Tim Minchin brings his show An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin to New Zealand for six shows in March. Ahead of the tour, he spoke with Greg Bruce, in what was supposed to be a straightforward promotional interview.
The celebrity interview might sometimes look like a nice conversation between two people, but what it really is is a commercial transaction in which the interviewer is mining the celebrity for clickable content and the celebrity is using the interviewer as a source of free marketing. The interviewer holds most of the cards because he is the one who controls the conversation and dictates what gets talked about and written, but the celebrity has one big advantage: status. Status makes you more interesting, attractive and connected, gives you more and better career opportunities, enables you to make more money and gives you a greater chance of surviving the climate apocalypse. It’s a virtuous cycle that ends, hopefully, with an invite to the Met Gala.
The interviewer, as one who regularly interacts with celebrities, is frequently reminded of his relatively (very) low status, which is not a great feeling, especially since he would very much like to survive the cost of living crisis and go to the Met Gala. The smart celebrity, understanding how status can be conferred, leverages this situation for all it’s worth.
At least that’s the way it usually works. But accompanying the exchange is the possibility – vanishingly rare, but still – that the shackles of the system might be thrown off and the banality of the commercial transaction transcended by the power of genuine human connection.
In 2005, Tim Minchin was an average dude who went to the Edinburgh Fringe and performed a one-hour comedy show called Dark Side, which was universally acclaimed, won him a Perrier Award and launched his career as a world-famous musical comedian.
In 2022, I was an average dude who had written a book called Rugby Head that said everything I thought worth saying about life and I put it out into the world and no one much cared, which led to much soul-searching and self-loathing: What was the point? Why did I think anyone would be interested in my thoughts? Why didn’t I just leave the writing to Murakami and Dan Brown?
On a personal level, I already knew the answer to the first and last questions. I’m trying to survive a cost of living crisis in the country’s most expensive city while bringing up three children. The tiny amount of free time I have is spent doing jobs around the house. I didn’t write a book because “my soul demanded it” or “I can’t not write” or any of that BS.
Anyway, when I mentioned to Minchin that I’d written a book, he very quickly said its title as if he knew it, and for a wonderful, moronic moment, I thought he might have read it. I wouldn’t say this made the whole thing feel worthwhile, but it definitely felt good. Even when I realised he’d just googled it, my book’s title on his enormously successful lips still felt quite nice.
Why did I feel the need to tell Tim Minchin about my book? I can’t say for sure. One plausible-sounding possibility is that I was hoping it would provoke him to say something interesting that I could mine for clickable content, but that’s just a story that suits my narrative. Anyway, if that was my plan, it failed.
The story I told him about the book was basically the one I laid out at the beginning of this article: my book didn’t sell, wah wah, poor me, what’s the point of anything?
In response, he laid out for me the narrative arc of Phil Connors, the protagonist of Groundhog Day The Musical, which he considers to be the superior of his two hit musicals, although its shorter run on both the West End and Broadway and its lack of a movie adaptation suggest the public prefers Matilda.
Minchin told me that when Connors discovers he’s living the same day over and over, he first wants to exploit the power that comes from that, then wants only to have sex with his co-worker, then realises everything’s meaningless, then tries to kill himself. When he can’t die, he comes to understand he doesn’t need a purpose or an outcome; that things can be worth doing just because they bring pleasure or kindness or relief, that it doesn’t matter that there’s no tomorrow where he will be affirmed for his actions. Then he realises the way to make himself feel better is to make other people feel better. He sees that he’s not the centre of the universe. He becomes an altruist, and not just an alturist but one of the greatest altruists the world has ever seen.
At this point, you are supposed to think Connors has “got there”. But, Minchin says, he hasn’t. There’s still one more step: what Minchin describes as mindfulness, or the ability to be “striveless”.
“And so,” Minchin concludes, “all this is s*** I understand, but cannot apply at all. But the framing that helps me is that art is an offer, and that you are just putting an offer into the world and there’s nothing you can do to avoid the disappointment of that offer not having much uptake.”
It might seem like Minchin has had a lot of uptake on every offer he’s ever made, but in fact, before his breakout performance in Edinburgh, he played 12 years of extremely low-level gigs, often at the back of the stage, in covers bands. He never thought he was too good for it. He thought that was how good he was. He describes that time now as “joyous” and says he’s not sure how necessary his subsequent success has been to his happiness.
“I’d like to tell you if Rugby Head had sold heaps of copies you’d probably be a bit happier,” he said, “but I wouldn’t f***ing guarantee it.”
He’s 48 now, and when he talked about his future, it was less about his career and more about the sort of man he wanted to be: He told me he wants to carry his age lightly, to be “charming and avuncular and grateful and kind and a mentor”. Then he asked me what sort of man I wanted to be.
I wasn’t sure why he was asking, given that such a question is way beyond the bounds of standard operating procedure for a celebrity interview, but I told him I wanted to be a good person, a good husband, a good dad. I said I wanted to be less self-centred, less achievement-oriented. I didn’t use the word “striveless” but if I’d thought of it, I would have. I told him I wasn’t proud of my reaction to the lack of reaction to my book. I said that while I had assured myself during the writing that I wasn’t doing it for the response, it’s now apparent I was lying.
He told me I needed to write a second book, and that, while doing so, I needed to hold in my mind the thought that I don’t need validation and that I am enough as I am.
He said: “If you can take the lesson of your first book and go, ‘Oh, hold on, I made a logical error: I thought it would make me love myself because other people would love me, and I thought I’d be validated, and I thought it would allow me to redefine myself and not have to talk to self-indulgent artists on the phone, because I’m a f***ing novelist’, then you’ve learned all those lessons the f***ing hard way.”
He continued: “So what you can’t do is turn around and go, ‘Well, this one’s going to validate me’. You shouldn’t write a second book if you’re going into it with the same hopes. You should write a second book because you go, ‘Oh, no, I write because I’m a writer and I’m valid because I’m loved by my wife and friends and my kids and because Tim Minchin loved my book.”
(It’s possible the last sentence ended with “... and not because Tim Minchin loved my book”, but I can report only what I heard.)
“And if you can write the next one knowing that you write because you’re a writer, and that is what artists do, is put offers into the world, then that’ll be transcendent.”
I was deeply moved by his words and the apparent care and sincerity with which he said them, but I also thought: “All this is s*** I understand, but cannot apply at all.”
Minchin is first and foremost a funnyman, having written dozens of hilarious songs of great insight and intelligence that have led to sold-out shows all over the world, then to commissions to write two hit musicals, and to much other work on stage and screen. He has been significantly enriched by these achievements, been critically acclaimed, and won a laundry list of awards and honours, including two Tony Awards, the Order of Australia and an invite to the Met Gala.
But his approach to life might loosely be described as “Are you sure about that?” and his new show, An Unfunny Evening With Tim Minchin, which he’s bringing to New Zealand for six shows in March, is, in part, the result of his asking that question specifically in regards to the career that has brought him all this success.
He recently told TVNZ’s Aziz Al Sa’afin: “Once you’ve done comedy, you’re addicted to laughter. And after you’ve got laughter, everything else feels like failure.” He says the new show is an attempt to rectify this, to be more present, more authentic and more reflective. It doesn’t have what he calls “punchline songs”. He says: “I refuse to be a musical comedian for the rest of my life.”
His mother died in November, while he was in the middle of touring what he calls The Unfunny Show. The next day, he performed the show, as scheduled, at a sold-out Sydney State Theatre. Of that decision, he now says: “I thought, ‘Well, this is part of it, I’ll just bring it on to the stage.’ But actually, what it required is a sort of slightly psychopathological dividing of my brain so I could get through the show.”
But can he be sure about that? Who gets to decide what is and isn’t psychopathological? At the end of that show, he sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah with the lights off and the whole audience sang along with him. Who among us can say it wouldn’t make the pain of our mother’s death a little more bearable if we were able to celebrate her life by singing one of the most beautiful songs ever written with 2000 people who love us?
Life is mostly questions like this, followed by death. You’ve gotta laugh, don’t you?
Since his mother died, he said, people have consoled him with phrases like “You must be devastated’, but he says 48 is not very young to lose one’s mother. He recalled (because I had shared with him earlier) that I had been 39 when I lost mine, as had his sister. A friend of his had been 11. He said: “It’s hard not to do the logic”.
“So maybe that is masking,” he said, “but it’s also incredibly consistent with how I’ve approached life.”
He said: “If I lost my daughter, I would not be able to do the logic.
He paused for a moment, then said: “My son on the other hand … ”
He said: “My job is to put good ideas into the world. I mean, it’s mostly to entertain and to f***ing put food on my table. But, beyond that, to put good ideas into the world. And those could be funny ideas, or eviscerating ideas, or trite ideas or cute ideas. But I want to spread good ideas.”
It was funny he should say that, because, a few days before our conversation, an idea had popped into my head, which I felt I had to share with him. It was just a single word. I don’t know where it came from or how it found me, but it wouldn’t leave me alone.
I said: “I have an idea for you.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Do you want to hear it?”
“Yeah,” he said, “I really f***ing do.”
I was relatively sure he didn’t mean that, but I knew better than to say so, because I’d done something similar while talking with Michael Buble earlier this year and that had turned into a total disaster.
Before I could share my idea with him, though, he said: “Is it to make a musical out of Rugby Head?”
My heart leaped again to the absurd, already-disproven conclusion that he must have read my book, largely because it does contain all the elements of a world-class musical: Pathos, humour, the agony and ecstasy of life, cute kids, the music of Mariah Carey and a whole chapter on Buck Shelford’s testicle. During the writing of the book, I had fantasised often about it being adapted into all sorts of money-spinning works, including a musical, and hearing my fantasy given voice by one of the world’s foremost composers of musicals reignited it in a way that made me dizzy. In my head, a new and brighter future unspooled: Me, walking the red carpet at the Broadway premiere of, my incredible wife on one arm, Rachel McAdams on the other, Tim Minchin behind us, whispering in McAdams’ ear about how great I am.
In the wake of all this, my actual idea suddenly felt very stupid. Furthermore, too much time had now elapsed between the tease and reveal, and I doubted my idea would support the accumulated weight of expectation.
I should have just spat it out. Instead I continued to waffle. I told him it was just one word, that maybe he could work with it, that it had come to me just before the interview. (This last claim was a lie. I don’t know why I said it.)
Finally, my well of meaningless nonsense must have run dry, because I heard myself say: “It’s ‘Timnasium’.”
There was an extended silence, during which I died several deaths, only to be reincarnated and then immediately deincarnated when I registered his response (“Oh, wow!”) as sarcasm. My heart first sank, then ceased. I should have realised it was a stupid idea, or at least far too stupid to share with a creative genius.
But, as any good primary school teacher will wrongly tell your children, there is no such thing as a stupid idea, and, despite my self-loathing, Tim Minchin was about to prove it.
He asked first if a Timnasium was an actual gym or a gym for the intellect. I didn’t have any answer for that: I’d expended all my creative energies on the word itself. I hadn’t anticipated questions. I suggested, lamely, that maybe it could incorporate both aspects.
He took my intellectually limited input and ran with it. He began riffing, as I watched on in awe. He suggested maybe he could do Joe Wicks-style exercise videos, but teach critical thinking skills concurrently with the physical exercises.
He said: “I could go: ‘This is a lunge. Now, the philosophical equivalent is a backward step. Sometimes you have to take a backward step. You have to check your argument’.”
I thought this was a truly great idea, and I began to fantasise about the success of the Timnasium and the reflected glory/royalties that could accrue to me as a result, but then, before Rachel McAdams could make her inevitable appearance, and for reasons I haven’t yet been able to isolate, it struck me with the power of epiphany: The glory was not in the future; the glory was now; the glory was in the moment.
We had gone nearly half an hour over our allotted time. I didn’t care. I felt giddy. He’d given me much powerful and heartfelt advice. He’d mentioned the name of my book three times. He’d not just asked me to send him a signed copy but told me I MUST send him a signed copy.
If it had been a date, I would have told him I’d had a great time and asked if he’d like to do it again sometime. But it wasn’t a date; it was a transaction.
And then again … Why did he ask if I was coming to his show in Auckland in March? And why, even though my family is currently on a strictly enforced spending freeze, did I tell him I wouldn’t miss it for the world? And why did he suggest I come for a drink with him afterwards? And why did I end the call with “I love you”?
A few days after we spoke, I sent him a signed copy of Rugby Head. On the title page, I wrote: “We’ll always have the Timnasium.”
I haven’t heard anything back.
Tim Minchin will perform An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano as part of the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of The Arts in Wellington on March 8 and 9, and as part of the Auckland Arts Festival on March 21 and 22. He will also perform two shows in Christchurch on March 24 and 25.
Update: Due to demand, a third Wellington show has just been added on March 7.