SNAP CHAT with Guy Montgomery

My first job was . . .

Working in a factory assembling boxes of tourist products. The boxes had moisturiser in them made from sheep wool. How the hell do you reduce wool to moisturiser? Sounds like a waste of perfectly good wool to me. I took the issue up with anyone who would listen and it did not go well. I was 13 and they seemed to think I should worry less about the contents of the moisturiser and more about putting the moisturiser into the boxes.

It taught me . . .

To respect authority. Don’t ask questions, just shut your mouth and put the little pottles full of moisturiser made from wool inside the bigger cardboard boxes.

My big break came . . .

Jesus, that’d be bad news if I’ve already had my big break. Most people reading this have no idea who I am.

The last job I quit was . . .

at a sushi restaurant in Montreal. I moved there to start a career in comedy but discovered half the comedy scene is in French and you legally have to be able to speak French and English in Montreal to be employed but somehow wrangled a job mixing drinks. The only French phrase I can remember is “creme hydratante la laine” meaning (if memory serves) “wool moisturiser”. After learning of a city called Toronto that had a bigger, English-based comedy scene, I quit my job to zero fanfare and moved the next week.

The most famous person I’ve ever met is ...

Probably Lorde. I knew I was gonna get an intro and leading up to the intro all I could think about was what to say when you meet someone? Completely derailed the conversation I was having, which upsets me to this day because, as it turns out, one of the people I was talking to was the guy who figured out how to turn wool into moisturiser and he was explaining exactly how that

process works.

Shewas...

I couldn’t tell you. The whole thing was a whirlwind.

The best time I’ve had on stage was...

Tim Batt and I used to host a podcast called the Worst Idea of All Time where we would watch and review the same movie every week for a year. At the end of a year of watching and reviewing Grown Ups 2 52 times we took it upon ourselves to see if we could write the entire script from memory. Our efforts saw us host a live reading of our version of Grown Ups 2 to a sold-out crowd in Los Angeles. We had Busy Philips reading as Adam Sandler and Melanie Lynskey, Baron Vaughn and Kate Micucci reading parts while Tim and I read the action and direction. It was the most surreal experience of my life.

But the worst was . . .

When I moved to New York I did was an open mic show called the People’s Open Mic at a dive bar in Manhattan. I paid $5 to do five minutes of material. Two hours passed and it was my turn. I took the stage to an audience of three remaining performers and the host. I called it a scam, did a joke to absolute silence, mumbled “I moved from New Zealand for this”, and left the stage. The host came on stage and said, “Welcome to New York bitch.”

My dream role would be . . .

CEO of a company that turns wool into moisturiser.

● Guy Montgomery stars in Vermilion ,in cinemas today. He also will be performing his new solo show I Was Part of the Problem Before We Were Talking About It at Bread & Circus — World Buskers Festival in Christchurch from January 11 — 15, 2019.