Clint Johanssen: Alternative Comedian

Clint Johanssen: Alternative Comedian






[Blank screen with voiceover.]

CJ: All my heroes…all the guys who really pushed the boundaries…at some stage, have had to overcome hardship. All of them.

[Shot of man sitting on a couch. He’s in his mid-thirties, with receding hair tied into a ponytail. He is wearing a “Good Bush, Bad Bush” T-Shirt (depicting a hairy mons pubis and former US President George Walker Bush, respectively) and has a single gold hoop earring in his left ear. He wears glasses and appears slightly uneasy about the interview. The man speaks again.]

CJ: I mean, for example, right...Richard Pryor: set himself on fire trying to smoke crack cocaine. Umm…Rick Shapiro: Worked as a male prostitute. A homosexual male prostitute, actually. And of course, Bill Hicks…pancreatic cancer. Dead.

[Man pauses for a moment.]

CJ: And…if I have to suffer any of those things to see my name up in lights…then so be it.

[Wistful piano music as camera cuts to a shot of CJ sitting on the edge of his bed.]

CJ: I guess I’ve always been drawn to humour and making people laugh…I think it’s just something you’re born with.

[CJ smiles softly, then chuckles to himself.]

CJ: I remember actually, in Primary School...I used to be a bit of a class clown, used to get up to a bit of mischief…I did this one thing where I’d impersonate the Principal, you know – he had this horrible lisp – and I’d say to the other children you know, stuff like “sssssthufferin’ sstttthuckatash!” and “stttthtop being sthiilly in sssthex ed!”

[CJ laughs with more conviction.]

CJ: I used to get a lot of “Clint, stop distracting the class!” and “Go outside, Clint!”...and the teachers liked it even less.

[CJ sits silently, still smiling and nods to himself.]

CJ: So I guess I’ve been stirring the pot, so to speak, for as long as I can remember.

[Cut to home video footage of Clint onstage. He’s wearing a ‘Vote for Pedro’ shirt and cargo pants. He paces backward and forwards across the cramped stage.]

CJ: “And Labor’s solution to this is to ask us to vote for Mark Flippin’ Latham! The guy who makes the Khmer Rouge look like the effin’ Democrats!”

[Silence from crowd.]

CJ: “But you know what they say about the ALP, right? The Crean will always rise to the top!”

[More silence. Camera pans away to a disinterested member of the crowd reading the label of a beer bottle. Clint can be heard in the background exclaiming “so I was thinking the other day…imagine John Howard on Dancing With the Stars, wouldn’t that be..” (tape ends).]

[Back to CJ sitting on couch.]

CJ: There is definitely a political edge to the stuff I’m doing, yeah. I mean, I sometimes think, you know…Clint, you have a degree in Cultural & Media Studies

[Sudden cut to a photo of young CJ in a mortarboard. His gown is open and underneath he’s wearing a Hole t-shirt. He has one of his parents under each arm. They’re typical sunburnt suburbanites and have both got their eyes closed in the photo. A gigantic ECU banner is visible in the background.]

CJ: …you’re an educated guy. Why are you acting up in front of a bunch of strangers instead of being out there making a difference? But…to me, comedy is making a difference. You can make people think about things, sure. I mean…I could write a book, or a newspaper article…and I have written newspaper articles, actually…

[Another cut to a photo. It’s an opinion piece written in a local paper. There’s a small black and white photo of CJ baring his teeth and doing the ‘devil horns’ sign. Article reads “SUBURBAN SLAM WITH CLINT JOHANSSEN” with sub-title “ILUKA COUNCIL WHEELIE BIN EDICT UNJUST, TOTALITARIAN.”]

CJ: But all that would do is educate people. I want to make them laugh. And if they’re educated too, well…I’ve done my job.

[Cut to CJ sitting on an empty stage in a chair.]

CJ: I guess because of the kind of thing I’m trying to do with comedy, there are times when the audience doesn’t quite get my angle. Which I understand, you know…the first thing you learn is that the audience is never wrong…just sometimes maybe slightly uneducated, but it’s your job to reach out to them…I always try to lace my sets with some jokes for, ah…Joe Average, if you will. You know, the guy who gets home from pushing wheelbarrow or, um, welding… and has a beer, opens the paper…probably straight to the TV guide or…Hagar comics…then, you know…ahh…well I guess he goes to bed after that. Hopefully without having beaten his wife, or gambled away their food money on greyhounds. But I make sure there’s something for him in all my sets.

[Cut back to CJ’s performance tape.]

CJ: “So I, I um…I recently got dumped by my girlfriend, and you know, I asked why and she said “It’s because you’re a loser.” And that came as a real shock to me, because I don’t even support the Dockers, let alone bloody play for them!”

[Cut back to CJ sitting on chair.]

CJ: So yeah, it can definitely get a little trying, you know…but it’s certainly not going to deter me from doing what I love. I have an analogy, actually: the audience is like a computer. You need to fill it with information, you know…but if you try to cram too much onto the hard-drive…or the audience’s heads…the computer slows down and stops working. And sometimes that makes the computer a bit angry, and it will go and yell at me, or key my car…but really, it’s your fault for not having a better computer.

[Cut to CJ sitting in a café. He is reading a copy of ‘The Portrait of Dorian Gray’. He traces the text with his index finger and mimes the words as he reads. He pauses for a moment, puts the book down and produces a copy of the Oxford Modern Dictionary. Finding the word in question, he replaces the dictionary and resumes reading. Almost instantly, he puts the book down again and reaches for the dictionary.]

[Cut to CJ being filmed from across a table in the café.]

CJ: This is where I like to come for inspiration, just to, umm…people watch, I guess. I’ll sit here with a flat white, a novel…and just watch. I might think, you know “isn’t it funny how we’re in an economic crisis and yet…people are still buying things,” or…”why do men drink their coffees differently to women?” or…”oh, doesn’t that guy have a funny limp!” and just brainstorm for a while. I like to think of this as my office, so to speak. The dream factory.

[CJ chuckles to himself.]

CJ: The staff here are great, too. Really great senses of humour. There’s a little board outside where they like to write little poems or messages, just to give people a chuckle.

[Cut to a shot of a blackboard outside the café. It has ‘A Spoonfull (sic) of Sugar May Help the Medacine (sic) Go Down, But Our Super Sweet Lattes Will Bring You Up!”]

CJ: I help them out sometimes, actually…I said to Breeanne, the manager – she’s not here today – but I said, how about this one: “Henry the 8th: tyrant or twitcher? Go decaffeinated, not decapitated!” Haven’t seen it up yet…maybe a bit too highbrow, but all the girls had a real chuckle at that one.

CJ: But, ah…this is a really special place for me. I met Marnie, here actually. I was carrying a pot of hot tea over to my table and there was this, just…absolutely gorgeous woman sitting cross-legged on a chair, and I was…I was gobsmacked. I was so busy looking at her, actually, that I didn’t see this raised floorboard and…


[Cut back to CJ’s couch. A timid woman in her thirties is sitting down, dressed in a burgundy crushed velvet dress over green leggings. She has a single blonde plait in her brown hair and pulls distractedly at it as she speaks.]

Woman: …and it actually burned me quite badly. I still have this red mark…

[Woman goes to roll up dress over her stomach and shot cuts abruptly to CJ on the couch next to the woman.]

Marnie: I think…what attracted me to him most was definitely his energy. There’s a real vibrancy in Clint, a real passion that I haven’t found in any other men. He really loves to let you know how he’s feeling, to tell you what he thinks is wrong or unjust in the world and how he wants to go about fixing it. The whole car ride back from the hospital he wouldn’t stop talking about it. I think that’s when I fell for him.

[Camera shows close-up shot of CJ getting all misty-eyed.]

CJ: And with, Marnie…we just clicked. We love all the same things. Literature; film; nature; coffee, of course! I can have dairy, and she can’t, but that’s the only real thing. She actually gets violently ill. But you know, “soy be it!”

[CJ and Marnie share a laugh.]

Marnie: Clint’s really supportive of me and my career choices, too. I…I used to run my own Reiki clinic, and it was quite successful…but my passion has always been to write and illustrate children's books that teach environmental awareness.

[Cut to a picture of a children’s book with a crayon drawing of a manatee with a plastic bag over its head. It reads: “PORPOISE IN PAIN” by Marnie Fern Morris.]

Marnie: So I decided to pursue that. And so Clint’s been great with supporting both of us. We just need to be a bit thrifty sometimes.

CJ: That’s right. I mean, Marnie always says “Clint, you have enough energy to power the whole shire!”

Marnie: It would be nice to be able to use the dishwasher sometimes, though…

CJ: I…yeah, but we’ve made choices, and we’re happy. Aren’t we?

Marnie: Oh, yes, absolutely. I just…no, it’s OK.

[Camera lingers on the couple. Marnie bows her head and looks like she’s crying. She squeezes CJ’s thigh. CJ looks limply at the camera without saying anything.]

CJ: Right….I’ll go check on dinner.

[Cut to CJ in the backyard with a shovel. He’s standing next to a shallow hole full of embers and is holding the shovel towards the camera. On it is a small alfoil parcel.]

CJ: Damper. Full of carbohydrates, easy to make…patriotic. Doesn’t require electricity…or hot water.