Wil Anderson
On the eve of his Wilosophy tour, Wil Anderson tells Andrew P Street about...
By Andrew P Street
...cultural references that don't travel well:
"It's never the material that fails when you tour: it's always some expression that you think is universal and then realise isn't. I remember doing a gig in New York where I said 'I don't want to hang shit on George Bush' and everyone stared at me because they don't have that expression there. So it was like some weird Australian would come over and literally hang shit on their president, like I was some kind of defecation decorator. Like you know, brown is the new black? Or Brown Eye for the Bush Guy."
...pressure bringing out inspiration:
"If you'd asked me a week out from the show I was honestly going 'why didn't I try harder at uni? Why did I not choose another way to earn a living?' This show just came together very well in the last week. Literally: the preview gig was at the Fringe Bar, it's Monday night and I still had no ending for the show – and then I had an idea and I sat in my car with a pen and a napkin. So I've written the entire closing bit, which is possibly the strongest part of the show, on a napkin leaning on the steering wheel of the car, half an hour before the show. And I'm thinking 'why the fuck do I spend three months sitting in my office working when clearly all I have to do is sit around in the back alleys of Darlinghurst scribbling down notes?'"
...the difference between Sydney and Melbourne:
"I always describe it in terms of nightclubs: in Sydney, if a nightclub is popular, you know it is popular because there's an ad in the paper, everyone's talking about it, there's a line down the street and there's a big sign out front. In Melbourne you're walking in the city, your shoelace is undone, you duck down an alley to tie it up, lean against a wall, touch a brick, a door swings open and there are two dudes sitting on milk crates and they look at you and go 'nah mate, members only.' That's Melbourne's most popular nightclub. That's the two cities in a nutshell."
...balancing his workload:
"I've tried to separate things much more than I have in the past. Like, there is nothing about advertising in my show. I'm not saying that at some stage I won't do a show like that because I do think that there are things that we don't get to get to talk about on [The Gruen Transfer], but I didn't want to do that this time. I look at my stand-up as my really creative work, and everything else – whether it's TV or my magazine stuff – you have a specific format and a particular audience. Stand-up is my time to talk about whatever I want to talk about. Someone said to me once that if people are going to come out of their house just to see what you have to say, then you should actually have something to say. So more than ever, I just said 'fuck, I'm going to have something to say' – and hopefully say it in an entertaining and amusing way."
Wilosophy is at the Sydney Opera House 11-21 Jun.
Wil Anderson talks about The Gruen Transfer.
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