Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, and then there are times when fiction influences truth. Such has been the case with comedian Henry Phillips. In 2009, he starred in and co-wrote a feature film called Punching the Clown. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, he delivered a film that drew critical praise. Amazon Prime members currently can stream it, while the sequel called Punching Henry was just released this spring.
The two films, however, are only one facet of Phillips’ comedy. Another is live performance — he’ll be at Montgomery’s Go Bananas Comedy Club Thursday through Sunday. For years, he was most widely known as a comedian who sang funny songs, but these days he’s concentrating more on straight stand-up. “I tell stories and throw in a few one-liners,” he says in an interview. “I’ve always liked a good one-liner. I’ve just had more of a craving to tell interesting stories lately.”
Songs are still a big part of his set, though. “There are a couple of new ones I’ve done on the (radio) Bob & Tom Show within the last year.” Older songs receive the occasional update, like his popular “Oops.”
“I think at the time I wrote that, the big story was the BP oil spill,” he explains. “It’s like, ‘Hey, if you mess up, just pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move on.’ Sounds like a positive message.” In the past few years, he’s rotated in verses about reading the wrong name at the Oscars and losing an entire Malaysian airliner.
Another endeavor Phillips has also become involved in is creating web videos. He currently produces two different series, Henry’s Kitchen and You and Your Fu*king Coffee. The former was inspired by the plethora of YouTube cooking videos hosted mostly by single men. Phillips stumbled onto these and decided they were ripe for parody. In Coffee, he destroys the lives of various people with his need for java. It was the cooking videos, though, that led to his recurring role on the hit HBO sitcom Silicon Valley. “They were fans of my kitchen videos,” he says. “A few of them went viral, and it turned out to be one of the smartest things I ever did by accident. All of a sudden, the phone started ringing.”
He continues to produce both web series. “They’re really fun for me to make,” he says. “Like stand-up, there’s no one telling you how to do it.”
The two series require different levels of effort. You and Your Fu*king Coffee, for instance, requires much more time to produce. “There are eight episodes of Coffee and they require a little bit more in terms of production values and a bigger budget. I might do another episode this year. I definitely have the scripts for them.”
The most recent episode is a period piece based on the 1937 Hindenburg dirigible disaster. “The whole thing is, I’m supposed to be manning this mooring tower and I go get coffee and that causes the whole tragedy,” he says.
Dean Cundey, a veteran cinematographer who worked on Jurassic Park and Back to the Future, worked on that episode. “There was a solid month of going back and forth with props and special effects,” Phillips says. “The idea is so silly, but the amount of work that went into it is crazy. If you saw what the set looked like, you would have thought we were shooting Transformers.”
The cooking show, on the other hand, takes less time to complete since, by its very nature, it’s comparatively low-tech. “There’s a full day of research, getting a shot list, figuring out what physical gags there are going to be,” he says. “I usually go through my old tweets and try to pull something out of there that sounds like a funny thing to say while I’m stirring our whatever.”
The shooting is hard work. “That’s a real mess,” Phillips says. “I kind of dread it because I’m like ‘Man, there’s going to be a lot of cleanup after this. Then there’s a day of editing, and sometimes I’ll put a new song on there as well.”
The types of videos he parodies continue to inspire him. “What you’re watching is real. You’re watching human failure in its purest form.”
HENRY PHILLIPS performs Thursday-Sunday at Go Bananas, 8410 Market Place Lane, Montgomery. Tickets/more info: gobananascomedy.com.
This article appears in May 31 – Jun 7, 2017.