking about the end of the world
because they’re facing their own personal apocalypse as they start
to see the trajectory of their lives heading toward death.
Most humans are narcissists so they become fascinated with
apocalyptic and dystopian stories because their feeling is they’re
so important to this world that if they die, they’re going to take
the rest of us jerks out with them. It was a joke but one that came
from a sincere place of being terrified. But also in a weird way,
taking perverse comfort in this idea that it’s all going to end, and
there’s nothing we can do about it, and it will all happen all at
once, and it will be all over with. It will be like peeling off a
band-aid of doom.
So when you look up the next day, and that hasn’t happened, and
you’re facing the dumb rest of your life, it is kind of scary. Even
though I was joking, I told the joke so many times that not
professionally, nor personally had I prepared for the idea that life
would go on and I would have to fill it up with new endeavors.
J: How should a viewer cope with this realization
that you’re giving them? JH: Different people are going to react to it in different ways. Anyone under 35 believes they are immortal and says that dumb joke doesn’t matter to me. Anyone over 35 who’s beginning to appreciate that they are dying, I hope will feel a certain sense of catharsis. I do. Even though the apocalypse I put forward was only one of my own imagination, I am glad the world didn’t end. I’m finding it really interesting to figure out what I do next. A lot of that has to do with starting from scratch basically, as a creative person.
J: Are you bringing your current act around the
country, spreading the gospel?
JH: I’m not spreading a new gospel here – I’m just
a guy who predicted the end of the world and it didn’t happen, who
has to answer for himself the question ‘Now what?’ As a guy who
cannot help but go on a long monologue about making eggs, and
construct an alternate reality in which you are one of the world’s
leading scrambled egg bloggers, that happens naturally in my brain,
to create alternate realities and exist within them pleasantly, but
the alternate alternate reality, which is the truth, is that’s just
me and it’s much more of a revelation for me to get onstage and just
be open about – just be myself.
Even though a lot of my comedy is insincere or fake, it’s sincerely
insincere and it’s a new pleasure for me to just get up and not feel
like I have to bend my comedy into a particularly persona – or not
even bend my comedy but bend whatever stories I’m going to tell into
a particular persona, but be able to jump around between scrambled
eggs and the lives of my human children – to literally just wear the
clothes I feel like wearing that night as opposed to wearing a
costume I have to wear.
J: How should one prepare to sit down and view the
special?
JH: First of all you have to be a subscriber to
Netflix. If you are a subscriber to Netflix, then thank you. Please
turn it on, sometime on June 20, and then let it run. As I always
promised with my books, if you buy it, it frees you from the
obligation to read it, as far as I’m concerned. But it does not
matter to me if you do not watch it, so long as you subscribe to
Netflix, stream it on June 20 and let it run all the way through.
Because as you know, Netflix is watching all of us and they will see
what happens if you pause it and don’t come back to it. If you do
that, they will come to me and take one of my children.
J: Well that’s no good. People have to watch.
JH: It’s serious business and not entirely in that
sense. I hate to couch it in these terms but this special is really
exciting and important to me, and I’m really excited to be able to
do something on Netflix because I feel as though this is the way
filmed entertainment is going to be made and distributed. I’m a
Netflix user and a Netflix lover, so I would love to do more stuff
like this in the future. If you enjoy the special, that’s not only
wonderful for me and I’m grateful, but it also does its own work,
because you enjoy it and watch it. If you only merely support what
it is I’m trying to do, which is survive, it would be very helpful
to me if you watch this special, and didn’t not watch it.
J: Well I’m already subscribed on Netflix and will
play it again, because I don’t want anything bad to happen to you,
or your family. Is it OK to watch on the days after the 20th,
or only on the 20th?
JH: Of course, on the days after. Especially for
subscribers, it costs you nothing to keep screening it over and over
again. Boy oh boy that would be great. But in a new era, after the
world has not ended, I’m being a little less cagey and coy in my
comedy, and a little more transparent in talking to fans. Part of
the thing I’m saying is ‘you do what you want and love what you
want. I totally respect the decisions you make. If you happen to
want to support me, this is how you do it.’ We have to be open about
these transactions if we want the art we love to work and to
survive.
There are a lot of people in the world who think they’re supporting
“Community” by torrenting it five months later. That’s great – and
great for them for spreading the word in chat rooms and on social
networks, but if you really want to support the thing you love,
figure out how they want you to support it, and do it.
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