Twenty years into his stand-up career, Anthony Jeselnik remains the king of crossed lines.
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The photograph is from artist Rachel HulinsFlyingseries, an image calledFlight of the Scholar.
It depicts a toddler in midair at the top of an imposing library staircase.
Hes gazing upward, expression blank, his body at an off-kilter diagonal.
Seen with herotherwork,Flight of the Scholarlooks like part of a fairy tale.
Hed seen theFlyingseries online, andScholaris his favorite, he says, because that kid is going down.
Its all anybody talked about for weeks.
I said, Who cares?
How many kids do you know who get to die a winner?
Of course, they eventually got rid of it.
To protect their four children.
Or, as I like to call it, a gender-reveal party.
Comedian Sarah Silverman likens it to professional wrestling: Hes the heel.
And he takes it and makes it really highbrow.
But underneath that performance, Silverman acknowledges that Jeselniks act has an unnervingly unknowable quality to it.
His first breakout performances were in roasts, especially the Comedy Central roasts ofDonald TrumpandCharlie Sheenin 2011.
The conceit of the roast is that its friends who adore each other tearing each other apart.
ThatsnotAnthony, Silverman says.
He is calm, professional, and dispassionate.
It is not a defense mechanism, he says.
It is an offense mechanism.
Im not letting you laugh at me.
Im perfect, he says.
Youwrote those jokes, Jeselnik says.
You made this act.
I dont feel bad for you.
Their comedy requires buying into those identities and accepting them as sincere.
But Jeselniks act requires cognitive dissonance.
And in life offstage, heisdifferent.
In conversational speech, hes faster, but his words have the same weighty, carefully chosen quality.
But it was harder for me to see because I knew he wasnt that big of an asshole.
As hes gotten older, Jeselnik says, tragedy and grief affect him more.
There are things where youre just waiting for the news from everyone.
Ill be 46 in a couple of months, he says.
A lot of things dont make me laugh.
I love this a lot, he says.
And then I was like,Oh no.
When I visit, Redrum (who Jeselnik calls Rummy) is not at home.
Hes been sent to stay with Jeselniks assistant for the day.
Hes nervous, Jeselnik explains to me, and does not do well with strangers.
Yeah, he says.
Jeselnik grew up in Pittsburgh, the eldest in a Catholic family of five children.
His mother, Stephanie Jeselnik, says that he was attracted to unusually dark topics from a young age.
Death, dying he would always ask me questions.
Even as a 4-year-old, it was graveyards, what happens when you die.
He didnt understand why people wouldnt talk about it.
And I would have a go at change the subject.
Sitting down with his teachers was not always fun, his mother tells me.
They would have a list of things they had to complain about.
But he was always very funny.
I remember the teachers saying they might laugh, but after they finished laughing, they were scared.
I think I was just a lot darker than most class clowns, he says.
I ask if they were right that he needed to be disciplined.
Yes and no, he says.
If you look at what I became, then no, they were wrong.
But they didnt know this was even a possibility.
(There are better writers out there.
Read Donna Tartt.)
Brogans advice that stand-up would improve Jeselniks writing was the first time he considered performing onstage.
If the joke didnt work and I said something very egotistical, it brought them back, he says.
But the deadpan was,Im terrified.
I only have these jokes.
Im not telling a story.
Im living and dying on these words.
And when they ended, I had six months of unemployment, and having that was huge.
By 2009, his comedy career was taking shape.
My girlfriend likes to joke shes got a chocolate addiction, the line goes.
And I said, See that, honey?
Why cant you be that skinny?
Jeselnik describes this as a mean, smart joke you couldnt see coming.
The end of the joke is designed to outrage an audience, and it does that job well.
I never can, she says.
Hes kept it … You know, you cant pin down what hes about.
I brought these notes onstage because I dont respect any of you.
He put it in there.
And listen, no one saw that thing, so I can still do it.
One of my gifts is that Ive never tried to make it easier.
Ive always kept it hard, he says.
If I show up and do a silly dance?
I couldnt operate like that.
I just dont know why you could eat steak and you would want to eat cow shit.
Does it bother him that audiences are so drawn to Rifes work?
Im sure Gordon Ramsay doesnt lose sleep at night because McDonalds sells billions of hamburgers.
I also take exception to the idea that the country prefers Matt Rife over me.
Thats like saying the country prefers James Patterson over Sally Rooney.
Popularity is not a metric I use to measure myself against other artists.
Everything is an opportunity.
His opinion of Hinchcliffe remains unchanged: He is a troll, basking in the shadow ofJoe Rogan.
I do not care.
But he didnt get very far into the process, he says, before changing his mind.
I dont even want to work on this anymore.
I dont want to do a narrative, I dont want to talk about sexuality.
It doesnt really benefit my comedy.
Writing the story, writing all the characters, it was like,This is too much.
A little of both, he says.
It wouldve been someone figuring out their sexuality later.
Was that an experience he had?
Sure, he says.
But he didnt want that to be part of his comedic identity?
I didnt really have a comedic angle on it, he says.
It was like,Oh, maybe Im gonna try this out.
Or just … Yeah, it never really came together, and no one really gave a shit.
During my first visit with Jeselnik in September, hes in between two legs of an international tour.
His apartment has been carefully cleaned, but there are some items that dont belong to him.
I ask him about other hobbies or interests.
He cites his dog and also that he reads dozens of books a year.
We discuss Lev GrossmansBright Sword, which he loves.
But he says the books are in service of the comedy.
I really, really love comedy.
I think I understand it in a way I dont understand other things.
Part of the gambit comes from Jeselniks framing.
In the special, he tells the joke anyway, now as the opener.
You know what I hate?
When Jeselnik tells me the story in person, it is earnest to a fault.
When he tells it to me this time, its not a story about breaking rules.
But onstage or off, the takeaway is identical: Jeselnik is immensely proud of his work.
But intent can be ambiguous.
It looks like everythings going to be okay, and its not, he says.
Its like a punch.
Its not anaw; its like afuck.
Everyone else is like,We gotta have a happy ending.
I dont think its unfair or untruthful.
I just think its boring.
