Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 13

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
RUSSELL BRAND
Robert McKee: I’ve always said
that it’s great fun on both sides
of the stage. People in the audience, of course, are having
a great time when the work is
going well, but so is the comic.
Doing it is great fun.
Russell Brand: Yeah. Yeah, when
it’s good.
RM: Yeah. There’s another energy in comedy, as old as comedy, which is sex. The first great
performers, comic performers
on stage, wore a phallus down
to their knees just so that the
audience understood what the
real source of energy was.
RB: I didn’t know that.
RM: You didn’t know that?
It was literally down to their
knees, and then over the…
RB: Was this commedia dell’arte
or what? Earlier than that?
RM: No, this was Aristophanes;
this was the Greek.
RB: Euripides and all the frogs
and all that stuff.
RM: This was old comedy. Flies,
frogs, all the bugs, and all that
stuff. This was 2000, 600, and
500 years ago. Then over the
centuries, that phallus got
smaller and smaller. Then by
the Shakespearean…

RB: Not in all cases.
RM: [laughs] Then in Shakespearean times, they just wore
what was called a codpiece,
which was like a jock strap on
the outside of your costume.
Then with Victorian repression, it became Charlie Chaplain’s cane, Groucho Marx’s cigar, Woody Allen’s glasses, and
on and on. Do you recognize
the sexual energy of comedy,
and if so, what is your phallus—
your surrogate phallus?

where do we go with our sexuality? In that moment when you’re
caught up in your sexuality, with
that thing that’s either an animal
or a child, if someone can touch
you there, there’s an, “AH!” And
you’re going to laugh, and it is
just so private.
RM: You might be the first tattooed comic.
RB: Yeah, that’s just one of my
claims.
RM: That’s sexual.

RB: Well, for me, there is constant use and reference to sexuality because of its explosive nature, and because of the implied
privacy and the odd contradiction of the sanctity of sexual relationships and the profanity of
sexual relationships. For me, I’m
constantly referring back to that
energy. I suppose because of its
literal biological explosiveness of
the active ejaculation.
My symbol of the phallus is the
phallus. You know, I am forever grinding my hips and swirling
around up there and referring to
sexual energy, but I actually have
never really translated it.
But I use sex quite a lot, even in
a show like Messiah Complex. If
it becomes theoretically dense, I
will explode it with sexual content. In terms of the frequencies of consciousness we know,

Story Magazine // Issue 005

RB: Yeah, in a way. I think they ’re
sort of like clowns as characters.
There’s like a topless sexuality—
it’s a chaotic sexuality. In terms of
reputation, sexuality has always
been sort of part of what I do.
On stage, for me, the sexuality is
about the juxtaposition and the
explosion between the profane
and the sacred. That’s where that
stuff comes from. In terms of content, it gives you access to things
that are very intimate and private.
When I talk about my sexuality,
it’s always in a humiliating way.
Sometimes I’ll make very bold
show-off statements, but then
I’m always deflated. The humor
is surely coming from the flaccid
phallus, not the erect phallus.
One of the jokes I’ve always had,
actually, is that it’s nice when