A lot of comedians fall into the trap of being best known for one routine (Dave Chappelle comes to mind.) You did a YouTube video spoofing fans coming up to you talking about the Hot Pockets routine. How do you try to avoid being known as “the Hot Pockets guy?”
I mean, it’s not the end of the world. I definitely don’t want my tombstone to read “Jim the Hot Pockets Guy.” But it doesn’t really bother me because there was a time not long ago where I was the “meow guy” from Super Troopers, or with my earlier stand-up it was just “the manatee guy.” So if I’m now known as “the bacon guy,” it’s not the end of the world. I’ll keep writing and hopefully I’ll come up with another joke that will replace that. Now I’m being known as this “food comic guy.” I mean you write about what your passion is, and right now it’s about being lazy and eating.
One more Hot Pockets question and I swear we’ll move on. Do you think you’ve ultimately helped or hurt Hot Pockets’ marketing department? Lewis Black ended up doing promos for the Weather Channel. Have they approached you to do ads for Hot Pockets?
It’s interesting. A guy emailed me saying he was part of a focus group of Hot Pocket consumers who watched my material and were asked whether it encouraged them to eat it or not. So they’ve done research, and I think I’ve definitely helped them; I mean, they know it’s not caviar. But again, though, I wouldn’t want to be known as the Hot Pockets guy, so I wouldn’t do a commercial for them. That’s not to say I’m against commercials. But for awhile on my last tour they’d do guerrilla marketing where they’d have a guy show up at my show dressed as a Hot Pocket passing out coupons. We had to put a stop to them because people thought I was working with Hot Pockets.
Yeah, it must have seemed like you were on the inside of a Hot Pockets conspiracy.
Yeah, you know what I mean? And it’s not like there’s a whole message to the Hot Pockets joke. It’s basically just “Hot Pockets give you diarrhea.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone do the politically correct audience member voice in quite the same way you do. Did that come from a need in your show early on, or did it just come about spontaneously that just stuck?
Article comments
1 - Manny T.
Awesome interview Ethan. Gaffigan rules!