Put on a ‘Happy Face’
Comedian Ryan Hamilton headlines Comix Thursday through Saturday
We as a culture have always relied on our happy, slightly goofy and cornily decent folks who remind us that there is yet charming Innocence in the world. We just don’t see many of them any more — much less in the universe of standup comedy, where nuke-fallout obscenity, ribald sexuality and drug jokes are reliable, laugh-inducing topics.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for clean comics, too, as per the success of Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan and Brian Regan. But part of Seinfeld’s and Regan’s genius is a sly sense of psychological primacy, and Gaffigan uses a self-effacing “I’m a slob” image to cleverly hold a mirror to America at large.
Into this wellspring of talent comes a rising, obscenity-free observational soon-to-be star named Ryan Hamilton, whose “gee whiz” persona and material is obvious as soon as he bounds onstage looking as though he just bolted early from the marshmallow cookout at the church jamboree. He’s skinny, tall and looks, well, like what might happen if a cosmetic surgeon blended the features of Howdy Doody, Opie Taylor and “King of the Hill’s” Bobby Hill.
“Thank you, thank you! Where do you want to begin? Shall we start with my face?” Those are Hamilton’s opening words in his very funny new Netfix comedy special, appropriately titled “Happy Face.” “I think I could sell ice cream in the ‘50s,” he explains, then presents a different scenario. “(But) I can’t just show up at a funeral.” He acts out addressing a mourner. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” he says, beaming his utterly sincere grin. It’s how Hamilton always looks, but it’s almost creepy in context.
Indeed, Hamilton puts his own distinct personality, background and appearance to good use. Born in Idaho, he’s been a
resident of New York City for a decade, but just when you think he’s falling back a bit too often on the wide-eyedrube-in-Manhattan trope, you realize he’s making plenty of wickedly droll fun of his adopted city, too. For example, a twist on Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York,” with its signature “If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere” lyric, is sensational.
Hamilton, who’s appeared on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” “Conan,” “The Late Late Show” and “Last Comic Standing,” was recently named one of Rolling Stone’s “Five Comics to Watch” and has been opening for Seinfeld. Hamilton performs Thursday and Friday and twice Saturday in Comix at Mohegan Sun. And though he’d probably get carded at any liquor store — the 40-year-old Hamilton doesn’t drink — he’s been moving up in the comedy hierarchy for a quite a while now.
“I didn’t think about being a comic as a career for a long time,” Hamilton says by phone last week. “It’s very interesting
to grow up in a place like Idaho with any aspirations to be an artist or creative person. That’s just not the culture. Not many actors or artists or musicians come out of Idaho. The closest thing growing up would be the high school musical, and I wasn’t musical.”
While Hamilton didn’t fit into the agrarian template of his surroundings — “All my friends were into tractors,” he laughs — he slowly began to have vague ideas about the future. He loved Gary Larson’s “Far Side” cartoons, and it occured to him that he could be a humor columnist. He says, “I thought Dave Barry had the greatest job in the world.”
With admirable but perhaps naïve initiative, Hamilton approached the local county newspaper. “I said, ‘Hi, could I have a humor column in your paper?’ And they actually said, ‘Sure. Okay.’ So I’d write a few graphs for a column each week throughout high school. I had no idea what I was doing, and they were terrible. But I guess it was experience,” he says.
Also, around the time he got his driver’s license, Hamilton became fascinated by the “Evening at the Improv” television series that features standup comics onstage. From those shows, he started to familiarize himself with certain comedians, and his parents would wake him so he could watch the late night shows if one or another was appearing.
“I loved it, but my peers in high school would never have said I was funny. I didn’t have the reputation as the funny guy in school,” Hamilton says.
Still, he describes his parents as creative and supportive. His father grew up in the Southern California surfer scene, “so I became the surfer kid living in Idaho who’d never seen the ocean.” As a member of the student council, Hamilton would employ humorous solo sketches to advance an agenda, and studied public speaking and journalism. He scored a weekend gig doing sports pieces for a local NBC news affiliate and try to interject humor. At junior college, majoring in broadcast/print journalism, he and some friends would produce comedy pieces for the campus radio station.
At 18, Hamilton decided to go onstage at a local pizza parlor that had a weekly comedy night. He says he was horrible but absolutely fascinated. After graduating college, he moved to Salt Lake City and a PR gig. He worked up three minutes of material and, at night, got onstage at every opportunity. Then he got laid off from his day job. Hamilton gave himself a year to try to make it in standup.
He worked a brutal schedule on a brutal circuit of one-nighters throughout the northwest. “I’d take anything,” he remembers. “Someone would call with an offer for a 30-minute set — and I’d go do 30 minutes I didn’t have. These were really tough bars, but I’d drive 10 hours in a blizzard if it meant I could get onstage. One woman head-butted me because she wanted to buy me a drink. I tried to explain that I didn’t drink, and I was driving back to my room at the Super 8 and I had this romantic notion. She just head-butted me, but I guess this is comedy.”
Hamilton’s developing style wasn’t remotely ideal for rough-drinking bars, but his philosophy was that, if he could make his material work in those environments, then he’d know it was really good. He moved to Seattle as he got more polished and popular, and one night some industry talent guys from Los Angeles saw him. He got a manager, some television auditions — no show offers — but continued with standup.
“I did one-nighters for years and finally got a spot on ‘Comedy Central.’ It was only one night in New York City, but it was a revleation,” he says.
Another unknown comic saw him that night and told him, “You’ve got to move here, and we’ll get an apartment. This is where it all happens.” The unknown comic was Amy Schumer. They didn’t get an apartment, but Hamilton did eventually move to New York, and he says, a touch of disbelief in his voice, “She’s continued to look after me. It’s amazing, really.”
The pace and competition in New York is incredible, Hamilton says — but maybe Sinatra was right. If Hamilton can make it there, on his own terms ...
“I’m comfortable in New York even though my friends and colleagues here will always be different than me,” he says. “I miss Idaho and nature and my family. This can be a lonely job, and there are a lot of discouraging moments. But there’s such great energy and opportunity here. You know, some artists need angst or anger to do standup. But somewhere along the line I learned I do my best work when I’m happy and confident. And I’m happy here. There are nights now onstage when I know it’s going to be funny. There are moments when I know anything I say is going to work.”