How to win by losing big
Henry Phillips turns a bad-luck persona into comedy gold
FOR 15 years now, a group of Los Angeles comedians have been in a poker club: Sarah Silverman is a member, as are Comedy Central roastmaster Jeffrey Ross and Henry Phillips. “I’m usually the butt of all the jokes,” says Phillips, a guitar-playing comedian. “I’m comfortable with that.”
So far, he’s parlayed his failure-prone persona into a darkly hilarious Web series and two movies, 2009’s “Punching the Clown” and its sequel, “Punching Henry,” out Friday in theaters and on demand now.
Silverman appears in the new movie as a podcaster interviewing Phillips’ character about his life as a touring comedian constantly set back by bad luck, bad decisions and hecklers. That catches the eye of TV executives (J.K. Simmons and Michaela Watkins) who aim to capitalize on his uncanny ability to screw up.
That part isn’t far from reality. “After the first movie came out, we got a TV deal,” says Phillips. “[They] wanted to make a show about what a loser I was. And, in typical loser fashion, the deal fell through.”
Nevertheless, it made for good material. “I’ve always found failure hilarious,” says Phillips. In his YouTube series, “Henry’s Kitchen,” he plays a single man in a lonely apartment who gives disastrous cooking lessons, enhanced by Phillips’ mournful musical accompaniment, jokingly credited to “Jose Suicidio.”
“It was 2011, the first movie had come out, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be this huge launching point for my career, and I was going through a breakup,” says Phillips, 47. “So I wanted to learn to cook. And on YouTube I found there’s an infinite number of amateur videos by these random guys, in a bachelor apartment or their mom’s attic, teaching you how to grill asparagus or something.” His first riff on the trope was mainly to entertain his friends. The second installment, “How To Make Henry’s Anytime Chili for One,” found a wider audience, inspiring him to make more. Silverman has called it “the best cooking show ever,” and Mike Judge is such a fan, he signed on for a bit part in “Punching Henry.”
Every so often, Phillips says, someone tries to persuade him to bring “Henry’s Kitchen” to a bigger site. “They’re like, ‘You can get more exposure.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, but this way I get to say ‘f -- k’ whenever I want.’ ” As Henry puts it in the new film, “I think I’m failing very well doing what I love.”