A nice chat with James Mullinger, the brains behind the GQ comedy issue

BONUS THING: we'll be live-tweeting a first read of the magazine when it turns up with the hashtag #gqlolz. Which will hopefully be soon, we've got lunch plans. 

 

The initial idea was from my editor Dylan Jones. He called me in – and you never know what that could mean – but it turned out to be something good. When he said it was going to be a comedy issue my eyes lit up and it was music to my ears. And when he said he wanted me to take control and run it, it was a dream come true – the two things I love most in the world, comedy and writing for GQ, combined. That excitement then became a challenge because you think, if I'm going to do this, I want it to be the best issue, and I was quite nervous about being able to pull it off. 

But the great thing about straddling both comedy and journalism was being able to call up people I knew like Jerry Seinfeld, and one thing I knew about Seinfeld was he could open doors. We were approaching huge names like Paul Rudd, Tracy Morgan and Owen Wilson, people you would normally only go to if it involved putting them on the cover. But once Seinfeld was on board, people were willing to get involved, and they got what we were trying to do: a portfolio devoted to comedy. And that was about comedy across the board. Portfolios like this often tend to be people up-and-coming or the new masters, but we wanted to do one across the board, Jack Whitehall to Jackie Mason.

 

I'd written a piece about how he had inspired me to do stand-up and it got back to me that he'd read the piece and liked the fact it was about him as a stand-up rather than his as a sitcom star. I wrote to his manager to ask if he wanted to speak; we did, and he loved that. He got on board The first iPad edition of GQ last year and did a short film for that. He's just someone who loves stand-up and loves people who are enthusiastic for comedy. In fact, his whole belief system is about people who love what they do – it doesn't matter if they're the bus boy, a waiter, a journalist, a comedian – he just respects people who love what they do, embrace it and are passionate about life. That's how it started, really.

 

To be honest there were a handful of people that we wanted that weren't available for whatever reason, but our list was very tight. One might wonder why we've got certain British comedians in there but not others, but it was very specific and deliberate: people we thought deserved to be there. There are British comedians who will remain nameless who are selling out arenas and we personally don't rate them, which is why they're not in there. Russell Kane isn't selling out the O2 yet but in our opinion he's a fantastic stand-up that deserves to be there. 

 

The easy answer is to go for the biggest name, like Owen Wilson or Paul Rudd, and obviously that was a massive treat. And you know you're doing something good because they're normally American GQ stars who would normally only do British GQ for the cover. Now, the story ended up on the cover, but they didn't know that when they agreed to do it. Working with Seinfeld again was a dream come true and I worried he might not do it so soon after the last time but he liked the idea. But I think probably the biggest surprise was Garry Shandling. We didn't actually expect it; he's the comedian Jerry Seinfeld and Ricky Gervais look up to, and he doesn't need to work. That's the other thing about this issue: none of the people had anything to publicise, they all did this because they got what we were trying to achieve. 

 

It's just a picture actually. For all the portraits we had a load of comedic props out, but everyone really thought about it. Garry Shandling spent about an hour looking through the props, picking things up, putting them down, thinking about them, and in the end he said, can someone go get me some fisherman's waders. He pulled a fire extinguisher off the wall, and the shot's of him in boots firing a fire extinguisher. [EDITING NOTE: Good grief, I didn't notice this until transcribing the interview, but someone please report GQ to their local fire service.] It looked absolutely brilliant but the best thing for me was just seeing his mind work, the guy who's responsible for one of the greatest TV shows of all time and inspired other shows like The Office. That was just fascinating. When you do what I do and spend ten hours a day in an office, and then travel halfway across the country to do a gig to fifty people in a pub in Leicester, you don't think you're going to be talking to Paul Rudd and working out what's funny. 

 

No, it was over London, New York, LA and San Francisco. They were all shot by Gavin Bond and he shot Seinfeld for last year and he's done the posters like for Wedding Crashers. 

 

Dylan Jones has written a fantastic hero piece on Sam Kinison. We really wanted a cross-section of comedy and it would have been typical to do Bill Hicks or Peter Cook. We wanted to do someone who in the comedy world is thought of as a legend and an icon, but in the mainstream, not many people know him. He spent a lot of time with his brother and has put together pretty much the definitive piece on Kinison, and hopefully people will check out his work. The McIntyre thing was definitely a coup; I know him quite well and we were doing pub gigs together before he was the superstar that he now is. The thing I was definitely keen to happen with that was whenever he does interviews he'll either do it in a funny way, or people will be deliberately antagonistic towards him, and the photographs are always funny. I wanted behind the scenes, black and white behind the stage at a warm up gig being quite nervous. For all the criticism he works very hard, goes out and road tests his material with small clubs, and that's what I was wanting to say. 

 

Dylan asked for me to be in there which was nice, so I'm the least-known comedian in the entire issue. Mike Birbiglia, who in America is very well known but isn't here – that will change when he comes to the Soho Theatre. There's Russell Kane, Jack Whitehall, and elsewhere there are comedians doing contributions: David Morgan, Tiernan Douieb. We've really got a cross-section. 

 

The answer is we won't really know until we see how this one does. Creatively it's already a success and everyone who's seen it loves it. From a commercial standpoint it's only a success if it sells really well, and I'd love to do it once a year and inject more comedy if it works.