Written and directed by Renée Webster, it’s very loosely based on the true story of a women-run Australian company set up to offer safe, respectful sexual services exclusively for other women.
We’ve hooked up today via a terrible distorted cellphone connection to talk about a new Australian movie called How To Please A Woman, in which Thomson plays a stripper/sex worker/cleaner/furniture removals guy. Josh Thomson along with How To Please A Woman co-stars Alexander England, Ryan Johnson and Erik Thomson. Thomson seems to be on a surging upward trajectory just now, his mix of talent, eccentricity and vulnerability in high demand both here and overseas. It's an approach that gets him noticed and gets him work. I’m hoping people will enjoy the journey, without there having to be any sort of destination.” I get unreasonably passionate about rubbish stuff, and it’s the contrast that’s funny, rather than the content or the end point. You’re in the back seat and they start arguing about the curtains at home or something, and even though they’re embarrassed, they can’t stop themselves. “Like, you’re in someone’s car, and a couple in the front abandon social graces and just start to have an argument. I mean, I love jokes, but I also love awkward conversations where people get passionate about weird things to the extent that they get all vulnerable and real and you’re the witness. “But it fits with the sorts of things I personally find funny. He imagines people are often confused and amused at the same time. “The other comedians on 7 Days are a lot faster getting to a perfect pay-off line whereas I’ll just have an idea I think might be funny and no ending for it. The other comedians on 7 Days are a lot faster getting to a perfect pay-off line whereas I’ll just have an idea I think might be funny and no ending for it. I’ve never been very good at straight punch-line stuff. My safety net is that people never see the s. “Partly, that’s because I also work editing behind the scenes, and we edit out the bits that fail. He was happy on the high wire, with no net.
Here was a man who trusted in his abilities. It always seemed brave to me, just stepping into the unknown in high-risk, prime-time situations. Thomson would often just start into something obliquely related to the topic at hand with no idea how it might end, piecing together a freshly-minted funny monologue in front of your eyes, the riffs loose as a goose. It became clear that he was stranger and more exploratory than many of his contemporaries, and not really a traditional punch-line comic. You saw glimpses of it sometimes when he occupied the nightly comedy chair on The Project and suddenly went off-script, lurching into eccentric improvisations on live TV.īut it was 7 Days where Thomson got to really spin his wheels. He has carved out a niche for himself as Aotearoa’s reigning comedy surrealist. Josh Thomson and his father, Pareora-based David Thomson.