James Mustapic

It’s incredibly loud when James Mustapic starts talking. Sitting inside a café, you can hear every word within a 20-metre radius. His sentences bounce off of the concrete walls and directly into the ears of unsuspecting customers.

James begins to explain the trajectory of his career. He begins with the Youtube channel that he made in high school and his commentary videos that recapped and poked fun at Shortland Street, a New Zealand soap opera, which soon garnered the attention of local comedians and actors.

The success of the video series Shorty Street Scandal lead to the popular online magazine The Spinoff approaching James for similar content. He recalls the event: “they approached me, and then I came up with Repressed Memories a year or two later. Then, I came to them with that.”

Mustapic’s Repressed Memories series highlighted the forgotten cultural moments of New Zealand’s past, including a deep dive into the boys of early-2000s NZ pop music, and ranking previous Air New Zealand safety videos. Reflecting on these videos, James notes, “I always struggled with trying to find a good balance between [comedy and criticism], like… I look back on one of my old Repressed Memories about Drew Neemia, and I watched one of my jokes and I thought, was that a joke, or am I just being really mean? I didn’t think there was really a punchline in it.”

Still, the success of James’ online videos prompted him to move from Dunedin to Auckland in the pursuit of comedy. “I used to do school speeches and I would try to do lots of jokes and my teachers used to say ‘you should do stand-up’ and I was always like ‘ugh, no.’ But [moving cities] was due to the success of Shorty Street Scandal.”

Following his relocation, James began to try stand-up comedy, he says “at the classic comedy club on Queen St. That’s one of the main ‘great’ places to do stand-up in Auckland. We did ‘raw nights’ as they call it. It’s all of the newbies. It’s $5; you expect some bad and some good.” It was a turbulent time in his career, he adds, “in the first few years of stand-up, it’s really nerve-wracking. I found it very stressful, and I actually wanted to quit stand-up for a while.”

Despite his initial nerves, James comments that writing his first jokes “was quite exciting. Nowadays when I write, I’m like ‘oh that won’t work’ or ‘oh this isn’t good enough!’ But when I started I was like ‘this is hilarious; oh this is so funny!’ Often it was shit.”

Since then, Mustapic has headlined a variety of stand-up shows and has taken his hour-long shows on tour across the country. His two most recent tours, Inside James Mustapic and James Mustapic is Coming Out (From Under a Rock) sound almost like the inverse of each other. When asked if the titles reflect the sort of comedy that he is performing, James says "[w]ell... kind of! I remember, one of the things that my friend said to me was that she missed hearing about my life on stage. I usually just come up with a fun concept, to be honest. With Inside James Mustapic… I thought it would be fun to go inside my body like the Magic School Bus.”

The idea of the Magic School Bus hints at a recurring theme in Mustapic’s work; childhood memories. It is a theme that only grows stronger in his latest project - Abandonment Issues - a new series currently airing on TVNZ On Demand. He explains, “[i]t’s sort of like a Repressed Memories 2.0. It’s a full 22-minutes, which is a big step up from 7 minutes or whatever. It’s basically playing clips and making fun of old New Zealand TV shows. Then I go on a full hunt to track down the celebs that I’ve talked about. I find them and interview them. Each episode has a ‘mission’ - something I need to do to resolve my abandonment issues with that celebrity.”

At this point, the noise in the cafe is amplified by the grinding of coffee beans occurring in the roastery in a room nearby. James yells as he explains the challenges of making the show. “I came up with the idea in 2019, pitched it once; didn’t get it. Then, I just forgot about it and moved on. I pitched it again around October or November last year. It was a really quick turnaround. We got the funding to make it in late December, and it needed to be done by March. It’s been full-on.”

Comparing the challenges of writing for a stand-up show and writing for television, he says “there is something quite nice about not having a live audience, because in my head I’ll write something and think ‘that’s funny.’ There’s no audience to laugh or not, so I just assume that it’s funny and that people are laughing. Whereas, if you do it in front of a crowd and they don’t laugh, you’re just like ‘oh okay.’”

Beyond the challenges of pitching the show and getting funding, James notes that getting the tone right for each episode has been difficult. “There’s definitely been a few jokes that I’ve written, or the other writers have written, that are really funny, but we can’t put it in the show.”

Mustapic is also conscious of the impact that the show may have on the people it is about. “It’s hard because these people are famous, yes, but they’re not like mega-famous. They’re not still earning millions of dollars, and they’ve probably all struggled at times. I think about that and I’m like ‘oh God, am I being too critical?’ It also depends on the celebrity that I’m making fun of as well, and if they’re up for it. Jason Fa’afoi from What Now was instantly like “make fun of me, say whatever you want, don’t worry!” That’s great.”

James still promises drama, though. “Each episode is about one specific celebrity, and we’ve got them as a guest, but I’ve been making fun of them earlier. I don’t want them to watch it and be too angry. Although, if I annoyed someone, that could be a season 2 storyline. But mostly, especially when doing the interviews, I’ve been like “oh my God, they’re going to hate it when they watch it.’”

James Mustapic’s Abandonment Issues is available to stream on TVNZ On Demand here.

Len Blake