Comedian T.J. Miller on 'Big Hero 6', Pre-Show Rituals, & Rubber Chickens

Let's go. What's going on, everybody? I love you! You guys want to hear you have a good time? It's great to be here. All right, this game, this game is started. Moving gracefully through your youth. Start building up your field call value. Make a love of TJ. I'm TJ and Miller and I'm a comedian. and I do movies and television and stand-up comedy. I do funny noises and some weird faces. And I do children's birthday parties but only as a caterer. I always knew I was funny as a child. And part of part of that was just sort of knowing, it was a lot of spatial recognition stuff. Kids would always laugh because I could use objects kind of, you know, differently than hold on. Differently than than I think they would expect. There it goes through there and it comes out here. And, you know, I think that was it. It was sort of just realizing that you know, I can make people laugh and And that's what I wanted to do. And my first stand-up comedy routine was at The Cotton Club in Chicago, Illinois. And I I promised myself. I had said, "TJ, you have to get up this night." I went down there and there were four people in the room. All black. Went to the bathroom for 30 minutes, practiced my routine. I thought this would be funny. You know, bomb in front of four or five people in South Side Chicago. I came back out to that club and there was 300 people. And I did pretty well. Usually you don't do well on your first job. I have a prescription for for marijuana. It's for anxiety. Primarily anxiety about getting arrested for marijuana. You know a lot of people have rituals before they go up to do stand-up. Turn your baseball cap upside down, turn it around, throw it in the trash, retrieve it, recycle it. Use the fibers to make a new baseball cap. I'm not about that. Every time I'm about to go up, I interrupt what is otherwise a really, you know, cogent interview by wrapping a chair around my head, having trouble getting out of the chair, eventually making my way to having the chair sit on me rather than me sit on the chair. That's my ritual. How would I describe my style of comedy? Describe my style of comedy? How would I would describe my style of comedy I I would my style of comedy described as the type of guy that sits in a chair, lets the chair sit on him and asks you if you'd like to sit in the chair. I think the trait that all comedians have in common is everybody owns a pair of shorts. But a lot of non-comedians have that too. So I've thought about this, maybe it's seeing things through the lens of the jester's eye because everybody sees something through the lens of something. So whether that be negative, positive, pessimistic or optimistic, perhaps to see it through a lens of humor is maybe to soften the existence that we know is going to come to an end. But I think it's more about people that sit on chairs and then let chairs sit on them. When I'm on stage so many things go through my head. You know, my mind, my brain goes through my head. Antlers, people named Trisha, past experiences, future experiences. Juke boxes. That's it. Yeah. I don't smoke a lot of marijuana anymore. I used to smoke it every day, all day, every day, all the time nonstop. You know what? That's gangster. It is. If you have someone that you know and you're like, "He just smokes way too much." Oh you're a pussy. Almost all of my stories and and and life experiences that my jokes come from are about how I bought, and this is so foolish, but I made so much money on Yogi Bear 3D. That I bought about 350 condors, those are birds of prey. They're illegal in the United States, you have to have them shipped in through the black market from China. You know, a lot of that has to do with getting married, falling in love with Kate. We knew each other since college, you know, wanting to own more leather, not jackets, not pants but, you know, car covers. You know, owning more than one bicycle but all of them are welded together. That sort of stuff, those are the experiences that I translate into comedy. If you treat anything with severity or you're serious about anything then you can't possibly be a you know, a really pure comedian. So I try and take everything with a grain of salt. I didn't choose The Hero Six. They they chose me in a very positive way. They sort of said, "We really think this would be good for you." I was at a point where I, like I always am every single week, every month, every year, I'm thinking, "Well, I have to purse down projects. I got to do less." And then the third day, "Can you just put an audition on your iPhone? They they'd like you to do it." Fine. Yes, okay, fine. And I did that and I'm so glad because now I'm in one of the best films that I've ever seen. As far as voiceover versus television versus film versus stand-up, it's not really getting into character. I'm not a very good actor. I'm I'm a pretty good comedian because I've worked harder than anybody else except for for Hannibal Burress. I think with voiceover, you've got to know that you have no physicality. That if if that's a crutch or a skill set it doesn't matter, you don't have it. So you got to focus entirely on, you know, what verbally and vocally you can make funny. Um, but it's all it all sort of tracks back to improv. Improvisation sort of, I'm an improviser by trade and so I just try and, I actually don't read any of the scripts for movies that I'm in. I don't read the scripts for Silicon Valley. I just try and go to them with a fresh perspective and make it seem a little bit new. And it's also funnier to me if I see it for the first time. But yeah, voiceover is strangely very hard but much easier. A lot of people want their comedy to have some greater purpose. For me it's not. I, you know, I have no interest in trying to release people from their own death anxieties so they can possibly have the transparency within their own relationships with their loved ones and their family and friends such that they can achieve ultimate intimacy which requires ultimate transparency. No, that doesn't seem, it seems like a waste of time. I like primarily to talk about how much I know about giraffes. I know more about giraffes than every other person in this world. I do. Do you have children? Miss? No? Good. I'm glad because if you would feel sorry for them they had a mother who didn't know anything about giraffes. I think, you know, we're getting into a period of more awkward comedy, letting it breathe a little more. I personally think that comedians became political and sociological and now it's our time to become philosophical and talk about death, which The Hero Six does, and sort of issues that transcend sociology and and uh politics. But I think the main way that comedy has changed is just nobody's using rubber chickens in the way that they used to be. And that is so frustrating to me because a chicken a chicken is so funny. And then the fact that it's rubber. And the fact that there's rubber and it's a chicken. To me, I don't know, why aren't we using that more? You know? So that that would be, I'd say that's the main way that I think comedy in the American landscape has changed. I would love to just be the Dane Cook of Howie Mandel's, that is the Howie Mandel of Jerrod Carmichael's, who is the Kumail of Pete Holmes, that is the Pete Holmes of Conan O'Brien, who is the Johnny Carson of David Letterman's. And David Letterman is nothing more than the Colbert Reports version of what Seth Myers did wrong in terms of Jimmy Fallon. If all that could just synthesize into an Artie Lange of Artie Lange's, then I would be the Steve Martin of none of them. My character in Silicon Valley, Erlich is uh he's an arrogant blowhard who's brash, brazen, says whatever he wants, has no sort of respect for anybody around him, manufactures his own self-confidence, smokes weed all day, every day and drinks constantly and is mostly interested in reputation, respect and pussy. So, how I get in character for that is I just walk onto the set as myself. A lot of people mispronounce as uh Erlich. It's just a mispronunciation and I think pronouncing things is important and if you uh mispronounce them then you should try and figure out the correct pronunciation. Is everybody paranoid when you smoke marijuana? Do you? Yeah? That's the worst one. Alcohol never does that. Alcohol has this magical property. You're never drunk and you're like, "Everybody wants me out of the room." We're all making fun of me but they're doing it just with their eyes. You just, you moved his hands like that guy's a, I know it. Never did that. Alcohol never does that. When you're drunk you're like, "Yeah! Yeah! I can fight anyone!"

I would love my stand-up career to sort of flourish into a film career that could kind of degrade into a television career that could become a live improvisation Chicago career that would then catapult me into a terrible uh career at Saturday Night Live and then have that sort of fall apart and become a career as a dishwasher in Chanute, Kansas, where my great uncle was born and lived and soon will die.

Outside of stand-up, what are my passions?

I mean, I love stand-up. Uh, you know, I I was a juggler by trade and I think that sort of got me to the place where I just really passionate about stand-up. I love stand-up comedy, you know. I love being a comic. I'm really passionate about being a comic. And I've always wanted to sort of step in front of people and tell jokes. So those are really my passions. Stand-up is a very precarious art form. All the frustrations that come with it. For instance, I almost got punched in Los Angeles. A woman was heckling and we had an interaction and then she felt that her uh her husband should come up and fist fight me and he almost did that. I took the high road. And by that I mean, I hit him with a flute. I think my fans get drunk, get high and uh hate their lives. A heckler just is a person who wants to be a part of the show. But uh I try and bring them in. They're there. They paid. They just want to laugh. Tonight uh there was a gentleman who wasn't having a good time and I included him less to make him feel good but more to just say, you know, understand that I understand what you're going through and you don't like it and I don't like it. So maybe we can connect on that. I'll be gone in minutes. What kind of comedy do you like? You like being at my show? Oh, thank you. Whose show is it? It's Silicon Valley? Thank you. Give it up for it. For me, non-verbal communication is important in the sense that If you're focusing on the comedy, then film is no different than television, is no different than voiceover, is no different than advertisements, is no different than branded content, is no different than stand-up comedy, is no different than sketch comedy, is no different than improvisation. I think it's easy for a lot of these mediums to make you get caught up in uh caring about something else than the audience laughing. So I guess the difficulty is foregoing that to remain altruistic and the philosophical drive that makes you pursue comedy to make people happy because of the tragedy that permeates everyday life. That the only ephemeral escapism is comedy. Don't I feel better? I go home and I sleep in a bed that's made of money from Yogi Bear 3D. Thank you, guys.