When I mention Justin Hamilton’s name to people in the comedy industry I hear words like ‘generous’, ‘gentle’ and ‘supportive’. The high regard in which he is held is not unfounded. He is a genuinely humble man who is actively supportive of his peers, be they comedians who have worked in the industry for many years or young comics just trying to find their feet. I sat down with him in the front bar of The Evelyn and had a chance to get inside his head for a time.
Justin found his way into comedy through a passion for writing. “I always wanted to be a writer…from primary school…and I was writing short stories etcetera”. As a late teenager Justin was lucky enough to meet the Doug Anthony All Stars, forming a particular friendship with Richard Fidler. “Richard Fidler looked at my writing and said ‘you should get into stand up’”
Justin first started working in stand up in 1994, performing in a duo called The Bunta Boys (“Bunta” being an Aboriginal word meaning “crazy”, little known here but in common use in South Australia and the Northern Territory). He says, reflecting on those experiences. “[It was] the two of us doing songs and sketches for about five years…[we] had exciting times like meeting Humphrey and stabbing effigies of the Pope onstage”. The duo split up for a variety of reasons, the main one being a topic Justin touched on again later in the interview. “We had management and it was the worst mistake.” The management in question was a guy managing not only Justin and his partner but other Adelaide comics like Lehmo and Dave Williams. “He took over and just ran everything into the ground ripping everyone off money wise.” After the demise of the Bunta Boys and Justin taking some time out to travel, he got back into the comedy scene as a solo stand up. “I went from the duo and there was the light and shade in the duo. I was the agro character and my partner was the lovely one… I had to lose all the aggression. I was quite aggressive when I started off as a stand up but it was purely because I played that character rather than it being an aspect of myself.”
While still based in Adelaide Justin ran the Rhino Room for two years and also opened the Poster Comedy Club at PJ O’Briens with Lehmo. They flew Wil Anderson in for the opening night and sold out the venue to four hundred people. “In our first eight or nine months…our interstate acts were Wil, Greg Fleet, Dave Hughes, Sue Anne Post, Anthony Morgan, Peter Hellier… the problem had been in the past was that a lot of young comics get kind of cocky ‘cause they’d do well in their pond and they don’t realise what’s on the outside, so these guys would be doing alright and they’d be getting a little following and the next minute Dave Hughes comes into town and they go ‘oh right, that’s what I’m meant to be aiming at’”
When I first walked into The Evelyn with Justin we sat down at a video game table and Justin told me that he and Gatesy had talked about getting one of these as a coffee table. His excitement for the idea was apparent but he quickly turned cold on the notion, explaining how difficult it would be to replace the parts if it ever broke down. This moment was a charming illustration of an aspect of Justin’s personality, childlike in the joy of a crazy idea but reverting to the ‘Mum voice’ of practicality. Justin is someone who has stepped up to the role of pragmatic organiser on many occasions, from running rooms to being an instrumental part in instigating the inaugural Adelaide Comedy Festival earlier this year. “I always go back to Adelaide and run my show and I said to Charlie Pickering ‘do you wanna come over’ and Charlie said ‘why don’t we invite some other comedians’ and I said ‘sure lets see what happens’. The next thing we had thirteen acts and sixty nine shows in ten days. It was great”. Asked about the pragmatic aspect of doing comedy Justin responded “I manage myself because I don’t trust management…I do all of this stuff, I manage, produce, direct myself during festivals. You just do it all because you know it’ll get done.”
Justin’s craft is underpinned by a love of writing and in terms of how he goes about writing his shows he commented “it’s all over the place every year, every year without fail”. In past years Justin has employed different processes from working on a huge blackboard, to writing out the entire script verbatim and memorising it and, for his upcoming show, making notes in point form on scraps of paper. “I kind of like writing by hand, it just feels a little more organic…you can draw arrows, you can cross out, it just feels like more of a process”. Justin is currently working on his next festival show “Justin Hamilton’s Smash”. “The premise is it’s the end of the world as we know it and I don’t feel fine…It’s almost like a very optimistic show about a pessimist.” Justin describes the script for this show as “months of work and it’s a folded up piece of paper”. Reflecting on the ever changing challenges of writing he says “There’s that panic of sitting down and going I don’t know, I don’t know how I did this last time. I always change.”
Adelaide born, Justin has now made his home in Melbourne but still has very strong links to Adelaide. “I always like to do for Adelaide, for the Adelaide scene, what I didn’t have… Dave Williams, Lehmo, we were all just ripped off blindly…we were doing gigs where, say, there were five of us on we would make between us, maybe four hundred and fifty dollars and then we’d find out that this guy was charging eighteen hundred for the show…we didn’t know, we were naïve.” In recent months he has supported young Adelaide comedians such as Muj and Rebecca Hill, lining up gigs for them in some of the best Melbourne venues. When I mentioned Rebecca, Justin was full of praise. “She really take advice and she really works on it and she really improves. I feel like taking some older comedians and saying ‘look’.” He added “for all my faults, and I have heaps, I think I take advice pretty well…good advice…you don’t need a comedian telling you ‘well you don’t talk about your dick enough’”
Asked about the advice he had for young comedians Justin’s response was immediate and emphatic. “Keep writing, keep writing, without a doubt just keep writing”. In regard to the comparative importance of writing to gigging Justin reflected on the lack of availability of stagetime in Melbourne “It’s hard to get stagetime…[in Adelaide] I got stagetime whenever I wanted. Bam, bam, bam, make a mistake, I’m on next week. Bam, make a mistake, I’m on tomorrow night. It’s hard here, there’s lots of people who want stagetime…sometimes it’s not good to try new material, not the right environment.” He reiterated the importance of having good writing as a support base. “Say you’ve got five minutes, you work on your five minutes and then drop two of those minutes, add a new two minutes and sandwich it between the three minutes that works”
“A lot of my role models aren’t comedians” Justin noted, citing Scottish writer Grant Morrison as one of his major influences. “I always find it amusing when people come along and say ‘oh that show’s influenced by…’ well no actually, I can tell you exactly what it’s influenced by…when I’m writing I’m thinking of things outside of comedy…But within the industry…there’s bits and pieces from different people, I like the daring of Fleety... I love the confessional tones of someone like a Judith Lucy and a Sue Anne Post… for a work ethic I think Wil Anderson is really good, he works tirelessly at his craft.”
He also nominates Lehmo as someone who was a major influence on him, particularly when Justin was starting out. “We were performing together every week for a year. He’d already been doing stand up for about six years before I started…he was really helpful in pointing out mistakes I was making that would have taken me ages to learn what that mistake was…that’s six years of experience that I didn’t have”. Justin spent three years at Triple J and, although he describes the experience as fun, it was possibly not the most creatively satisfying experience. “There’s a lot of ‘don’t be funny, why be funny just be good company’...I can be funny and good company, that’s kind of what I do”. I asked him what sees his future holding for him. “That’s a good question…it’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately…I’ve been making money from this for a few years now…and that feel like a win right there”. His enthusiasm waned a little in referring to some of the more conventional media of a stand up comic. “TV doesn’t really interest me, radio… I might end up doing it”. His tone lifted when he spoke of alternate notions. “I’ve had ideas percolating around” he said, particularly referring to a children’s book he’s been working on.
But, in what perhaps typifies Justin’s attitude to his work the most, he concluded “every year I just wanna get better…every show’s about doing a better show than last year’s show.”