After some COVID-related delays stand-up comedy institution Jeremy Hotz is finally ready for his long awaited Marquis de Sad tour. Hotz has a special interest in his November 17 show here in town, which was originally scheduled for last February.
“To be honest with you, I’d like to buy property in Victoria so I have one in each country,” says Hotz. “A lot of people say that that part of British Columbia is the nicest part of Canada to live in.”
Hotz possesses one of the most unique and recognizable voices in comedy today. It’s not schtick—according to Hotz his demeanor is shaped by a generalized anxiety disorder.
“It’s really weird in that it has nothing to do with what’s going on in my life,” says Hotz. “Sometimes there is absolutely nothing stressful happening and then it comes out of nowhere and I get agoraphobia and I can’t even go outside, for fuck sakes.”
Hotz turned his struggles into an asset—his anxiety played a pivotal role in developing his stage persona early in his career.
“When I got bad attacks my hand would go up in front of my mouth,” says Hotz. “I didn’t notice it. When I was on stage it kept happening and my friends were going, ‘Get your hand away from your face,’ but I didn’t even notice.”
Hotz says the involuntary hand movements began about two months before his first appearance at the Just For Laughs festival in 2002, and persisted on what was at that point the biggest stage of his career.
“I was the hit of the Montreal Comedy Festival is what fucking happened,” says Hotz. “I just looked different than everyone else and people wanted that. It didn’t have to but it all worked out. Life is funny that way. You never know where you’re going to end up.”
It wasn’t just his demeanor that separated him from his peers, says Hotz. All kinds of opportunities came his way, because he had no intention of being a talk-show stand-up comedian.
“I wasn’t running home, like the other comics, to watch Leno and Letterman and all that shit,” says Hotz. “I think a lot of the things that happened in my career happened because deep down I don’t want to do those shows.”
Hotz says that because of the restrictions around live events, it was impossible to continue as a touring comedian during the pandemic.
“COVID screwed everything up and we just kept rescheduling,” says Hotz. “We’ve just done it again. It costs a lot of money to go on tour, so we try to get four or five shows together.”
Frustrated by the unpredictability of the past two years, Hotz says he had to reinvent himself.
“All of a sudden I’m a stand-up again and then I’m not,” he says. “I had to change to keep working because touring was so unpredictable. I ended up doing a radio show called The Hilarious House of Hotz that got picked up by Sirius [XM, satellite radio]. It started as a lark but people were listening so I had to do it for real. We’re on Sundays at 7:00 and we got picked up for a second season.”
Hotz says he’s ready to get back to what he does best.
“I don’t bother with segues. I think the audience is so impatient they just want me to tell the fucking joke,” he says. “I’m kinda all over the place. Sometimes I’ll do half of the joke and then I’ll forget and way later it hits me and I’ll do the second half. It feels like it’s by design but it’s by dementia.”
Jeremy Hotz
8 pm Thursday, November 17
$41.50-$77, McPherson Playhouse
rmts.bc.ca