In the first two minutes of his new special “Silly Silly Fun Boy,” Pete Holmes quips about his “big, dumb Mormon face” (despite the fact that he is not Mormon) and admits to sticking Q-tips deep into his “ear G-spot” (despite the warnings on the package).
Right off the bat the humor is, as the title suggests, silly. But like with all of his sets, Holmes imbues wisdom in even the most juvenile of jokes. “It’s your resistance that creates the suffering,” he says later, sounding like a pull quote from a philosophy book. (It’s a punchline about pooping one’s pants while driving.)
Holmes has been a prominent name in stand-up for two decades now, and while his playful brand of comedy hasn’t changed, the “Crashing” creator and “You Made It Weird” host has seen the industry transform rapidly around him.
“It’s so funny how comedians have become little businessmen,” he tells Variety over the phone, driving across Los Angeles to a podcast appearance. “We’re supposed to be eating loaded potato skins and being drunk in a green room, and now we’re talking about long-term benefits as opposed to taking a big advance.”
Out March 24 at 5 p.m. PT, “Silly Silly Fun Boy” is Holmes’ sixth special and first to be released directly on YouTube, following a brief exclusive window on 800 Pound Gorilla. He’s explaining why the video streaming site has recently become a favorite distributor for comics, but a passing truck derails his train of thought into a nascent bit.
“Can we take a moment to appreciate that Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul have a mezcal together?” he asks, referring to the “Breaking Bad” duo’s brand Dos Hombres. “They had a show where they were drug dealers, and now they’re like, ‘Remember us? We’re the meth guys. Drink our mezcal!’”
“We’re so stupid,” Holmes says, cracking up. “We’re such a stupid group. ‘Hey, wanna get high? Remember? The people in their underwear cooking in a camper?’ We just don’t see alcohol as a drug. Anyway… what were we saying?”
I love a comedy special that drops you right into the set. How did you decide there wouldn’t be a walkout?
I haven’t been asked that before, and to be honest I kind of wanted to be asked, because there’s a lot of consideration that goes into making a special that often goes unnoticed. When I performed this hour, there’s probably 10 or 12 minutes before the first actual joke of the special. My wife is always like, “Pete, you could just skip this.”
When it’s live, there’s more consideration around meeting the audience where they are — how are they feeling, what’s the vibe, all of that. But when you’re watching a special on TV, people are much more capable of just jumping in. So it wasn’t a fear-based decision — like “We have to start fast because nobody has an attention span” — it was more about how do we make this as lean as possible.
When taping a special, Bill Burr told me he enjoys picking crowds that will be a bit “hostile” toward him. What factors did you consider when picking Portland?
Bill — who’s one of my favorites — his ideal show is one where people actively disagree with him, because that’s his art. I’ve sat with my wife Valerie watching him do a joke where we both disagree with his point, and by the end we’re both laughing anyway. That really is his magic. My offering is a little different. I’m looking for crowds that are playful, silly and open — and it’s a real plus if they’re not just comedy-savvy, but live-performance-savvy in general.
Brian Regan has this great quote I say all the time: “Comedians are like musicians, and their instrument is the audience.” So I’m not doing comedy at them — the sound I can make is 100% reliant on them. I’m looking for silliness and openness more than I’m looking for the uphill challenge. Portland is an incredibly liberal place, and I have some jokes about gender identity that I knew they’d be on board with. But I actually love doing those jokes in rooms where it’s a little iffy. So it’s not about aligning with them on every value.
You joke about how the type of people who are unwilling to use one’s preferred pronouns are the same people who would get mad if their truck was misidentified as a “car.” Was it different performing those gender jokes from city to city?
Yeah, it was. Every joke has something underneath it, and if there is a message, it’s that we do all sorts of things to accommodate people’s feelings. It was fun to do it in front of crowds where I sensed they might not be so sympathetic to the idea. I’ll tell you, the joke never got silence. It might have gotten a little tense, but more often it was actually the liberal crowds who’d get worried I was going somewhere offensive — because comedians tend to take the side of [mocking trans people].
When I’m doing a joke like that and I see genderfluid or queer people in the audience, I can feel that kinship beaming back at me. And that’s meaningful to me. It’s not why I started comedy, but after 25 years, I’m starting to see the potential of: We’re actually saying something. Even when we’re saying nothing, we’re saying something with our nothing.
Pete Holmes at the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin, Texas
Getty Images
Is it a trope now that every comedian has a trans joke?
Yeah. I think it’s directly because Chappelle made a lot of noise with his trans stuff. If you have a trans joke, it’s like having a Michael Jackson joke — it’s so well-trodden that you better make sure it’s good. It can’t just be a cheap laugh, because a lot of times the joke is really just being disrespectful or irreverent, which is by definition titillating — it’s shocking or upsetting, or you might find it hilarious. I didn’t feel like I had to do a trans joke, I just had something to say about it… even though it’s probably easier and safer to say nothing.
When you first started, were there any taboos in comedy that audiences have warmed up to in the years since?
The big thing for me is religion and spirituality. It’s been exciting for me that by just mentioning God, people don’t automatically assume you mean an old man in the sky who’s mad that you masturbate. It used to be if you said “I believe in God,” it meant you don’t say “fuck, shit, piss, cunt,” you don’t do drugs and you obscure your sexuality. Now it’s so wonderful to be able to say, “Can we talk about what we’re all doing here?” and not have anyone in the crowd bristle because the guy swears or acknowledges the existence of sex or psychedelics. I grew up in a time where there was comedy and there was faith comedy, music and faith music, and that line has been so delightfully blurred and has removed that taboo.
I want to ask about the business of comedy. In your HBO show “Crashing,” we see the humiliating lengths comics had to go in order to get just a couple minutes of stage time. These days, many young comics are skipping the club scene and building an audience online. Is the industry you came up in a bygone era?
It is. When I made “Crashing,” I was talking to people older than me — Artie Lange, Bill Burr… that’s where the wisdom is. But if I was starting in the scene now, doing a 2020s version of the show, I’d be talking to people younger than me, like Gianmarco Soresi. He is a brilliant comedian who totally figured out YouTube. Not just how to market himself, but how to find his fans and build his base. And now he can tour. It’s incredible — not only can he tour, but he can actually make money just from the videos. I get so excited for young people because of that.
I’ll talk out of the other side of my face in a moment, but if you can skip going to a club called The Chuckle Conglomerate at some horrible rest stop where you make $300 eating shit in front of a crowd you shouldn’t even want to do well for, and instead just hone your craft, find your fans, and align with them, I think that’s beautiful. That’s what “Crashing” would have been about now: how do I make a TikTok, how do I get on YouTube, how do I release my own special? Look at Shane Gillis — he put his first special on YouTube and it goes viral because it’s good.
So to talk out of the other side of my face: I have appreciation for the way young comics are doing it, and I don’t think they’re missing out on anything. But I do think there’s a quality to letting the world test you — being a little frightened and then persevering, in whatever form that takes. There’s nothing like walking into a bar that smells like blood and beer and doing well. It toughens you up and builds muscle. I don’t think that’s unique to comedians; I think that’s what your 20s and 30s are for. Let’s go grow, let’s go be scared.
And you can do both.
Comedians doing both are in the best position. Sorry to keep mentioning Gianmarco, but what he’s done with his YouTube is remarkable, and the guy tours, the guy does sets, he’s up there at one in the morning, he knows what it is to scrap. It’s good to do both: One is cardio and the other is weights, and you need both for a healthy artistic body.
Speaking of YouTube, this is your first special released on the platform. It seems like there used to be a stigma around YouTube, that it was where you went if you couldn’t sell your special to a network or streamer. But now some comedians are turning down offers from Netflix to release directly on YouTube.
The comics I talk to, including the younger ones, say there is Netflix and there is YouTube. That’s not to say you can’t have a special elsewhere — Roy Wood Jr. has a great Hulu special, and maybe my favorite special of all time, from Chris Fleming, is on HBO. But it’s like musicians with albums. They put out a record so they can tour. In the past, comedians have understandably gone for the payday. You make $100,000 to sell your special to Comedy Central or whatever. Now, you make your money touring, so you want to reach the largest number of people, and that’s why people are going to YouTube. But, you know, we submitted the special to Netflix and — my feelings aren’t hurt — they did pass. It gave us a moment to go, “OK, what is the path of most fans as opposed to the most money?”
Pete Holmes and Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”
CBS via Getty Images
As someone who hosted a late-night show, what do you think of the state of late-night? Is the format on its deathbed?
It’s so funny, I’m driving past Warner Bros. right now, which is where we filmed my talk show. I always drive by and remember parking there. It was such a sweet time of my life. Anyway, it’s so obviously podcasts. In one sense, everything’s changing, but in another sense, absolutely nothing is. I was just in New York promoting my kids’ book and this special, and I go to Barstool Sports, I go to all these podcasts — and they’re all talk shows. And then I did Colbert.
What we’re losing with Colbert is… I don’t put on a suit to do a podcast. Colbert is in the Ed Sullivan Theater, for fuck’s sake. It’s where Letterman was, where Ed Sullivan was. It’s got a band and a shiny floor and it’s on CBS. So on one hand I’m like “Nothing’s changing,” but it is valid to mourn the loss there. And the real loss isn’t people making jokes in a chair talking to a host. The real loss is the specialness. It’s like going to a fancy dinner where you dress up and there’s a maître d’ and a sommelier. You’re still just eating a meal, but the ritual and the history make it feel so much more special. That’s what’s being lost.
Do you have a dream guest for “You Made It Weird”?
I’d like to get Jim Carrey. I know he’s in the news for his red carpet thing, but that’s not why. I think he and I would have an interesting conversation about spirituality.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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