Aussie comedian Jim Jefferies ready to serve up a cocktail of wit and audacity
Trending
Known for his bold humor, Australian stand-up comedian Jim Jefferies has attracted fans around the world, joking and weaving often outrageous stories like the time he took a childhood friend with muscular dystrophy to a prostitute, needing wheelchair access, or the one about climate activist Great Thunberg, which led to him riffing on garbage cans, rolling luggage and the moon landing.
The star of multiple Netflix specials, a Variety review noted: "He's one of the most in-demand comedians on the planet, playing world's biggest rooms, including Madison Square Garden and London's The O2, and having them laugh in the aisles at Edinburgh Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and Glastonbury."
Named Comedian of the Year in 2019 at the Just for Laughs Festival, his brilliant satire on gun control from his "Bare" special has amassed 21 million views on YouTube.
"There's definitely a stream of consciousness to it," Jefferies said about his style of stand-up. "I don't write my jokes down. Dirty stories for the most part. Dirty stories and commonsense observations. I'll never be a great political comic who gives you all the right facts and figures, but as an idiot, I'm pretty smart. I do a lot of my writing. If I'm having a really long shower, my wife thinks that's because I've come up with a bit."
Bringing his "Son of a Carpenter" tour to the Maui Arts and Cultural Center on Friday, he explained, "the basic thing is my father was a carpenter, and I have as much right to call myself the son of a carpenter as Jesus did. At least we know for a fact that I exist."
Jefferies' extended storytelling approach developed from performing at Scotland's prestigious Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
"Back in the early 2000s, the road to success in the U.K. meant you had to do the Edinburgh Festival," he recalled. "That's where you could get people to actually review you. All I had was like a 20-minute routine, and then I had to do my own show, and that's an hour. So I learned to stretch out my jokes and to put in little passing gags and going off on tangents and do that Billy Connolly thing where I'd start a story, forget a story, come back to a story, which a lot of comics do. It was interesting to American audiences when they first started seeing me because when I moved over here I was telling all these long-winded stories and everybody else was trying to get their four minutes together to do 'Letterman.' It was a different mindset."
Jefferies reports he was the classic funny kid growing up in Australia. "My brothers found me funny and my dad found me funny," he said. "I think the girls started to find me funny around 16. I remember wanting to be a comedian as an occupation from about age 14. I only wanted it as a job. I didn't want it as a career."
As far as early influences, Eddie Murphy was prominent.
"Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' came out, and you could rent a video copy of it," Jefferies said. "Apart from that, growing up in Australia, I didn't see anybody do stand-up for more than five minutes on TV. Growing up, people always now talk to me about Pryor and Carlin. Richard Pryor was an actor doing movies with Gene Wilder, and George Carlin was Rufus from 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.' We never got HBO specials. We never got Showtime specials. So Eddie Murphy's 'Delirious' has still got a very big footprint on my brain."
A recent show review in Brisbane's The Courier Mail headlined, "Crude, rude, and hilariously unapologetic," noted that, "Aussie comic Jim Jefferies served a cocktail of wit and audacity. There's no skirting around the fact that Jim Jefferies is as audacious as they come. Crude? Definitely. Rude? Without a doubt."
With age, he has adjusted his comedy to reflect his life changes. "I'm 48 years old. I'm not 22. I don't take drugs anymore, and I don't have one-night stands any longer. So those jokes don't happen. It's not that I've toned down the way I tell jokes or my delivery has changed. It's just my life has changed. I used to tell stories about my own childhood and things. Now I'm telling stories about my child's childhood."
Looking forward to returning to Hawaii, he says he loves being on stage. "Performing in front of a live crowd is something that I would do daily for free. I don't get paid to tell jokes; I get paid to get on airplanes. If I had a comedy club in the basement of my house, I'd pop down there and do a show every couple of hours. But the traveling is what gets to me, so I always find a way to organize some shows in Hawaii. I've been coming for years. So this is one of the gigs that is not a hassle in any way whatsoever. You're staying in a nice place, you're eating shaved ice, and then you get up and tell some jokes. It's a pretty good life."
Jefferies will perform at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center's Castle Theater at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Tickets are $73, $93 and $193 for VIP. The show may contain mature subject matter.