Juston McKinney
written by Ken Carlson
“I had a deal with CBS,” recalls Juston McKinney, “They made seven pilots that year. I was #8. That’s the closest I ever came. What boggles my mind, at this point, with all those people interested, my pilot never got made. How was it so funny to so many people, then somehow it never gets made. How is that? I don’t know if the industry is short-sighted or just blind.”
The line of success is finer in stand-up than for most professions. The span between opener to middler, national headliner to mass market popularity, can be the turn of a friendly card. Every person has their own gauge for success and by all accounts, this married father of one who makes his living making people laugh is proud of his climb up the comedy rungs, but there is a sense that his recent move from Los Angeles back to his home region of New England brings with it the feeling of unfinished business. “In January of ‘98 things moved for me, as I look back now, very fast. I could argue that I was closer to being big ten years ago than I am today.”
Officer Juston McKinney of the York County Police Department. One of Maine’s finest. A professional who showed respect for his job and the public he served. The description doesn’t sound too much unlike his current occupation, with the exception that at 19 he carried a gun to work.
“Yes, now it seems really young to me,” says Juston, looking back, “I couldn’t even buy my own bullets. I see kids now that are 24 or 25, living at home with no direction their life. I worked in the jail first. I made a point there to be good to be people. I learned the importance of that when I was a kid and cops used to come to my house to arrest my dad. My first year on the beat, I answered a call regarding a theft of pumpkins. I looked fifteen at the time. The woman who answered the door thought I was there for ‘Trick-or-treat’. I had to say, ‘No, ma’am. That’s my police car and this is a real gun.’”
Juston went on to work with the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program in his area, speaking with kids in schools; a connection he admits was linked to his father’s drinking problem, and later lead him to comedy. “It wasn’t easy,” Juston recalls, “But, I always had a desire to teach, to be a positive role model. And if you look at the kind of people who go into entertainment in general, a lot of times, there are family issues growing up: bad relationships with one or more members of your family, drug or alcohol abuse in the family. There’s no question in my mind that my path was taken because of the way I grew up. I lost my mother when I was six years old. My father was an alcoholic. Humor was how I dealt with the stuff growing up that I may not have had to if my mother had stayed alive. It does have a lot to do with that, and sure, hand-in-hand, there are emotional issues. I’ve got some good friends in the business with commitment issues that are probably connected to things from their past. They want to impress somebody, make somebody laugh, get that instant gratification that they never got as a child. So, I think that goes into problems with relationships, but no different from anyone who didn’t go into stand-up. If those issues are there, those issues are there. But there’s no doubt that a lot or people are driven by hard situations and try to make the best out of it.”
After three years of stand-up, Juston started playing colleges. Like many others, his stock rose from the reaction to his 20 minute set at the NACA convention. His got him a standing ovation. From those shows, Juston got the money to go to New York. Within a few weeks of moving there, he was in the rotation at the Comic Strip, Stand-Up New York, and Caroline’s. “Within a year, I got management out of LA and a six-figure development deal,” Juston recalls. “Then in ‘99 I got another six-figure development deal. Fast forward from there, I moved to LA and reality shows took over. But, I got Leno in ‘02 & ‘04. So early on, I knew I could do it. Once you start passing at clubs and you start getting work, that’s big.”
“Will Smith’s production company was bidding for me three years in a row,” Juston continues. “I went on the set to see him. I was in his trailer, drinking Snapples with him. He was sitting there, reciting my jokes that he’d seen on my tape about my being a small town cop. He’s hitting his leg and laughing. Will Smith is reciting my jokes telling me how great I am. It was surreal. Here I am, many years later, I feel that opportunity slipped. I feel like I should have been on a show, that I should be further along. People say, ‘Wow, you’re really successfull.’ But if you look at how close I came, Warner Bros and CBS and Will Smith’s company, and the idea that still hasn’t been made. It’s my story. How is it not funny now? If it fails on the air, OK, at least I had my shot. It’s weird. They try to get you when you’re hot. But if they think you’ve cooled off, they move and jump around to the next thing. So you’ve got to stay in there and keep putting out good content. Keep writing.”
Juston points out a growing trend with comedy content, including movies, “A lot of the young teen movies now are really dirty. Step Brothers, Super Bad, and Role Models are three I saw recently. It’s a different type of comedy from ten years ago. With Something About Mary, you had moments like that. But these new ones, there’s so much swearing and ball jokes. I don’t love that it’s going that way because I think the crowd at clubs starts to expect that. But, to keep up, I’ll write a little of that into my act to appeal to my audience. I like dirty comedy if it’s funny. I’m not saying you should be this or that, but if you’re clean when you’re starting out, you’ll get more work. If you’re dirty, maybe you’ll be more famous. Growing up, I loved Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay. They were filthy. I tell guys just starting out, if you can work clean, you’ll get opening work because it sets up the show. You can get corporate work. You’re opening the venues you can work at.”
The Blue Collar Comedy brand, a juggernaut in stand-up is one that is associated in the same way NASCAR is in this country; incredibly popular in the South and rural area throughout the rest of the country. When their producers decided to branch out and find a new audience; “Not just the southern redneck,” in Juston’s words, “but also traditional blue collar.” They came looking for McKinney. “Guys who have had normal jobs, like me. I was a cop. John Caparulo did landscaping. Jamie Kaler was in the Coast Guard. That was the experiment they tried to do. Me, being a cop in Maine, living in a trailer park, making ten bucks an hour, they felt that was blue collar. They liked my material and felt it was appropriate. I jumped at it because it was a huge opportunity.”
“Juston,” comedian Tom Cotter comments, “is one of only a handful of comedians that can kill in front of any audience, be it a college or a senior center. He is well liked and respected in the New York comedy community and the LA comedy community and has made both cities his home over the past 15 years. He is the class of the New Blue Collar Tour and barring a freak accident, he’ll be a force to be reckoned with in the comedy world for decades.”
“It was good exposure,” Juston comments, “a real resume builder. It was also a little difficult at times, with its timing in this economy and working with new people. But, I was offered a big break and I’m glad I did it. A lot of the stuff I do in New York and LA is about being a cop. It’s a mainstream topic that everyone gets. Small town police department, they can relate to it.”
“With Maine,” Juston continues, “there’s the city, the artsy scene, the coast – lighthouse Maine. Then there’s rural Maine, it’s a totally different bag. You have to be careful not to insult them. I used to live in a trailer park in Maine. It was in Saco, across from Fun Town USA. It’s surrounded by car dealerships. I can talk about it. But, if you’ve never lived there, you have to be careful talking about it. The people there are all going through similar stuff. If you can talk about that stuff, they love it. You go to Maine and just mention Biddeford (a small town south of Portland) – if I tag a joke with Biddeford, I get an applause break. They like that you’re doing stuff for them. So many times, they get the whole, ‘You’re out in the woods, you’re rural. Nobody thinks about you.’ So when somebody thinks about them, they like it. They take to that a lot. Some of the material I’m doing is about moving back to New Hampshire. It’s about people and relating to them. You know what they’re going through. You appreciate how they talk, what they say, the lingo. But they’re proud too. There’s a fine line between entertaining them and offending them. Is it laughing at them or with them. A lot of people from Northern Maine don’t like jokes about that area. Every new comic does a Maine ‘tooth’ joke (as in country folk only having one). They’re just hard working people. They have a way how they do things and like that.”
For a veteran comic like Juston, butterflies and nerves rarely come out before a show. Juston chalks that up to experience and confidence over preparation.
“Believe it or not, this weekend (at the Hartford Funny Bone in Manchester, CT) I’ve been throwing out premises that I haven’t worked out yet,” says Juston. “I’m a little all over the place. I like to turn over my act when I go back to a place. So I’m working on stuff now that will be even better in a few weeks. When I’m on, I’m not thinking about the next bit. I’m not looking ahead, I’m in that story. That’s why new premises are so good, you have to be in it because you’re living the story. You can’t go off muscle memory. If I’m looking ahead, then I’m not connecting with the audience like I want to be. Every once in a while, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. But I’ve had audience members come up to me after a show and say they’ve seen this comedian and that comedian, but this was the best show they ever saw.”
“My first show,” Juston thinks back, “I went down to Stitches in Boston. I was maybe 22 and had three minutes. It went well. I was surprised. I hadn’t told a soul I was going because I didn’t want them to see me mess up. I was so confident afterwards, that I told everybody the next time I went down. Maybe 20 or 25 people showed up. I wasn’t aware that comedians could do the same material again. I thought they just did whatever was going on in their life. I did a new set and didn’t do nearly as well. I was starting to sweat and drop “F” bombs all over the place out of nervousness. Vinnie Favorito was hosting. He came out and said, ‘Juston, great job. Next time why don’t you try throwing a few more fucks out there. Maybe that’ll get them.’ He totally shit on me. The next guy went up, who I had seen before, and he did the same jokes as the last time. I remember standing in the back of the room, thinking, ‘You can do that?’ That’s how I learned, the hard way, to listen to your jokes and build material from structured jokes.”
“It is an extremely tough thing,” Juston comments, “to keep a marriage and a family together if you’re a travelling comic and you’re gone thirty weeks a year. So, you’ve got to find a way to balance that. You have to be with someone who meets you as a comedian. If you meet someone single and you’re not doing stand-up at the time and you buy a house together, then tell her – guess what? I want to be a stand-up comedian, I would be shocked that it would work. Unless you lived in New York City and were able to dabble as opposed to being a road person, it’s just too demanding. I don’t know who would put up with it unless it’s someone who didn’t want you around the house.”
“I go to LA. My booking agent’s in LA. My representation’s in LA, Parallel entertainment. I’m always pitching shows. I’m always working on scripts. I’m just trying to do it all. For the career, the move was frustrating. You know this real estate market – buy high, sell low. We were looking outside Los Angeles and searched progressively out based on what we could afford. We started looking in Pasadena, Riverside, and ended up in New Hampshire. Say I get a call to read for something in LA. Is it worth the flight just to get looked at? It’s two-fold. It’s hurting my time, putting in. On the flip side, there’s the drive of trying to get to a point where, financially, I don’t need to be away twenty five weeks a year; that I can go maybe once a month, then I can be home with him and my wife. Over the next few years, he’s a baby and won’t realize I’m not there so much, but I will. As he gets older, 6 or 7, maybe 11 or 12, that’s when I need to be there. I need to really push these next few years to get further along. That’s the trade off. What else am I going to do? I’m definitely planning to spend more time at home. This December I did a week in Dayton, a week in Columbus, and a week in Hartford. Next week I’m off to Virginia Beach. But in January I’m not going anywhere. I try to spread it out. But, here (New Hampshire where he hosts his weekly satellite radio show on XM/Sirius, “Juston McKinney, Live from the Woods.”), you can’t beat the quality of life, and right now, it’s all about raising a family.”
“Juston is a great guy,” says Chris Mazzilli from Gotham Comedy Club in New York. “He’s a total professional and terrific comic. He has smart, original material and a tremendous work ethic. He is one of my favorites.”
Whether it’s by reputation, word-of-mouth, or most likely, trial and error, veteran comedians learn to distinguish the good comedy rooms from the bad ones. “There are ‘A’ rooms and ‘B’ rooms,” says Juston, “‘A’ rooms like the Funny Bone and the Improv. In New York City, there’s Gotham. I do all of those and it fills up my travelling schedule I’m fortunate enough to pick and choose.”
“Sometimes,” Juston continues, “It’s the sound, lights, the aesthetics, the way they do business. If they ‘paper’ everybody a lot, that can have an effect. There’s the money, is it good or low. There was a room, maybe 7, 8 years ago where I was headlining on Long Island. I ordered a steak sandwich. The booker goes into the kitchen and says it’s for ‘the comedian.’ What I found out later was that they don’t give comedians the best cuts of meat. I don’t know if it’s older meat or lesser cuts, but that’s what they give comedians. I never went back to that club. It’s about making you feel appreciated.”
For more on Juston, visit JustonMcKinney.com.
Ken Carlson is the editor of the comedians magazine.