Wil Anderson Articles/Reviews

[Laney]

For Love or Money

Wil Anderson is torn between remaining at Triple J, where he feels ideologically comfortable, and accepting a lucrative offer from Austrereo.  It's beleived Anderson has been tempted with a million-dollar deal to join Manda Keller and Mikey Robins on Triple M's breakfast show.

He was first approached by Austrereo last year when Triple M needed a replacement for Andrew Dentron, but he turned them down.  Last week, Austereo boss Brad Mach and Triple M program director Guy Dobson renewed their efforts, meeting Anderson at a Double Bay cafe to discuss their offer.

Anderson, whose contract with Triple J expires in June, told The Guide he was flattered by Austereo's interest in his career but indicated he would probably renew his contract with Tirple J for another year.


SMH, The Guide, 18-24

[Kara]

Good for Wil! I hope he doesn't sell out and move to greener pastures. But in the long run, i feel he might take the plung into the big $ cheque fields like the rest of them.
But i hope i'm wrong.

Plus he's less contricted on JJJ, Triple M will only tie him down.

It's like another radio presenter once said "When a good comic comes along, some commercial network/station picks them up, and cuts their balls off!"

Which is what could/will happen.

My 2 cents!

[smooth]

I think it would be soooo ironic if he did leave JJJ to go to MMM considering how against commercial radio stations the guy seems to be *

I's like to say that I would stick my principles too if it were me in his shoes, but I have to admit that the $$$ would probably be too tempting *

hehe



Edited By smooth on Mar. 20 2002 at 14:28

[mish]

There are a couple of photos too... sorry, I don't have the technology to scan

The Sunday Telegraph, 24 MAR 2002
Wil Anderson - funny man
By: Ute Junker    

Q What's in your fridge at the moment?
A bottle of sweet chilli sauce, some blackberry jam, somewhere between three and 12 beers - there's never more than 12, and when I get down to three, I know there needs to be more - and several forms of Coke - maybe a two-litre bottle, some 600ml bottles and a few cans. There's a bottle of vodka in the freezer.

Q What's your favourite food these days?
There's a soy shake I get at The House Of Soy that's the business. It has date and banana and coconut and tastes like you're drinking straight banana bread.
It's like licking cake mixture.

Q Are you better at cooking or cleaning?
I'm actually quite anal about cleaning.
I spend a lot of time arranging CDs into alphabetical order or in order of my favourite bands or arranging DVDs into ones that have directors' commentary or are wide-screen format. I don't cook at all. It's a food chain thing. There are so many people who are great cooks - what we need are consumers.

Q What's the worst thing about living with you?
I live on my own, but if I did live with someone the worst thing probably would be that I'm a 15-year-old boy trapped in a 28-year-old man's body.
I genuinely have the house I wanted when I was 15. I have a DVD player, two video players, two stereos, three TVs, PlayStation 2 and two computers. If someone said, "Have you got a frying pan?" the answer would be no. But if someone said, "Hey, you don't happen to have movie number four in the Planet Of The Apes series on DVD with director's commentary?"- well, my friend, I can help you out.

Q What did you do before you became a comedian?
I spent three years working as a journalist in the Canberra press gallery. I actually graduated first in my course at uni. I got great marks in a degree I don't use at all. I think if you're going to waste something, you may as well waste something that you're really good at. I gave my parents that one moment of pride, so now the rest of my life can be a huge disappointment.

Q How did you get into stand-up comedy?
I started about seven years ago. I'd quit journalism to write the great Australian novel, and I did what most 20-year-olds do when they decide they're going to write a book: I spent all my time drinking and trying to have sex with people.
The one thing I didn't do is write - I didn't fit a lot of that in. I suddenly ran out of money and I decided that doing some stand-up would be a good way to see if the stuff in my book was funny. So, I had a go and did well enough that I decided I'd do it again.

Q Who would you say is your ideal woman?
There's a shortlist. Winona Ryder is on it. I like the shoplifting thing. It gave her an edge. She needs a man like me - I'll steal stuff for her. Actually, I'd be pretty happy to date anyone Johnny Depp's dated. In fact, I'd be pretty happy to date Johnny Depp. Australian actress Rose Byrne - she's such a spunk. Buffy. Although, to be honest, it's not so much Buffy as Joss Whedon, who writes the show. So, maybe I could date Winona and Joss could be my best friend.
And Johnny Depp would come over occasionally and we'd get a bit kinky.

Q Do you have any recurring dreams?
Last night, I dreamt that I was meant to be going on Hey, Hey, It's Saturday to sing a version of Christina Aguilera's Genie In A Bottle and I was going to play guitar and sing it acoustically.
I was just about to go on stage when I remembered that I don't know how to play guitar. Luckily, Paul Dempsey from Something For Kate was there and he played guitar and sang. I had this other dream once - I was fighting vampires with Buffy and I killed all these vampires. Just as I killed them all, she turned and said, "You know you're not really in the gang, don't you?"

Vital statistics
Age 28
Famous for the morning shift on radio station Triple J; hosting the ABC-TV series The Glass House; hosting the Melbourne Comedy Festival Gala Opening
Marital status single
Lives in Sydney, at Bondi
Favourite hangs
cafes Brown Sugar and
The House Of Soy in Bondi
Star sign aquarius

[Cherryish]

There's an article/interview with Wil in the Bulletin.. and luckily I don't have to type it up because its here.

Enjoy..

Cherryish

Wil Anderson: Practical bloke
27/03/2002


Jackie Dent meets comedian Wil Anderson and gets the impression he's no pretty boy.

It’s 12:57pm and Wil Anderson is sitting in Bedrock, a funky hair salon in Newtown, Sydney. He is looking a little grave. Straight up, he says he is OK about the interview in the salon but he doesn’t want his photograph taken during the hair cut. He doesn’t want any pretty-boy stuff.


But he is sorta pretty-boy, in an indie sorta way, with his gold fingernails, black home-boy sneakers and dyed, spiky hair. As he says later of the image game, with foils in his hair: “I don’t like doing things that focus on a style above what it is I actually do. I would never do Cleo Bachelor of the Year. I don’t want it to look good. Looking stupid is great.”

Anderson, 28, is part of the new breed of Australian comedy stars, with a career that could lead the jealous to harakiri. He co-hosts the national Triple J breakfast show. He hosts The Glass House, a weekly muse on current affairs on ABC television. But in the coming weeks, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Anderson will be doing what he digs the most: being a stand-up comedian. “I love seeing live comedy,” he says. “Comedy is a live art form. TV doesn’t do it justice, radio doesn’t do it justice. You have to see comedy live.”

Apart from hosting the Gala, the night when the cream of the comics at the month-long festival show off their gags, Anderson will also perform a season of Wil by Mouth, a show he has taken to Sydney and Adelaide.

In Sydney, the gig was a spray on current culture, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to John Howard and wrestling (a sport he loves so much he collects posters). Anderson also talked a little bit about his personal life, and his mum. These jokes seemed more thoughtful, more real.

However, as Anderson points out, some people hate the personal stuff. “People bring to the table their own perceptions,” he explains. “I know as a performer that from night to night different jokes will get different responses. I try to mix it up so there are all sorts of elements, so there is something for a load of people.”

Where some entertainers are a little glum and Jean-Paul Sartre-ish away from their audience, Anderson is pretty much the same as he is on the ABC but without the need to be as funny all the time. He talks (very quickly) about the differences between dwarves and midgets, and says he has seen dwarf porn. He jokes he would rather have a good night’s sleep than have a threesome with Winona Ryder and Rose Byrne. But he will then earnestly discuss how he will never ever make a homophobic joke in his life (a theme common with most modern comedians).

Anderson came to comedy because he hated journalism, felt constrained that the couldn’t say outright what he wanted to say. (He had worked at The Australian Financial Review and the Herald & Weekly Times.) So he started going down to The Esplanade pub in Melbourne’s St Kilda on Sundays to watch amateur comedians. After assessing there were at least two other people he could be funnier than, he gave it a go. Four years later, he was a well-established Melbourne comedian and, in 2000, got the Triple J gig.

His profile is now big enough that his extracurricular activities make it into the press: secret coffee meetings with rival radio network Austereo (Anderson says he will probably stay at Triple J) and dates with other stars. It is this notoriety that can make limelight characters hard to work out: are they being genuine or phoney?

Anderson seems genuine when he claims he is wary of not getting involved with the celebrity circuit: “I don’t go to openings of things, I don’t hang out with people in the media because how can I go on the radio and make fun of Dannii Minogue if I’m at a premiere movie with Dannii Minogue as her mate? It makes it much more difficult, so I just avoid those situations.”

He is also fairly philosophical about people who don’t like his work: “You know the biggest insight into being somebody in the media or being famous on telly is that people hate you, people hate you, and they will tell you that they hate you.” The only time he seems to be putting it on is when I ask him if being a famous comedian helps him meet women. “Girls don’t find comedy attractive!” he declares. “Rock ‘n’ roll. Girls like rock ‘n’ roll, they don’t like comedy. Comedy is not sexy.” Yeah, right. The anti-pretty boy to the end.

[Nick]

"Girls don't find comedy attractive!" he declares. "Rock 'n' roll. Girls like rock 'n' roll, they don't like comedy. Comedy is not sexy."


MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *breaths* HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH... LIAR...HAHAHAHAHAH

[op shop girl]

*giggles*

Pffft, yeah, we don't find comedy the least bit sexy, do we?

My stash of comedy videos and magazine cut-outs of comedians are eqivalent to the porn stash of a male the same age as me.

You draw the conclusions.

[cyborgsnail]

Oh my lord! *falls over laughing* I never thought I'd live to see the day when I saw a picture of a guy in foils. Muahahahahahahaha!!!!! Anti-pretty boy my arse. *g*

[wickedsoulrebel]

yeah...as above... april issue.... middle page.... interview with wil... not funny though....

i'll type it up sometime...

wickedsoulrebel  :p

[wickedsoulrebel]

ok... finally got a chance to type it up... soooo enjoy!!...

Triple J Brekkie Interview with Wil Anderson
Why would thousands of people and guests including Rocket Science, Spiderbait, Ross Noble, Tripod and WWF Founder Vince McMahon be roaming around the Melbourne Town Hall in the early hours of the morning? To be part of Triple J's Breakfast Show live broadcast, of course.

Samantha Allenmann caught up with one half of the Breakfast team, the multi-talented Wil Anderson.

Samantha: What did you think of today's turn out?
Wil: Gee, there was a lot of people here. It was massive! Each year it gets bigger and bigger, like I would have thought last year we had 1500 people and today maybe 2000 people, something like that.

Samantha: Even at 6am?
Wil: At 6am we probably had like 1000 or 1500 people which is just insane-it's just beyond our wildest expectations. That's about how many people actually listen to our show in the whole of Melbourne!

Samantha: Do you prefer being live in front of thousands of people instead of just sitting in a studio?
Wil: No, it's actually really hard work. I mean, it's good to do once and every now and then but you'd die if you had to do that everyday. It's the hardest work, for three hours you're just 'go,go,go', you've got people coming in and out and you don't have time to think or pause or do anything like that. And at that time of the morning, to get your brain and body working like that is silly. It's much better to do the show in the studio where you can read the paper, write some jokes, have a coffee, relax in between what you're doing, you're not 'bang bang bang' the whole time. You've actually talked to your guests off air - we had guests coming in today that I hadn't spoken to off air, so the first time you ever speak to them is on air, which is not the ideal thing to do. Normally you'd like to get a bit of a feel for what they're like and whether they are going to go with you comically or they're going to be serious, or whatever that sort of thing.

Samantha: With what you said about it being harder to do live shows, in that respect is it more like stand up?
Wil: No, because stand up is easy. I find stand up really easy, I find that fun. I love the stand up because it's what I do. This is just my second job; this is just my part time thing… Doing radio in front of people is a lot harder because radio is not designed to do in front of people, radio is designed to do in a radio studio… The weird thing about doing this in front of a live audience is really essentially a radio show is us sitting around yakking and then playing CDs, which doesn't exactly lend itself to being a huge, live spectacle.

Samantha: How does this compare to being on a TV show [The Glass House]?
Wil: It [TV] is easier because we know what it is - that's what we do and we do it the same each week in that regard, and it's in front of a live audience which makes it feel a bit like stand up; it feels like a gig. It's a harder gig though than stand-up, I prefer stand-up the most and I probably prefer radio the second most and the TV is the least of my priorities. [However] I think it's probably easier than doing one of these live ones, these live ones are just - I feel exhausted, I feel like I could just sleep the next twenty weeks.

Samantha: Well, people had their blankets and pillows in there!
Wil: Yeah, and they're tired just from watching!

Samantha: Any other comments for RMIT students?
Wil: Um… yes, university education is the best time of your entire life, drink a lot of beer, have sex with a lot of strangers don't worry so much with your studies because they don't actually really make that much difference once you get out into the real world.

Samantha: What did you study?
Wil: Journalism.

Samantha: And did it help in getting you somewhere?
Wil: No.

Samantha: Thanks for your time.
Wil: Alright, thanks mate, cheers.

:p

[veronica tghf]

Just to let people know - "The Guide" in the Sydney Morning Herald tomorrow is having a feature on Wil Anderson.

Saw the ad for it in Saturday's paper (with a pretty horrible picture), I think it's going to be called "Wil Anderson's wacky world".

So keep an eye out for it - I'll check it out and if there's anything worthwhile in it, I'll try and post it.

[veronica tghf]

Hey!! I happen to like the Wil puns. And anyway, there's still lots of Wil puns to come:
Save the Wil
Wil Power
Dressed to Wil (ooo, I love that one)
Good Wil
Un-Wil-ing or Wil-ingly
Wil O' the wisp
OK I'll stop now, because they're starting to get stupid. :satisfie:



Edited By veronica the glass house fan on May 19 2002 at 17:51

[veronica tghf]

Thank goodness - the article [b:post_uid0]wasn't[/b:post_uid0] called "Wil Anderson's Wacky World".

It was a pretty good article: go HERE for the photos - the scanning was a little bad, I might try rescanning them tonight.

How much interest is there in me typing up the article?? It's a bit long so as long as there's someone out there who'd like to read it.... well, I'll type it up all the same.

[VAxwell]

Wind in the Wil.... Oh!
The Wil of Monte Christo
And my favourite one - Wil you fuck off...

[veronica tghf]

Sorry, only just got home from school.

[i:post_uid0]The Sydney Morning Herald - The Guide May 20-26th 2002- Cover Story[/i:post_uid0]
[b:post_uid0]Here, there and Everywhere[/b:post_uid0]

[i:post_uid0]TV, radio, stand-up... comedian Wil Anderson has been spreading himself thin lately and something had to give. Bernard Zuel talks to Australia's busiest entertainer.[/i:post_uid0]

It was the opening night of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, one of the big three comedy festivals in the world, and Wil Anderson - Victorian by birth, Sydneysider by relocation and comedian by inclination - was hosting the gala, a parade of festival comics doing five-minute spots for a national television audience of about a million people.

In two nights he would open his own show for the festival - a six show-a-week, two-week run that woould sell out every performance, much as it had during its pre-festival run through Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide. Tommorrow morning he would be up before dawn to host his national radio show on Triple J, and later that day he would record two episodes of his ABC-TV chat/comedy show, *[i:post_uid0]The Glass House[/i:post_uid0], before a large live audience.

At 28, the farmer's son from rural Victoria could have been excused a small, satisfied smile. A stand-up comedian without the gimmick hit record, franchised stage show or big movie, he was in demand, in work, in deep. Maybe too deep. Because far from smiling, Anderson was on the floor of his bathroom in his underpants, crying.

"My body just broke," Anderson recalls. He isn't embarrassed to reveal this. It's neither a boast nor a guilty secret; just the way things went after four months of, on average, less than five hours sleep a night, and the concurrent pressure of being here, there and everywhere. Maybe he could have passed up the festival's opening night gala - it wasn't a high-paying gig; it wasn't like hosting the Logies. But as he sees it, "I couldn't say no to hosting the gala." For a comedian, particularly one whose career began in Melbourne, it's right up there as prestigious gigs go. But something had to give, and it was his body.

If you're reading this thinking, 'Stop whingeing, Anderson, you're bloody lucky - nobody's making you do these things,' you'd get no argument from the man some see as the next golden child of Australian entertainment. And his answer says a lot about his priorities, odd in an industry where it's assumed there is only one way to do things - as fast, as attention grabbing and as ambitiously as possible.

"I'm not complaining about being busy," Anderson says. "I like being busy, I'd like some of those things not to be happening at the same time, but what do you do? Do you give up the oppurtunity to do your TV show, to do your radio show? The one that people would say is, you could do your satnd-up any other time. But the thing is, that's what I do; that's my thing. All this other stuff is fun stuff, but if I had to choose only one of them, [stand-up] is what I'd be doing.

"I've *always thought that if I stop doing that so I can do these other things then you're not a stand-up comedian anymore - you're a radio or TV guy who occasionally does gigs. And I've never wanted to be that person."

This is heresy enough, but what of Anderson's declaration that maybe, just maybe, radio and television comedians need a dose of reality every so often?

"I did three months of basically working six nights a week and it was great. I've never felt that I'd done better work on the radio; I was invigorated and sharp," he says. "The thing with radio - the TV is harder, but radio - you can fool yourself into believing you're being funny. You sit in that studio and make the other person laugh and you can fool yourself that you're making other people laugh at home. But you can't lie in front of an audience, so it sharpens up your other work because you find again what a good joke is."

It's not as though doing too much is new for Anderson. Nine years ago, while studying journalism full time in Canberra, he also had a full-time job with [i:post_uid0] The Australian Financial Review's [/i:post_uid0] Canberra bureau. "People wonder why I became a comedian. Well, I had no life before then," he laughs dismissively, though he does manage to slip in that he finished first in his year.

"I can't think of anyone who's wasted a career more than me. I think that if you graduate first you get your name on a board at the press club or something, and I'm sure my name's been Liquid Papered out and replaced by Adam Harvey or someone who went on to be a proper journalist."

Maybe it's not such a wasted career. Not when you consider that in the past year alone, Anderson has fielded offers from several TV networks and has been asked to join Triple M's Sydney breakfast team of Amanda Keller and Mikey Robins. He said no to them all. Is he a fool? The money, not to mention the audience, would be significantly better at Triple M, for a start.

...... to be continued (because this post is getting pretty long and there's still a page to go)!!



Edited By veronica the glass house fan on May 20 2002 at 17:56