It started with a kidney stone of biblical proportion. A millstone hanging not around James Austin Johnson’s neck, but bursting violently from his urinary tract, derailing his musical career just as he was getting it off the ground, having abandoned his life as a comedian, and mostly as a husband and father. But the kidney stone changed everything.
A tale as old as time. The next big thing that never truly got the chance to shine.
This is, of course, a joke—mostly. There really was a kidney stone, and it got in the way of some shows he had in real life and made Johnson think a little bit about his career—mostly that it was lucky it hadn’t happened during a Saturday Night Live taping — but it was a much more reasonable size (though anyone who has gotten a kidney stone can tell you that there’s no “good” sized kidney stone). And the SNL star who’s made a name for himself as a premier impressionist on a show with a long history of premier impressionists, really has pursued music as an outlet for when he’s not working psycho hours in 30 Rock.
“Yeah, you know, getting a kidney stone during my break at home just sort of prompted me to do some soul searching and to make a documentary with my buddy Bryan [Stray] that was just about the far ranging effects of a health event that changes everything,” Johnson says over Zoom. “And so we really took this idea of ‘What’s it like to have a kidney stone? How would that affect everything in my life, from how I relate to my family to how I produce comedy and produce music. And so we really just wanted to take that kidney stone and blow it up to the size of the entire world.”
That’s the genius of his aptly named Genius III short film, the latest in a series creating a fictionalized, exaggerated version of Johnson that portrays him as an egotistical creative “alpha” who pursues fame at the expense of his relationships, but uses the layers of irony and hyperbole to coat the real Johnson. The line between parody and true life shifts, sometimes mid-sentence. Facts bloat and deflate within the same line delivery. Songs begin in earnest confessions of self-doubt before spiraling into tales of polycule politics.
The truth is that Johnson is a Nashville native, where he brushed shoulders with legendary session guitarists “on ventilators in the front row at Sunday church.” He spends his time there with his wife and child during the SNL off-season. And like many Nashville natives it was sort of an “expectation” that he’d have some musical ability. Combined with his dreams of being funny, he’s naturally blended the two, but not like “musical comedians” such as Tenacious D or even stand-ups like Demetrii Martin or Nick Thune, who use mellow acoustic guitar as a sort of backdrop for traditional standup. But also not like the serious-but-with-humor-but-serious releases from guys like Tim Heidecker or Whitmer Thomas.
“I’ve always grown up admiring guitarists and wanting to be somebody who wrote funny songs and stuff, and I’ve always wanted to be a comedian,” Johnson says.
The lie in Genius III is that he’s quitting comedy, which he declares in bold lettering in bold lettering in the film.
He’s not really childhood friends with J.D. Vance, either.
“I love making an announcement. There’s something so funny about putting out a statement that you are, like, not going to tour anymore, and then you just are, though. I think it’s funny when bands call every tour the Farewell Tour. I think that’s so funny that Elton John is just constantly saying goodbye and just, like, keeps doing it. Another Vegas residency or something like that. So I like any kind of bold statement. I like lying. I think I like people who are, like, obviously lying, like when everyone knows that they’re lying, that’s really funny.”
That’s a key to the appeal of Genius III. You have to be in on the joke that Johnson is not some father who only cares about his son if he writes good material, but it is rooted in the unfortunate truth of the modern creative person who sort of has to either mine every interaction in his life for a potential laugh or put forth a conscious effort to turn that side of his brain off when the work day is done.
The problem with SNL, or comedy in the social media age overall, is that the work day is kind of never done. And to get to that point where we as an audience can draw the line between personae, Johnson had to have done a lot of legwork introducing himself to us with a steady supply of posts and releases and invitations into his life. Such is the curse of the modern entertainer.
But Johnson says that this current stage of his life, where he’s thriving in Studio 8H, finding time to post his own comedy on social media and on stage, and grow as a family man himself, is exactly where he wants to be, despite all of the aloofness he puts forth in Genius III. He’s prepared his whole life for this moment, as a comedy nerd in the music city, and is now in a place where he can turn those skills into a career.
“Looking back, I’m like, wow, I’m so glad I got to find my ikigai,” he says. Ikigai is a Japanese word that refers to something that is at the intersection of something you’re good at, something you like doing, something the world needs, and something you can make money from. People spend lifetimes searching for their ikigai, often unsuccessfully.
“So I found, like, my ideal kind of place as an entertainer, and that was good because I had a family that was starting that I needed to provide for. But it is overwhelming, trying to be a family man at the same time as trying to be a big star.”
At this point I wonder if he’s wandered back into the character he plays in Genius III, the one obsessed with being a big star, because the Johnson I’ve been talking to doesn’t seem too preoccupied with fame per se. In real life, though, he is, undoubtedly, a huge star. SNL is an institution. There aren’t many higher peaks for comedians of his or most other varieties.
He stays grounded, though, even in the storied halls of his employer, once again through inspiration in the music he loves—“more sort of roots rock, Americana kind of thing, sort of folk, Lomax type thing, Delta blues kind of derived, down home music, kind of bluegrass kind of thing,” as he describes in one of the long-winded overwrought genre descriptors in the film. In real life, his inspiration comes in the form of a Bob Dylan book.
“This is Bob Dylan’s Philosophy of Modern Song,” he says, pulling it up on camera. “This is a book that I read a lot in my dressing room and I have to read it in Dylan’s voice. But it’s just him taking all of these singles that he likes, that he remembers from like his teenage years in the ’50s. And then just Bob Dylan-izing about that. It’s like he’s just walking you through his house.”
He breaks into a highly marketable Dylan impression. The same one he would do just days after our interview in an SNL ad with John Mulaney.
“Bon Jovi had a song called ‘Living On a Prayer,’ also there’s, ‘I Say A Little Prayer’ sung by Dionne Warwick. But those are merely pop songs. The greatest of the prayer songs is the Lord’s Prayer. None of these songs even come close.”
He snaps back into character. The real character. His character. James. Real James—I think. You can tell because he’s a little quieter, not totally unlike the mumbly creative genius he plays on screen, but not entirely like him either.
“Yeah, man. This guy rocks.”
I give him one last opportunity to snap back into character, though, for my own sake mostly because it’s just so damn funny, and ask where he’d be if it weren’t for the pesky kidney stone.
“Probably the White House, doing whatever Kal Penn did for Obama.”