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Comedian Bill Burr: The slightly expurgated interview

SINGAPORE – With notable TV appearances on Comedy Central and his role as Patrick Kuby on Breaking Bad, along with several film roles under his belt (including the upcoming Black And White) and Netflix specials (his new series F Is For Family starts later this year); the cards seem to falling the right way for American comedian Bill Burr.

Bill Burr will showcase new material at his stand-up show on Feb 6 in Singapore.

Bill Burr will showcase new material at his stand-up show on Feb 6 in Singapore.

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SINGAPORE – With notable TV appearances on Comedy Central and his role as Patrick Kuby on Breaking Bad, along with several film roles under his belt (including the upcoming Black And White) and Netflix specials (his new series F Is For Family starts later this year); the cards seem to falling the right way for American comedian Bill Burr.

He got his start in comedy while in college, when a comedy club held a contest to find Boston’s funniest college student. He decided to sign up after meeting a guy who’d also decided to give stand-up a shot. “I didn’t know that all it took was to write five minutes’ worth of jokes and go to an open mic in my own city. Thank god I met that guy or I wouldn’t be talking to you,” said Burr over the phone.

He is considered as one of the top comedians of his generation - even if he doesn’t have a movie or TV career like some of his contemporaries, such as Louis CK or Ricky Gervais. But he’s okay with that.

“You can buy into that mindf*** — ‘I’m not valid because I don’t have this logo behind me or this TV show,’” he told Detroit Metro Times. “I do my gigs ... People know me and I get booked again. I got a wife, a dog and the NFL package. That’s beautiful. I’m not gonna lie. It is.”

He also doesn’t want to be, as he said several times in the past, “the guy who owns the boat”. “You want to be the guy that has the friend that owns the boat,” he said. “Let him deal with the docking fees and scraping the barnacles off… You just show up with a 12-pack and you’re a hero.”

Burr explained his rationale to TODAY: “When you own stuff like that, it consumes your time. I like living a life where I don’t own a lot of stuff. I’m way more into the experience than about owning a bunch of stuff. When I go to a new country, it’s all about interacting with the people and what I see. I buy a patch that has their flag on it – and a magnet. I have my memories and I’m good. I don’t buy stuff that I have to bring back and then pack up every time I move.”

He added: “I think Albert Einstein had it right – he had five sets of the same clothes so he didn’t have to think about what he wanted to wear when he got up in the morning.”

Such observations are what you will hear when Burr pops into town for his stand-up comedy show on Feb 6 at the Kallang Theatre.

“It’s going to be all new material,” he said of his show. “I wouldn’t make you pay to see what you already saw. I would never do that to you. I assume that anybody who remotely cares about my comedy will watch one of my specials and if I show up and do the same material, they’re going to feel like they got ripped off.”

Q: Is stand-up something that you’ve always been interested in doing? Was it always a career choice?

A: I didn’t think it was possible. I grew up before there was the Internet. So the entertainment business seemed very far away and far removed from me. Fortunately, I ran into somebody that wanted to do it, and I didn’t know that all it took was to write five minutes’ worth of jokes and go to an open mic in my own city. Thank God I met that guy or I wouldn’t be talking to you.

Q: How do you stay motivated? You can't be funny 24/7. Don’t you ever go, “I’d rather be watching the game than being onstage?”

A: The fear of having bad shows with people leaving the venue saying that wasn’t worth the money – that’s what keeps me motivated. I’ll have that thought sometimes going to a show but the second you’re onstage the adrenalin gets going and by the end of it, you don’t want to get onstage. The amount of times I’ve said to the person doing the show, "Dude, I’m exhausted, I’m doing exactly one hour and then I’m getting out of here" and then an hour goes by and I’m having fun and I end up doing an hour and 20 minutes … that happens all the time.

Q: Some say that comedy treads the thin line of controversy.

A: There’s no controversy in comedy. It’s one of the biggest myths ever. Nothing a comedian has said has changed a country’s foreign policy. It hasn’t changed anything. It’s a bunch of people flapping their arms and jumping around acting like they’ve been offended but nothing happened. A comedian told a joke and the crowd laughed. But they’ll put it on the news and they ignore that it was in a comedy club, they ignore the fact that the crowd laughed and they act like the comedians said what they said on a nightly news show rather than in a comedy club. It’s a complete joke.

I gotta be honest with – I’m nervous about being caned in Singapore. I don’t know where the lines are. What do you have to do? What’s the most minimal thing you need to do that will get you caned? There’s nothing I can say as a comedian that will get me caned, right? Well, give me a heads-up ... What percentage of the population in Singapore has been caned? I watched a YouTube video of someone getting caned and I think by the second (stroke), I would have fainted!

Q: Hang on: Since we’re on the subject, what do you know about Singapore? Have you been here before?

A: I’m excited to come to Singapore. It’s my first time in that part of the world. I can’t wait. I wish the gig was tomorrow. I know that it’s beautiful. I know that the people are friendly. I know that it’s really clean. I know where it is on the map. I know you guys have amazing seafood - I’m looking forward to that! I really think that I’m going to love it.

Q: Singapore’s comedy scene since is still pretty young. What advice would you give to aspiring comedians here?

A: Go onstage and do what you think is funny. Surround yourself with positive people. If anybody in your circle of friends starts to resent you or starts to say negative things about what you’re doing – cut them out of your life and move on.

Q: What’s your most memorable show?

A: Oh... Carnegie Hall. My last special in Atlanta at The Tabernacle Theater. The Fillmore in San Francisco. And the Singapore one – that’s going to be the first one I’m ever doing in Asia. To stand on stage in Singapore for the first time and get a laugh, that’s going to be pretty amazing.

Q: What’s the biggest life lesson you’ve learnt?

A: That I am in control of where I’m going. All I have to do is to do the work and everything will take care of itself. My happiness or sadness is all in my hand. It’s the choices that I make. It’s not somebody else, it’s not some group. It’s me. I’m taking responsibility for myself. If I’m miserable, it’s from the choices that I made and the dumb things that I did.

Q: You don’t have regrets?

A: I have plenty of regrets. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. But I’m continuing to learn from them every year and I’m trying to get a little bit better. Sometimes I make the same mistakes and sometimes I make new mistakes, but I’m trying, man, I’m trying.

Q: What’s the best thing about being Bill Burr?

A: I get to go to Singapore!

Q: And the worst thing?

A: Probably the flight there.

Q: You’ve sometimes slammed social media, but you also take to it for your podcasts. So is social media a boon or a bane?

A: I’m in a weird position where the power of YouTube has helped me, but has also hurt me. I can put clips up there and people get to know who I am, and that helps me. But when I shoot a special and put all the money up there and I’m trying to sell the special for $5 and somebody buys that and shows it to the world for free, that costs me a lot of money. I don’t know what the solution is. I don’t think people who put stuff up there are doing it maliciously to steal money from you. They just think it’s funny and they enjoy it and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. You can’t expect some teenage kid to understand the rules of intellectual property.

Q: What would you like the Bill Burr legacy to be?

A: Hopefully, it’ll be: ‘He was a guy who kept getting funnier with each special and he went to Singapore a dozen times and each time the show got bigger, and he never got caned.’

Q: If you could change anything in the world, what would it be?

A: If I could change anything in the world ... Do I end racism or war? One of the two. I would end people doing mean things to one another.

Q: Where do you see yourself in the grand scheme of things?

A: I don’t see myself anywhere. I see my life as being very simple. I don’t think about my legacy or see where I fit in the grand scheme of things. My job is a comedian and I write jokes to make people laugh. I just focus on that.

Q: What would your ultimate show be like?

A: To be better than the last one. That’s what I’m doing - I’m trying to improve as a comedian.

Catch Bill Burr on Feb 6, 8pm at the Kallang Theatre. Tickets from SISTIC.

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