In an age the place raunchy, ridiculous comedies are getting tougher and tougher to return by, stand-up comedian and podcaster Stavros Halkias is prepared to do no matter he has to change into the following Will Ferrell, Danny McBride, or Chris Farley. For years, his crowd work was a staple of TikTok, endearing audiences together with his crude, blunt sense of observational humor that extends to his involvement within the former podcast “Cum Town,” in addition to his present present, “Stavvy’s World.” Now attempting to each leverage and increase on this fan base he’s spent years cultivating, Halkias has positioned one other guess on himself by co-writing and starring within the indie screwball comedy “Let’s Start a Cult.”
The movie was conceived alongside co-star Wes Haney and director Ben Kitnick, who introduced the concept to Halkias, then later developed the script in addition to a quick model with him previous to the making of the function. Honoring the lovable idiots who got here earlier than him like “Billy Madison” and “Kenny Powers,” Halkias performs Chip, a child-like ignoramus who has so offended the cult of which he’s a member, they trick him into lacking the group suicide they deliberate on sharing collectively. Nevertheless, when Chip discovers the chief of the cult (Haney) managed to outlive the poisoning, he’s given the prospect to construct a new group of followers, this time with individuals who would possibly lastly love and recognize him or, on the very least, are as tousled as he’s. It’s the kind of enjoyable, foolish idea that, at one time limit, would possibly’ve garnered the eye of a massive studio, particularly with Halkias bringing each his expertise and his viewers to the mission. However reasonably than attempt to promote it and sure spend years creating it, the comic and his collaborators selected to behave instantly by going the unbiased route, working off a small finances from Darkish Sky Movies, an outfit largely recognized for working in horror.
“When I was younger, I was really precious about my material. I thought I was like a real artist,” Halkias mentioned in a latest interview with IndieWire. “Meanwhile, you know, I’m telling dick jokes at shitty bars. But in my head, I was like, ‘Nah, these are the most special dick jokes. I can’t let these out till they’re perfect.’ And I think what really changed my life and my career was just — put yourself out there, put your material out there. If your special is not ready, just do it. Nothing is ever ready like you think it’s gonna be.”
Cults have been a common subject of dialog as of late, with documentaries like “Wild Wild Country” and “The Vow” providing hours of in depth research on how individuals change into wrapped up in these teams, usually to the detriment of their very own emotional, bodily, and monetary well-being. Whereas many items have handled the topic in a severe trend, what attracted Halkias was attending to level out how silly, but confident all these cultists have to be.
“I like to think of myself as like a disciple of the confident idiot school of comedy. Like Will Ferrell movies, ‘Billy Madison,’ ‘Foot Fist Way,’ Kenny Powers, all that shit, and with cults, you get that distilled, cause to buy in, you have to be so dumb and so confident,” mentioned Halkias. “You have to tell your family to fuck off, sell all your possessions, some guy is God as far as you’re concerned. So you’re automatically dumb and you’re so confident you’ve changed your entire life. It was such a fertile ground.”
In making the movie on an unbiased finances, sure sacrifices did should be made, particularly as soon as Darkish Sky realized the function wouldn’t happen in a single location because the quick movie had. Halkias had by no means even written a screenplay earlier than and now he had to take action whereas additionally contemplating the monetary constraints they had been working below. Of the identical token, performing was by no means a pursuit he had in thoughts when he began stand-up and adapting his expertise to this process proved more difficult than he anticipated.
“I don’t know shit about acting,” Halkias mentioned. “I went to the Baltimore School for the Arts, like sixth grade after school program. That’s my total acting training and quickly you realize it, especially when you’re making an indie comedy and you’ve just gotta get it done. It’s like you have three shots at it. You wrote these words down, get them done. Especially when we were kind of up against it.”
Halkias went on to elucidate how the purpose of get up was “just to get a laugh,” whereas the purpose of performing is much less about inflicting a response than embracing what the character goes by. On the similar time, in speaking the highs and lows of Chip’s expertise for the digital camera, he was in a position to uncover new methods of bringing out humor that he might not have explored had he simply caught to being a solo act.
“There’s different ways to get a laugh and there’s things you can do with your face and there’s things you can do with your body. I’m used to my own timing, but there’s playing off of somebody else’s timing and that was all super fun,” Halkias advised IndieWire. “It makes you a better comedian because I love stand up, but it is a limited art form. There’s so many more ways to express yourself in a movie and that was fucking awesome. That was so fun to just figure out other ways to be funny.”
When requested why he, Kitnick, and Haney selected to make the movie themselves reasonably than contain a studio, Halkias simply laughed and exclaimed, “They’re not making fucking shit!”
Referencing fellow comic and pal Shane Gillis’ self-financed sequence, “Tires,” which Netflix acquired and only in the near past produced a second season of, Halkias, who co-stars on present, identified how despite the fact that Gillis is “selling out arenas,” he nonetheless needed to pay for the primary season himself simply to get it made. Seeing Gillis’ expertise simply pushed Halkias additional in direction of making “Let’s Start a Cult” independently, as, on the very least, he knew he wouldn’t have to attend for another person’s approval.
“I do love comedy movies. They’re not making them and we had an opportunity to make it and to be honest with you, I had an opportunity to star in a movie with no acting background,” mentioned Halkias. “If that means, we make it in a way where there’s no trailers and I’m napping under a tree, fine. If that means we’re eating Taco Bell sometimes instead of getting catered meals, who gives a fuck? Let’s just make a movie that’s funny and dumb.”
Halkias hopes his subsequent mission will get “a little bit more money,” but it surely’s secure to say he’s already entered the large leagues, having simply wrapped a function in an upcoming mission from an A-list director that options an Academy Award-winning actress. The chance was completely sudden for the comic, who had little performing expertise outdoors of shorts and who felt like this type of likelihood was nonetheless far off in his profession.
“What’s crazy is when I started [‘Let’s Start a Cult’], what I wanted, maybe someday like five, 10 years down the line when I get better at acting, was what just happened,” Halkias mentioned of getting solid within the upcoming function.
At first, he was uncertain whether or not he had the bodily and psychological area to tackle one other mission, particularly after a yr that had seen him end a function movie, a recorded stand-up particular for Netflix, a second season of “Tires,” all whereas balancing new episodes of his podcast “Stavvy’s World.” Nevertheless it was his expertise on “Let’s Start a Cult,” in addition to the make-it-happen mentality he established whereas constructing his profession that pushed him to take the danger.
“I did four projects that could have all been their own thing for a year. So I was done and I was like, ‘I’m taking four months off unless’ — I made a list of like literally five people — ‘unless these five people want to do something with me, I am saying no.’ And I turned down some cool shit too,” mentioned Halkias. “Then I got an opportunity to be in kind of a dream project with an A-list director I fucking love and actors that I have such respect for, have been in so many incredible projects from comedy to serious shit, and it was just surreal dude. It truly was a surreal experience and I just wanted to do a good ass job. I think the ethos of just make shit actually did help me out because if I was more precious, I would have been like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this.’ I would have been scared.”
In comparison with how he carries “Let’s Start a Cult,” Halkias doesn’t contemplate his function on this movie that massive, however says it did make him hopeful about his future on this enterprise and persevering with to discover a craft he was initially uncertain he’d excel at. He advised IndieWire, “I’m a little excited to kind of get another crack at a — knock on wood — big ass project where I get to just pop in and do a little something which by the way, that’s all I want. I love being the guy that pops in.”
Whether or not he’s simply popping in or a part of each scene, one factor is for sure: Stavvy is simply getting began.
“Let’s Start a Cult” from Darkish Sky Movies is now in choose theaters.
