Guy Branum is a Goddess

This final inter­view from our 2022 Moon­tow­er series is a spe­cial one. Of course, it’s spe­cial sim­ply on the mer­its of our guest: Guy Branum, whose writ­ing cred­its include Chelsea Late­ly, Fash­ion Police, and The Mindy Project. But per­haps what was most spe­cial was the con­ver­sa­tion that unfold­ed between Guy and Valerie, which ulti­mate­ly end­ed up being an insight­ful and impor­tant dis­cus­sion of dis­crim­i­na­tion, diver­si­ty, and inclu­sion in our very own com­e­dy com­mu­ni­ties. But more on that lat­er. First, let’s talk Guy Branum.

Fas­ci­nat­ing­ly enough, Branum start­ed out as a lawyer. See, law was a ​“safe,” and prag­mat­ic career path, as well as a par­ent-approved one for Branum. Of the shift from law to com­e­dy, Branum explains: ​“Part of, like, com­ing out of the clos­et and accept­ing that I want­ed to lead a life that was my own was [me] say­ing, ​‘No, I don’t want to do this. I want to be a stand up.’”

Branum actu­al­ly knew ear­ly on dur­ing this life piv­ot that he want­ed to be a writer, but he didn’t have the con­sis­tent con­fi­dence in him­self yet to sus­tain it and com­plete a spec script or screen­play. For­tu­nate­ly, stand up was the per­fect inter­me­di­ary to build Branum up to that kind of con­fi­dence. “… [In] stand up, you know, you only have to believe in your­self for, like, the length of an out­go­ing mes­sage,” Branum jokes. ​“Like, you just have to [fill] 45 sec­onds for a joke. And if you put enough of those togeth­er, you can do it.” Per­form­ing onstage proved an incred­i­bly use­ful method for build­ing his trust in his own instincts, as it allowed him to eas­i­ly get out­side input on the mate­r­i­al that worked and that didn’t. Along the way, he fell in love with stand up in its own right, even as he land­ed his first writ­ing gig for a cable network.

Hav­ing start­ed stand up in San Fran­cis­co, Branum is quick to praise the com­e­dy com­mu­ni­ty there, which he describes as a beau­ti­ful med­ley of club com­e­dy and alt com­e­dy. Branum fond­ly recalls per­form­ing at The Punch Line, but also per­form­ing for alt audi­ences who appre­ci­at­ed more than just the cheap­est jokes. On top of that, Branum artic­u­lates that San Fran­cis­co was ​“the only place in Amer­i­ca oth­er than New York at that point in time where you had sort of a semi-flour­ish­ing queer com­e­dy com­mu­ni­ty.” In fact, it wasn’t until Branum moved out of San Fran­cis­co and into Los Ange­les that he real­ized, as he puts it, that ​“gay­ness was going to be an imped­i­ment to main­stream suc­cess in stand up.”

Fun­ni­ly enough, one of Branum’s favorite facets of stand up is that ​“inher­ent in it is a lot of adver­si­ty.” Branum goes on to explain, ​“Stand-up audi­ences are more hos­tile to the per­former than just about any oth­er per­for­mance style. And it’s kind of what makes stand up good.” That being said, Branum rec­og­nizes that there is an added ​“insti­tu­tion­al hard­ness that exists for women and peo­ple of col­or and for queer peo­ple that not every­body should have to slog through.”

For­tu­nate­ly, in his 20 years of doing stand up (near­ly 18 of them spent in LA), the com­e­dy scene and its cul­ture has shift­ed, mak­ing strides to encom­pass more diver­si­ty. Women and queer comics have appeared more and more on line­ups, beyond the sin­gu­lar, tok­enized posi­tions they might pre­vi­ous­ly take up on a show. ​“Like, when I start­ed com­e­dy, I was nev­er on a show with [anoth­er] queer per­son unless it was an all-queer com­e­dy show,” Branum states. ​“But I remem­ber the day in like 2012 or 2013, that I, for the first time, was booked on a show and there were three gay comics on it. And, like, it just had­n’t crossed any­body’s mind.” 

In the same vein, Branum lauds the impor­tance of queer spaces for com­e­dy. He recalls how won­der­ful it has been to expe­ri­ence queer open mics in recent years, see­ing the comics get­ting to fail on their own mer­its, rather than due to insti­tu­tion­al resis­tance. Of course, queer spaces are impor­tant not just for the comics, but for audi­ences too: Branum recalls an expe­ri­ence cir­ca 2015 in which he clocked a group of gay men in the audi­ence of a show, and he then watched as ​“every guy who got on stage said the word fag­got.” Branum recounts how this moment was unfor­tu­nate­ly a sig­nal to the queer audi­ence mem­bers ​“that their pres­ence is con­di­tion­al — that … if they want to be here and enjoy the show, they also have to be humil­i­at­ed a lit­tle bit.” As the cul­ture con­tin­ues to shift, Branum believes that queer audi­ences are slow­ly com­ing to real­ize ​“that com­e­dy that isn’t drag, that isn’t explic­it­ly ​‘queer com­e­dy’ can be for them.”

Branum also recounts some of his unfor­tu­nate first­hand expe­ri­ences of that ​“insti­tu­tion­al hard­ness” for gay comics. He start­ed on Chelsea Late­ly in 2007, and no stand-up man­ag­er was inter­est­ed in rep­re­sent­ing him. Final­ly, in 2013, he had to active­ly ask and con­vince a man­ag­er to rep­re­sent him based on his demon­strat­ed income. It wasn’t until 2015 that his cur­rent man­ag­er saw Branum at a fes­ti­val and approached him to rep­re­sent him. Now, Branum is pleased to see queer comics backed by main­stream man­agers, but he admits his frus­tra­tion that even as recent­ly as 2015, he was being passed up by reps despite mak­ing con­sis­tent­ly good mon­ey, mean­while ​“nice, attrac­tive, straight white guys” with lit­tle mon­ey to show from stand up were land­ing great reps ​“because peo­ple under­stood where [they] could go. Peo­ple did­n’t under­stand where I could go,” Branum states.

The same kind of struc­tur­al dis­crim­i­na­tion could be found in the writ­ers’ rooms, too. As Branum worked on Fash­ion Police (you’ll have to lis­ten to the pod­cast to hear his per­son­al Joan Rivers sto­ries), he watched oth­er roast-style shows fail­ing to look for the writ­ers that could per­haps fit those roast writ­ing roles best — women, queer folk, and POCs. ​“And things are bet­ter [now],” Branum con­cedes, but he believes that even as diver­si­ty has become more of a con­sid­er­a­tion in employ­ers’ minds, the meth­ods tak­en so far to find and posi­tion those peo­ple have not been giv­en as much thought and care as they tru­ly need.

Inter­est­ing­ly enough, Branum’s first album came after 13 years of doing stand up. What was the lynch­pin, you ask? The fes­ti­val scene — from Bridgetown to High Plains to our very own Moon­tow­er. It was these envi­ron­ments that intro­duced him to a whole new gen­er­a­tion of comics, as well as to com­e­dy record labels who were keen to encour­age him. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as proud as he was and is of that album, the fol­low­ing year Branum faced a pret­ty dev­as­tat­ing rejec­tion from Com­e­dy Cen­tral. This blow was quick­ly cou­pled with anoth­er slew of emo­tions as the 2016 elec­tion con­clud­ed. ​“I tru­ly did­n’t know what I was sup­posed to be doing or say­ing as a come­di­an, and I felt real­ly lost,” Branum admits. “… I just feel like I was in the wilder­ness for, like, six years.”

“It was only in sort of, like, the last year that I was like, ​‘I have to — I have to get over this hump, but I need to start find­ing mate­r­i­al that I love again, and fig­ur­ing out what my per­spec­tive is, what I need to say,’” Branum mus­es. It turns out that the pan­dem­ic, too, was actu­al­ly a much-need­ed kick in the pants to final­ly let go of old mate­r­i­al. That being said, Branum is quick to caveat that redis­cov­er­ing his spark was not a pas­sive, mag­i­cal process: ​“I had to go and find the spark,” he says.

Per­haps in those tough times, it helped for Branum to lean on the mytho­log­i­cal sto­ry that informs the title of his book, My Life as a God­dess. The sto­ry in ques­tion is one that Branum would often tell his friends when they were feel­ing defeat­ed: a sto­ry of Leto. “… Some peas­ants are mean to her, and she gets real­ly hurt,” Branum explains. ​“And then she’s like, ​‘Oh, shit, I’m a god­dess.’ And she turns them all into frogs.”

For­tu­nate­ly, now god­dess Branum gets to work on projects that allow him to flex and show­case as much of him­self as pos­si­ble. After all, stand up is all about want­i­ng your voice to be heard, and Branum feels that his voice has tru­ly got­ten to shine through projects like Talk Show: The Game Show, writ­ing for The Mindy Project, and, most recent­ly, work­ing on Bil­ly Eichner’s upcom­ing rom-com: Bros (which has an all-queer cast!).

Branum’s future can prob­a­bly best be fore­cast­ed by, well, Branum him­self: ​“What­ev­er I do, suc­cess or fail­ure, it’s going to be flow­ery and fun. It’s going to have lots of good times,” Branum says. ​“And I’ll enjoy it, regard­less of whether the uni­verse decides to enjoy it back.” And that’s exact­ly the kind of god­dess ener­gy we should all be tak­ing into the future. Every­thing else can be frogs. 

Fol­low Guy

• Web­site — guy​branum​.com
• Twit­ter — @guybranum
• Insta­gram — @guybranum
• Face­book — Face​book​.com/​G​u​y​.​B​ranum
• Youtube — Youtube​.com/​G​u​y​B​ranum

Guy can be seen, heard, and read:

• Movies
  • Bros — Star­ring Bil­ly Eich­n­er (Sched­uled Release Sep­tem­ber 2022)
  • No Strings Attached — Star­ring Natal­ie Portman
• Book — My Life as a Goddess
  
• Oth­er Writings
  • Slate​.com
  • The New York Times
• Album — Effa­ble
• Pod­cast — Pop Rocket
• TV (Appearances/​Writer)
  • Talk Show: The Game Show (TruTV)
  • The Mindy Project
  • Chelsea Late­ly