Jim Gaffigan an ordinary superstar Regular-guy success has grown into a global arena tour By: Jill Wilson Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Jan. 14, 2019

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This article was published 13/01/2019 (2127 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When comedian Jim Gaffigan last performed in Winnipeg, it was November, and he poked a bit of fun at the way we whine about the cold despite the fact that we’re indoors most of the time.

He’s timed it so he’ll be able to revisit that material at his upcoming Bell MTS Place show, but Gaffigan — who’s on a world tour that takes him from Baltimore and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to Beijing, Shanghai and Seoul — says he’s as guilty as any of us when it comes to avoiding winter’s chill.

“It’s not like I’m outside that much when I’m doing a show,” he says. “I was in Oslo and they were like, ‘You’ve got to check out this statue garden.’ I discovered it’s outside and I’m like, well then I’m not going. I’m not going outside to look at the most perfect statues ever in January.”

The Illinois-born comic, 52, has parlayed his Midwestern sensibility and regular-dad persona into a wide-ranging and diverse career that encompasses standup (he’s made 11 comedy recordings and was No. 8 on Forbes‘ list of the highest-paid comedians in 2018), acting (everything from Law & Order to Portlandia), writing (he’s penned two New York Times bestellers, Dad Is Fat and Food: A Love Story) and commentary (he won a Daytime Emmy for his contributions to TV newsmagazine CBS Sunday Morning).

He’s a father to five children with his wife and partner Jeannie Gaffigan, who has served as co-writer and executive producer on his comedy endeavours since the mid-2000s. In 2017, Jeannie was diagnosed with a benign brain tumour; her surgery and recovery is a topic on his most recent comedy album, Noble Ape.

Gaffigan took time out of his touring schedule to chat with Free Press about new material, audience expectations and making jokes about death.

FP: The last time you were here (at Pantages Playhouse Theatre), it was soft-seat theatre show; this time out, it’s an arena gig. Is that a goal you set for yourself? And then how does that change what you do onstage?

JG: There are comedians that probably have that as a goal, but I never thought I would be touring doing theatres, let alone larger venues than that. The conventional wisdom is like, “Oh, arenas, there’s no intimacy, they’re bad for comedy,” but it’s become apparent that the technology has caught up to the situation. Our preconceived notion of a larger venue being wrong for comedy, it’s true if we’re using the sound and screens of 1980. But now we live in an era where in larger venue, there are more good seats, the sound quality is great, there are screens that can reach the less expensive seats better… Look, I’ve been doing standup long enough that I didn’t think wireless microphones were going to work — “Seems too risky.”

It used to be you wanted to appear on Letterman or Conan, and now you appearing on a podcast is probably just as effective.
— Jim Gaffigan

Also, these are people who know my sensibility. This is not just 3,000 people they dragged off the streets of Winnipeg. They know I’m going to show up with new material that’s good. They know it’s worth their night; I’m not going to go up with a pad and paper and read some jokes.

FP: I think the fact that it’s new material is interesting. You released your album Noble Ape in 2018, but this is the all-new Quality Time tour. Do you feel like the changing media landscape — streaming, YouTube — has contributed to a churn where you’re obligated to come up with new stuff more often?

JG: It’s interesting because it changes all the time. People are talking about Netflix taking over standup — “Is it good? Is it bad?” I’m like, wait three years. There’s gonna be something different.

It used to be you wanted to appear on Letterman or Conan, and now you appearing on a podcast is probably just as effective. It used to be you needed to have a special on HBO or Comedy Central and now in some ways, with Spotify… I mean, comedy is an audio thing. Obviously, live performance is the peak of seeing standup — and I’m not just saying that because I’m selling tickets; anybody who’s into comedy knows that it’s a conversation, there’s no fourth wall — but it’s ever-changing.

Back in the days of the Borscht Belt, people would do the same act for 40 years… An interviewer asked me the other day, “So are you touring with Noble Ape?” No, people would be furious with the same material. It is a great distinction from musicians, where, if they do new stuff, the audience is impatient. With comedy, when they do something even similar in tone, the audience gets impatient.

It’s fun for a comedian, because it’s an ongoing situation where you not only challenge yourself but you also have to challenge the audience. They might think, “I want to hear that fat pasty guy talk about food,” but they want something more complex than that. They don’t want me to throw away my point of view, but they want to see me evolve, they want to see things change. Maybe challenge isn’t the right word, but freshness, you know what I mean?

FP: On Noble Ape, you delve into some personal material about your wife’s illness that’s darker than people might expect. At what point did you decide that situation could be comedic — and were you worried how people would react?

JG: You know, we all live through medical emergencies with a loved one, we all spend those two weeks in the hospital, but we have to return to a certain level of denial about our impending death… I was doing it as this cathartic thing, and it became apparent that the audience was sharing that process.

We’ve all been in that vulnerable position, but it has to be earned and the material has to be good — and obviously my wife had to be good with it. In almost joking around about it, it was communicating to people that it was OK. It’s kind of like my view on parenting. You can complain to everyone about being a parent because that tells people that you’re involved… I feel in so much of life, we’re in this denial that life is hard. With comedy, we kind of get a glimpse of, “Yeah, I know it’s not polite to be angry about a kid’s birthday party but there’s a little annoyance.”

FP: A life-threatening illness goes beyond a little annoying, though. Were you ever tempted to go even darker with it — to do something like Patton Oswalt does with his wife’s death on his Netflix special, Annihilation?

I’ve been doing standup long enough that I didn’t think wireless microphones were going to work.
— Jim Gaffigan

JG: In the end, I feel like I’m a ’90s comic. The task at hand is to be funny and to make as many people in that room laugh. I guess I’m kind of like, you’ve got a job to do, right? There were topics that I tried to make funny but it got into this heaviness that was not constructive. And I also feel that there’s a responsibility to the audience. When they come to a show, they’re spending money and they’re giving up their time. People can make more money, but that one night that they can go out? There’s not many of those. You want the night to be a B-plus or an A. We’d all probably rather sit in bed and eat bacon.

FP: You seem to have a real awareness of doing things to make the audience happy.

JG: Occasionally, I’ll do an interview and they’ll say, “You talk about your kids mostly,” and I’ll think, I actually make a point of not talking about my kids too much because I’ve been that 26-year-old that has seen the comedian talk about their wife and children or husband and children and thought, “I don’t care about anything you’re saying.” I think of previous versions of me, and it’s why I don’t get too preachy, because I don’t like that. I love that when I’m watching a newsmagazine show, but not when I’m watching comedy.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier

Jill Wilson
Senior copy editor

Jill Wilson writes about culture and the culinary arts for the Arts & Life section.

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