Wil AndersonAlthough a broadcaster, writer and presenter, Wil Anderson remains once, always and forever committed to stand-up comedy. He's about to hit the stage again with Melbourne Comedy Festival Five Star show, GoodWil, this time doing a shorter run for those of us not able to make the fest. “Last time I was in Australia there was a Western Bulldogs supporter who was Prime Minister, and much like the Western Bulldogs, she didn't make it 'til September,” Anderson laughs from his current digs in the States. Increasingly pushing for an international stage and forum, being home will make a nice (albeit increasingly strange) pit stop. “I'm just happy I didn't come over here on a boat or else I might be doing all my gigs in PNG.”
Still piss funny, Anderson is committed to upping the stakes each show. “While I don't want to overstate, it is still dick jokes for cash. When it comes to comedy I want to take my work really seriously and myself not very seriously at all. That's the balance that I'm trying to work on. And I think there's a point that you get to in your life, and I don't think it's any coincidence that often the most creative years in a stand-up's life are their forties. If you look at the greats, if you look at George Carlin, if you look at Bill Cosby, if you look at Seinfeld and Billy Connolly, if you look at Ricky Gervais, if you look at all those guys and where they really hit their peak, it was in their forties. And the reason for that is, I think, it's about halfway through your life, an average life, and also you're young enough that you remember what it's like to be young, but also old enough to know that life is not black and white, it is grey, it is complex, and you'll sometimes change your mind on things. So I'm approaching forty now, and I feel like in the last couple of years I've been transitioning, and if these are going to be my most creative years I wanted to work out how to do it. I needed to get my skills to catch up to my ideas. Because to do the ambitious things that I wanted to do with my stand-up, I feel that you have to have really solid stand-up skills to be able to convey those ideas.”
Explaining GoodWil and how it fits his career, he turns to one of the greatest philosophers of our time for help. “I know that I compare everything to Batman, but I feel like this show is like my Dark Night Rises. I feel like three years ago I established the things I wanted to talk about, then in the second one I turned a lot of those things on their head, even in a literal sense where I said 'hey, you know how I was angry about this last year, but I've changed my mind and this is why,' and now it'll be like 'this is the last thing I'm going to say about a lot of these things.' And then next year I'm going to do something different again.”
