Julio Torres Makes Everything Funny—Including Color Theory

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1:44This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Julio Torres is one of the most original minds working in comedy right now. He first made his name as a writer on Saturday Night Live, and then he went on to make two shows for HBO that remain cult favorites, Los Espookis and Fantasmus. Torres also wrote and directed the film Problemista, about a toy designer who's facing deportation. There's a really unique surrealism to his humor, and when staff writer Michael Shulman profiled Julio Torres for The New Yorker, the piece ran under the headline, Extraordinary Alien.

2:33You know, of all the people that I've profiled for the magazine, Julio's one of those people where I just don't think his mind works quite like anyone else's. His comedy is not just straightforward, set-up, joke, set-up, joke. It's more like he's a guest lecturer at an art school or something, and he's laying out his very particular way of seeing the world. He's very design and visual oriented. He's very in tune with the inner life of objects. His new HBO special, which comes out this month, is called Color Theories. And the way he sees colors is quite different from the way that you and I see colors.

3:11We met in the East Village of Manhattan on one of the first warm, sunny days of the year. And we sat in the park.

3:21So I want to, without giving too much away about color theories, maybe give people a little bit of a taste because the theories are, it's not literal. You have to sort of open your mind to how Julio sees the world. It is an attempt to explain people, behaviors, and systems using color as a categorizing tool. So to give just an example from the show, why is Dwayne the Rock Johnson orange? Because orange is the midpoint between joy and rage. Joy being yellow, rage being red. An action movie star, I think, is inherently orange. Because it's dangerous, but it's also fun. and it's not scary. It's exciting.

4:20Yes, yes. And you're really into orange. I like orange, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, orange people are so magnetic. Like The Rock. Like The Rock. Yeah. Why is Catholicism purple? Because it is mysterious. It's a little Baroque, right? Mm-hmm. It is, I think, a deep, dark purple because it is a combination between the fiery passion of red. You know, there's a lot of blood imagery and Catholicism. Yeah. There's a lot of depiction of violence and Catholicism. Yeah. Very bloody. and the combination of that and the rigidity of an organized religion, which I would say is navy blue. And blue is like organization, right?

5:16Yes. It's a system. Primary blue is the color of logic, math, right? Things that you can't really argue with. Two plus two is four. But then systems and bureaucracy are navy blue because there's darkness in there. And by that, I don't necessarily mean darkness in the good and evil sense. I mean, like, unknowns. Yeah, black is the color of unknown, you say. Yeah. I mean, navy blue seems to be a big subject for you. It's sort of the star of the show, but, like, the villain of the show, because you call it the color that runs the world. I would say it's the preoccupation of the show. Yeah. Neither the star nor the villain.

5:54You have made a lot of really interesting art about the immigration system. Mm-hmm. like your movie Problemista and your show Fantasmas, is it safe to say that the U.S. immigration system is, like, deeply navy blue? Yeah, I mean, any bureaucratic system, I think, is navy blue. You don't have to go that overreaching and complex as the immigration system to find navy blue. I think that, like, Zola, the wedding registry website, is navy blue. Zola, the wedding website, is also navy blue. Why? Why are you involving tech in your love? why is why is tech now we have to create a password to get married right to invite nana she has to like what like download something no how long have you been working on these color theories i think i i was just compiling a list for a long time and then i saw oh wait all these thoughts can be a show was there a color you started with i think my actually might have been navy blue yeah yeah because it's i think it helped me put a name to the thing that i was disbelieved with and it addresses the um the frequent lie coming from navy blue which is i'm just blue because any bureaucratic system is going to say this is just logic it's just how it is it's like it's perfectly reasonable it's perfectly logical um but no there's something hidden there and that's hidden in black.

7:31Hmm. There's a lot of pretense in your color theories. It's like the color on the inside often doesn't match. No. What's inside. No. Of course not. Yeah. It's tricky. Well Sola does something that a lot of navy blue companies love doing which is presenting itself as beige. Okay wait. Define the terms here. Beige. Meaning? Meaning kind, soft, welcoming, inoffensive. sweet. Okay, now we're getting into AP-level color theory. Pastels are beige. Pastels are beige. The use of pastels is beige. Right. Yeah. I mean, this is when you really have to go galaxy brain and be like... There's a beige intention to selecting pastels.

8:19Right. Baby showers are beige. Okay. Yeah. So there's the literal color of the thing, but you're saying beige is like the essence. Yes. And that essence is used as a mask for companies because kindness emerged as a profitable concept. Like it used to be like, like when I was growing up, you know, you'd hear the phrase like sex sells, sex sells. Right. And then I think now, because the world has gotten so harsh, corporations realize, oh, kindness, wink, wink, sells. So everything got like soft and pastel and smooshy and... Or green. Green was a green... The corporation was a lot of presenting itself as green for a while.

9:10Okay, well, we haven't talked about green, so let's again define the terms. I mean, like the BP logo. Oh, yeah. Green, like natural, healthy, of the earth. Yeah. But green you also talk about in a more abstract way, too. Like, green is sort of following your instincts, you say, I think? Yeah, I think green is... Being at peace? Green is following your instincts, being at peace. It's the combination between yellow, which is joy, and blue, which is logic and order. So people that exude green are in control, but they're happy. Who's like a green celebrity? See, that's tough because I think if you're truly green, you wouldn't be a celebrity.

10:01Oh, wow. If you're truly green, you don't have a publicist.

10:09You're just living your life and, like, being happy. Okay. Julio Torres speaking with The New Yorker's Michael Shulman. More in a moment.

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14:05It seems like you've always had this intuition about the inner lives of inanimate. objects and concept and like abstract concepts like colors and and numbers do you feel like you've just had that your whole life i think we all do and then we we we forget about it like every kid does yeah and then you just sort of like are like taught to let that go or something the instinct is like quickly squashed or over the side can we talk a little bit about um When you were growing up, you've told me about how your family originally lived above your mother's dress shop. Yes. And that was this sort of like pre-lapsarian time for you.

14:50Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about like what you would be up to up there? A lot of playing by myself. A lot of alone time. I've always craved alone time. A lot of, yeah, like coming up with little stories, drawing, a lot of drawing. A lot of doodling. When you think about sort of that place, what color was it? Oh. Like your original apartment. Oh, that felt green to me. Mm-hmm. Yeah. There was order and we were happy. Yeah. Yeah. We were talking a couple years ago about your first special, My Favorite Shapes. Yeah. Which I really, really, really love. And I think Color Theories is a wonderful kind of companion piece to it.

15:38you kind of talked about making that special sort of like your attempt to return to this like idyllic childhood above the dress shop where you had like seamstresses for like working for you, making Barbie houses. Yes. Um, and it just, it seems like so much of your comedy is like still in that space of like being in the green zone of like getting to just sort of let your mind wander and explaining like sometimes in color theories, I feel like you're, you're sort of like someone has come into your childhood bedroom and you're like just sort of explaining what was on your mind, you know? Well, no, they come into my classroom.

16:15Right. Into my lab. But yeah, I feel like every, like the way that I approach my creative life, I hope for it to be green. And I, I hope that people leave feeling like that. and I hope the people that work on them feel like that and like, yeah, like joyful and relaxed. Yeah. Are there colors that you associate with San Salvador? Oh, that's interesting. That aren't here. Or less dominant here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's certain shades of plastic. For whatever reason, orange straws is coming to mind. Orange straws? Yeah. Huh. And like blue straw, like straws of every color.

17:04Like fuchsia, I feel like there's a lot of fuchsia. You know, I've been meaning to ask you something. Do you have synesthesia? I don't really know if I understand what that is, but do you have it? I'm also unclear on what that is, and I think we all have it. Okay. Associating colors to concepts, or like feelings to colors, or like sounds and colors. I guess it's like you see colors in music or... But we all have that. Music in colors. Do we? Yeah. Because you come out and you say that uppercase R is a purple letter. I don't think that would occur to most people. Well, but if you had a worksheet in front of you and you were forced to do it, you'd have associations.

17:56I think they should put this in school curriculum. Should. Yeah. Every classroom in America should be studying this. So you wanted to go visit a dollar store. Should we go? Yeah. Let's go look at some colors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:17We are at the 3rd Avenue Dollar and More dollar store. Dollar and more. Dollar and more. Meaning things are a dollar or more. We just entered and I should say I love dollar stores as a genre. I just love as a genre of store. We have a lot of great hoodies, backpacks. How do you feel about camouflage? I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't. We have a camouflage backpack. Yeah, I don't like camo as a genre. I feel a little weirded out about the, uh, the queerification of camo. Mm. Like, oh, like, gay people can kill too? Is that the? Right, right. Okay, this is fantastic. Glitter glue. That's so fun.

19:01Doesn't it make you just want to go glue something? Yeah, yeah. I want to do a project. Okay, so they have silver color, iridescent color, cosmic. That's what that actually says? Yes. The green one is cosmic? Why? Well, because it evokes space and aliens and that kind of thing, I think. Oh, okay. And then silver is just silver. I thought those were just your words for them. No, no, no, no. It's like they're actually being marketed. An iridescent color. This is perfect. Okay, so we're in the birthday section. We're in the birthday section, and it's like, where else are you going to go and find number candles around the corner from you?

19:37See, this is why I like the dollar store. It's like all the junk that people are impulsively just being like, oh, just get it off Amazon. Just walk three blocks, and you'll find it in New York. Wait, okay, I want to direct your attention to clear, candle numbers. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 all in clear. Clear is your favorite color, right? And I've never seen clear be represented in a birthday cake. Never. This is like breaking ground in birthday cakes. And the other one is a candle shaped like a question mark. I love the candle shaped like a question mark. Also it's glittery. what I really love about it is I mean obviously I love questions what I don't like about it is that if you put it on a birthday cake it's like oh ha ha cause we can't say how old you are ha ha but it's like to me the question is bigger than than how old the person is right it's not about hiding your like what else don't we know what are we keeping from each other Maybe that's a better tradition than singing happy birthday around a cake, is asking questions but not receiving any answers around the cake.

21:01A coffee mug, mostly white. There's a little title that reads Beautiful Lavender. It's in cursive with illustrations of a birdhouse, an envelope, and what is this flower called? Lavender. And a letter and a butterfly. So now this is, I think, very important because I've talked about how lilac has been anointed the color of motherhood. This is actually my favorite line in color theories, which is, can you just say what it is? Because I don't want to mangle it. Lilac is a mom. Purple is a stepmother. Yes. So much truth in that. So this mug is, I mean, first of all, backing up the thesis. Uh-huh.

21:52Yeah. Okay. And it's a mug that celebrates the concept? Of a color. That celebrates the association of a color to a concept. What would you say is the concept of lavender? Motherhood. Look at it. It's all like mommy lady stuff. Yeah, yeah. Or like grandmother maybe? They're like comforting friendly things that you might find in lavender. Yeah, like you could get this for your mom for Mother's Day. Like the equivalent would be finding like a, like a boy's backpack that just said like orange exclamation point. Yeah. This mug itself is a color theory. This mug itself is a color theory. Like you, this is ostensibly March.

22:37Speaking your language. Yeah. Julio, would you want this lavender mug? I think, cause I feel like you should have it if you want. I think I should have it. Yeah. Can we, can the New Yorker purchase this for you? Yeah. Do you want to expense it to the New Yorker? Yeah, I would love to expensive a lavender mug from a dollar store. The New Yorker's Michael Shulman with Julio Torres on location at 3rd Avenue Dollar and More. Hi, I would like to get this lavender mug. Color Theories is Julio Torres' new HBO special, and it begins streaming later this week. That's it for the program today. Thanks for joining us, and I hope you'll join us next time.

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