Talking to Ron James is a lot like, well, listening. As might be expected from his mile-a-minute, energy-packed standup shows, the man likes to talk and, buddy, is he entertaining to listen to. Therefore, instead of a conventional advance article on his show at Anne Portnuff Theatre March 7, Yorkton This Week presents his interview with Thom Barker in its entirety for your enjoyment.
YTW: The press release we got says, “Unshackled by network constraints and corporate oversight, prepare for Ron to let loose.” What can we expect to be different on stage from what we might have seen on TV?
RJ: Well, I don’t have to worry about getting sued if I say the wrong thing.
The Canadian libel laws are so litigious and so arcane that I couldn’t call Kentucky Fried Chicken ‘Hormone-choked Hell Hen or else some black-ops chopper in the employ of the colonel would have me in a spotlight. I’d be disappeared.
You’ve got to watch what you say about that button-down patriarch running the government store in Ottawa. You can’t say anything about the Conservatives or else I’d wake up with a black bag on my head in a Pentecostal church basement in southern Alberta while a gang of Tory storm troopers put the boots to me with a box of stale Timbits.
There’s another thing, when you’re on CBC you can make fun of everybody else but CBC. They don’t like you to turn your razor sharp stare on them
YTW: Did you feel uncomfortable doing your show?
RJ: I enjoyed doing my TV show, I enjoyed the studio, the crew. I had the best crew, you know, and a great writing room. Every time I walked into the room, I laughed. I really miss the creative process with a team, but what I don’t miss is the politics of that place and fighting to make sure you get a steady time slot and making sure they promote you properly and all that other crap.
One of the great things about having a successful standup career in this country is you can step away from television and its attendant demands and go out to where the world is authentic, go out beyond the myopic perimeter of Toronto or Vancouver or Montreal and see what really makes this country tick.
I think that’s been my virtue. I think that’s been the greatest boon I’ve experienced in my travels is seeing the country in its raw permanence in the dead of winter and out beyond the fancy photos from the tourist brochures, but just getting to know people, man, and I’ve never tired of it.
I’m so psyched to hit the west in a couple of weeks, you have no idea. Oh my jeez, buddy, I’m so psyched to be back on tour again.
YTW: Is that your favourite thing to do?
RJ: I’d say my favourite of all is to when you step in a theatre and it’s filled with paying patrons who’ve come to laugh; that’s the best, man.
You can really give them their money’s worth too and it’s so much different than television. It’s not safe, there’s no commercials, you can talk with the audience; you can riff with them. You don’t have to worry about editing. I can do two hours without breaking a sweat, well, that’s not true anymore because I’m 57.
When I first started, 15, 20 years ago, I used to end my show with two beers and a drink of Scotch. Now I end the night with two Advil and a bottle of Gatorade, you know. I’m living a healthier life, buddy,
YTW: One thing I didn’t know about you was that you spent nine years with Second City. What was that like and what did you learn from that experience?
RJ: I learned standards. That was the best thing I took from there and how to craft a joke properly and how to work in an ensemble, how not to work in an ensemble, the pressures of putting a show up each year.
That was an exciting day I started with the touring company. That was great fun being in the touring company van making 350 bucks a week being paid with a bag of russets and a Dixie cup of our own piss. It’s nothing man, but it was great and you were just discovering it too. Like when you discover something new. Like when you just start skiing or something, or playing hockey or anything that demands skill and suddenly you’ve landed in a place you belong. And that was the most wonderful thing with Second City, I landed in a place I belonged.
I got three years of university, but mostly I majored in binge drinking and hash knives so when I finally got into Second City and the touring company, it was great, you know.
I moved down to main stage and there was more pressure there on main stage, a little more political. And then I went down to Los Angeles to be in their show for a while and then I came back and continued to work with them in corporate gigs and things like that, bread and butter rent-making stuff. That’s where you’d go into a company and they’d tell you about the launch of some new arthritis pill they had, then you’d have to write a show about it. It was just very challenging, but, rent and all that other stuff, so I guess I learned an awful lot of things.
It was also great at that time because I was a journeyman actor; people would come down to see you at the old fire hall, which was an iconic room in Toronto at the time, and then the next day you’d be doing half a dozen voice overs or CTV would be giving you a small role.
It was an exciting time, but after I left there, you realize how comfortable the place is and it’s almost like you’re leaving home. I was broke for a lot after leaving there, went through some really really lean years in southern California, but came back and started a standup career. I think the standards I learned in Second City applied very well to my standup standards, but its an exponential leap the two disciplines, one’s improv and one’s standup and for my money I’d take standup any day.
YTW: One of my favourite bits of yours is the camping trip you took with your family. How much of that stuff is true and how much is exaggerated?
RJ: It’s all true and, of course, everything is exaggerated. What camping trip was that, the one where I had to put up the tent? Where my daughter says, ‘that’s okay, I love puzzles,’ and I say, ‘that’s okay, your dad loves a cold beer, it’s all yours.’ Or the other one where I’m slapping the mosquitos off me?
That’s exaggerated, but it’s true. We literally got out of the car and I was eaten alive and she’s asking me where the marshmallows are and the kids are asking where the marshmallows are, I’m sweating, it’s like 100 degrees in the woods, you hear the cicadas, there’s no wind the mosquitos are biting. I lost half a bottle of hemoglobin before I even got the trunk open.
YTW: You also do a lot of social commentary stuff where you get into these long, winding, rapid-fire rants and it always seems like you’re just kind of musing right off the cuff, but how much work do you actually have to do writing and honing that stuff?
RJ: Yeah, that’s when you sweat bullets, brother. Believe it or not, though, I find that after my first cup of coffee in the morning, if I’ve got something on my mind, it just flows. Or maybe after some exercise, or something, or hiking. I find if I’m out in nature and stuff like that and I’ve got something on my mind that I come back at the end of the day and I hit the computer and it all works.
I learned to work like I was in a coal mine when it comes to comedy because you are. You’re in the comedy mines and you’ve got your pick and shovel, which is your computer or your pen and your notepad and you just pump it out, man. It’s work. It doesn’t come spontaneously and I write everything. That’s seven national specials at 90 minutes each, if you include Shaky Town for CTV [“Up and Down in Shaky Town - One Man’s Journey Through the California Dream”, Comedy Now, January 1998]. Some of them were two hours so that’s a lot of material and you can’t come up with that material on your feet. Mind you, I do find some tags and endings to jokes and new bits and stuff in the middle of a set, but if somebody’s paying 50 bucks to see me, they deserve to see a tightly-scripted well-performed body of work.
YTW: You must have to rehearse a lot.
RJ: I don’t really rehearse that much. People ask me that. I write a lot, but I don’t rehearse a lot. I’ve got a pretty good mind for memorization so if I write it I remember it. I’m lucky for that and the more you perform it, the more it’s in your head. I’ve found that the tough thing for me is getting the old stuff out of my head and putting the new stuff in it. It’s true; you’ve got to clean the attic every time you go on tour.
I’ve never played Yorkton before so I’m psyched. I’ve seen lots of changes in the 15 years I’ve been coming to Saskatchewan. I remember the first time I flew into Saskatoon there was a Red River Cart with a pumpkin in it at the airport and five years ago I flew in there was a Porsche Carerra for 275 thousand bucks. It’s amazing what [the province has] done. It’s a good province; I have a great affinity for it.
YTW: Looking back, is there anything you’ve done in your career that you wish you could take back or do over?
RJ: No. I never really think about that because if you live in the past you’ll never last.
I think that my main priority for the show is that if the ushers aren’t wiping the seats down after I’ve finished, I haven’t really done my job, okay, so I’ll leave you with that.
