‘A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT’
Chris Gethard lets audience in on his Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People podcast
CHRIS GETHARD May 30, 7 p.m. | Biltmore Cabaret
Tickets: $22.50 at ticketfly. com
Chris Gethard’s therapist listened to his popular podcast Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People and quickly pointed something out to the comedian/actor.
“Hey, you are not a therapist. Stop giving them advice. Hear them out, give them a platform,” said Gethard repeating what his shrink told him. “She yells at me then charges me for it.”
Beautiful/Anonymous, as it is affectionately known, is as simple as it can get. Gethard talks to an anonymous caller for one hour. He cannot hang up but they can. They never do.
“People sometimes will call up and say ‘this is free therapy,’ I am ‘oh no I’m just an idiot from New Jersey, I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about,’” said Gethard over the phone from New York recently.
Fans of Gethard and his podcast can see him and it in action as he brings his Beautiful/Anywhere podcast and his standup comedy act to the Biltmore Cabaret on May 30.
The plan is to open with comedy then take a call for the podcast.
“People who listen to the podcast know you never know what to expect. It could be really fun or it could be really grim so I am going to open up the show and throw down some comedy just so people know I’m at least making an effort to be a comedian first,” said Gethard. “I want to make sure you get your money’s worth.”
While the podcast officially started in March 2016, Gethard had already been taking calls on his cable access New York TV show The Chris Gethard Show. The hilarious and weird former cable access show will tape a new 16-episode season for TruTV in August.
The Vancouver show is the first stop on a North America tour and only the second time he has done the podcast in front of a live audience.
“I think it will be like a good social experiment for me and the crowd,” said Gethard, who plays Ilana Glazer’s boss on Broad City.
As with any public life there are of course ups and downs. Gethard reports that his job has helped him become a better conversationalist, but sometimes he doesn’t want to talk he just wants to buy groceries.
“It’s funny I have a lot more uncomfortable conversations because now some of the people forget that when I am off the clock I’m a normal human being,” said Gethard. “They launch into their life story, their dark story. They forget my life is not fuelled by hour-long conversations about people’s darkest secrets. I think I am a pretty empathetic and open to conversation but sometimes people forget that I do occasionally unplug that. Sometimes I just want to be in a grocery store shopping for food.”
A self-described anxious person, Gethard subscribes to the keep it busy mental health plan. His one-man show Career Suicide aired on HBO and he is doing an album of that critically acclaimed off-Broadway show that mines his own battles with depression.
Also this summer he plans to work on a book (his second) that he hopes will help other wide-eyed showbiz loving folks to learn from his experiences in the game.
“It’s kind of like a comedic selfhelp book,” said Gethard, who also co-starred in the Mike Birbiglia film Don’t Think Twice and has appeared on Louie, The Office and Inside Amy Schumer. “While it is kind of in the self-help vein, it’s mostly going to be about how it is OK to fail and give up, so I don’t know how much it will help people. It’s probably the wrong message at the end of the day.”
If you haven’t listened to Beautiful/Anonymous yet, give it a shot. It is one of those gems that offers a peek into someone else’s humanity. It connects us and reminds the listener that we are all in this much bigger world together.
Gethard pointed to a recent conversation with a security guard as a strong reminder that there is always something else going on out there.
“His job was to watch the security cameras — an eye in the sky. We were joking around about you know people picking their nose and then about two thirds of the way into the call he said ‘yeah but the past five years since the opioid epidemic the reasons people are shoplifting are just getting sadder and sadder and more real.’ I was like ‘oh right the real world is everywhere’,” said Gethard. “At the end of the day the podcast is about humanity.”
The Vancouver show will be one of 14 podcasts that Gethard will tape on his tour. With that many one-hour conversations on the horizon Gethard knows full well that they are not all going to be clear sailing.
“There is no way they are all going to be light and funny. I know there will be at least one situation where I am sitting in a room with a few hundred people and it dawns on all of us that we are hearing something that none of us saw coming,” said Gethard. “That’s a pretty exciting thought — how we are all going to deal with that.
“The worst thing that can happen is that it is a total disaster and I’ve dealt with that before.”