Josh Johnson discusses Symphony, his new HBO special that uses structure, music, and comedy to “decorate reality.”
Mama’s Geeky recently attended a virtual press conference for the upcoming HBO comedy special, Josh Johnson: Symphony. During the session, Johnson sat down with moderator Jesse David Fox to discuss the meticulous three-year journey of crafting this project, his philosophy on “decorating reality” through comedy, and why he views human connection as a miracle that plays together like music.
Josh Johnson Talks HBO Special, Symphony
Jesse David Fox: So earlier this week, you released a nearly 80 minutes set on your YouTube channel about Hulk Hogan. Last week you put up an hour about Hantavirus. You put up an hour the week before that and the week for that and we before that, et cetera. What are those releases? And in that context, what does a special mean to you?
Josh Johnson: So those releases are more, timely, just things that are happening or my overall take or just my thoughts on how we’re responding to it, especially my response. But I think a special, especially what I’m doing with HBO, is meant to be more open-ended and timeless to have that re-playability, to come back and notice parts you didn’t notice before or enjoy the general thing because the topics are much more broad. And the thought that went into it is that, outside of maybe a couple of references you need to tell a specific story, that we wouldn’t want to really date it at all. And so, when I was writing all the jokes or when I think of what stories to include, I was like, ‘what is the most relatable sort of universal thing?’ And I think that that creates an opposite end of the spectrum from what I do weekly. Which is so much, sort of, of the moment.
Jesse David Fox: Can you talk about even just deciding you want to do something different from what most people are doing?
Josh Johnson: Yeah, I mean, so about three years ago, I went to the director, Jacob Manachi, with the sort of nugget of the structure of my ideas and how we would make it, how we would express it on camera, how we wouldn’t make this thing sort of come to life and not create a bit of a mess or lose the audience at any point, because the thing with differences is that sometimes something hasn’t been done before because it’s a bad idea. Like every once in a while, there’s a way to play with the form or to try to push the overall like landscape forward. And then there are things that are like peanut butter and pickle sandwiches where it’s like, no one’s done that for a reason. That’s like a bad idea. And so, in order to make sure that this was something that people looked at, and once again, even just the spectacle of it, I think something I felt like was missing that I really wanted to try to tackle. And it was a way of figuring out how to top anything that I do on the weekly with something that is more memorable or sets me and my work apart from the other things that are happening. And so having a central message, having those tie-ins that give it a re-playability because there are elements that come together, I think, on the second watch, that the first watch you’re just noticing or you’re just enjoying, or you are just following for the jokes. And then I think that you come back the second time and you catch where everything connects. And so, this is probably the most cohesive and layered thing that I’ve ever done.
Jesse David Fox: What does the title symphony mean to you?
Josh Johnson: I think it is intended to be a reminder of, as big as all of the things are that are happening in the world, and I’m not by any means like downplaying how horrible things are for a good portion of the world, I think that everything that gets created by us and I think everything, in my opinion, honestly, which is being undervalued right now, which is, like, human creativity, human connection and human labor, like the things that we do that we put into the world, whether they’re artistic endeavors or they’re just your everyday hard work are all being devalued. And I think that all these things together and how we relate to each other and all of our sort of goings-on in tandem with each other are such a blessing, they are such a miracle and they all play together like music. They all play together like something that you would not just pay to witness, that it’s like a blessing to witness. When you just see people, I mean, I’ll give you an example: I don’t know if you’ve ever been to like a really big concert, we’re talking like stadium, arena size concert, whenever there’s a song that the audience is singing together, somehow even though it’s made up of thousands of people who cannot sing, somehow all of us singing together doesn’t sound bad. It should sound horrible. Enough people together who honestly cannot sing on their own and they sing as like as one body, one group. I’m not saying it all sounds angelic all the time, but you see how there’s a melody and there’s a tune that even the most tone [deaf]… Because I’m not necessarily like a perfect pitch type person either, but I think that all of us together, even understanding what that melody is and all this contributing has this really beautiful effect. And I think that that’s a metaphor for, like, all life, you know?
Jesse David Fox: How do you approach the development of this special?
Josh Johnson: There is a quote at the beginning of the piece, which is, like a play on, an extension of or tag of a Basquiat quote about like, ‘Art is how we decorate space. Music is how we decorate time. Comedy is how to decorate reality.’ And those three layers that I’m doing the best as I can to show. So it’s like the art is the set, which I know I’m biased, but thought was like particularly beautiful, and even how there’s little surprises within the set that I think are really beautiful, music decorating some of the time and then comedy decorating the reality, because most of the things I’m talking about are like actually, you could categorize some of them as mundane or just, like, ‘this thing is something that happened.’ But how is it worth talking about for a full five minutes? And so those three layers are the intention in the beginning of the set sort of laid out. And it was the intention throughout the process of working on it.
Jesse David Fox: The core of your way of doing stand-up is showing the need for human decency. What is the main challenge in maintaining this moral compass while creating jokes and happenings?
Josh Johnson: I think that there’s like your personal decency and then there is a weapon, a weaponization, of decency for silence. And so, I think just because something is difficult, doesn’t mean that you have to be like vitriolic in your response, but I also think that calling something out for exactly what it is does not immediately make you hostile. And so, wading in what those differences are and what that thin line is, and then showing my best intention at like, here is me just telling you what happened. Here is me telling you how I feel about it. And if I can represent in the ‘what happened,’ whether it’s a personal story, a current event, if I can give as much of a neutral assessment as possible, which for some people will never sound neutral because that’s the other thing that we did when we sort of as Americans broke our news, is now just telling you a fact is somehow politicizing it. But it’s like, well, that is what, like, in court, that’s what they would say happened.
Jesse David Fox: What does having an HBO special mean for your career at this moment?
Josh Johnson: I think that HBO specifically is what I would call artistically discerning. And it’s why you don’t see as many, sort of, revolving door projects, you know? I think everything that gets put on HBO is intentional and carries weight because of that intention and the audience also has a recognition of, if there’s an HBO limited series, if there’s a HBO special, if there is an HBO series, it’s like ‘this is high quality and it’s being put out with a lot of care.’ And so, I think that for me to be a part of the overall catalog of people who I’ve respected for so long in other comics and just people who I really respect in the other categories of what HBO produces, it means a lot to me personally, for sure. Because it’s not that you should create artistic work purely for validation, but it is genuinely very validating to be seen as a peer of people I’ve respected for so long. You know I’ve watched HBO and HBO specials from the time I was really little and so even though, I won’t call it a full circle moment, because I hope the circle isn’t closed, but it is this beautiful checkpoint in a journey.
Watch Josh Johnson: Symphony here.
