The Surprising Adventures of Dylan Sullivan

Being like­able affords a per­son the abil­i­ty to make mis­takes (maybe not mur­der or defac­ing your friend­ly pub­lic library…please don’t do either of those) and still main­tain a like­able rep­u­ta­tion. The worst thing that might hap­pen if you make a social faux pas, if you’re a lik­able sort, is hav­ing to deal with wet carrots. 

This is the fate of our guest Dylan Sul­li­van. In the sto­ry arch of his life since dis­cov­er­ing the com­e­dy pro­fes­sion, Sul­li­van has thrown him­self ful­ly into the art. I inten­tion­al­ly say ​“dis­cov­er­ing the com­e­dy pro­fes­sion” because that’s how it all began for Sul­li­van. It’s an incred­i­ble sto­ry, and we’ve heard a lot of incred­i­ble sto­ries here at Com­e­dy Wham.

The way Sul­li­van explains it to Valerie Lopez, it start­ed when he answered an ad for an assis­tant in Los Ange­les, and head­ed to 8433 Sun­set Boule­vard for his inter­view. The psy­cho­log­i­cal games began imme­di­ate­ly: from see­ing the per­son being inter­viewed pri­or to his sched­uled inter­view time; to being pre­sent­ed with… checks notes… a bowl of wet car­rots; to the inter­view­er being sur­prised that he was­n’t imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized by his eager, but like­able candidate.

I can reveal now that, hav­ing watched Sul­li­van on stage a hand­ful of times since his move to Austin in ear­ly 2021, it makes per­fect sense that he land­ed the job because of his like­abil­i­ty (and an impend­ing film school cred­it from Chica­go). Between his friend­ly nature and his inim­itable laugh (you’ll hear plen­ty of both through­out the con­ver­sa­tion), it’s easy to see why Pauly Shore inter­viewed Sul­li­van from his main office at The Com­e­dy Store and gave him the job. Being unflap­pable by a bowl of wet car­rots can pay off!

From there, it would be easy to say the rest is his­to­ry, but it isn’t, Sul­li­van is still quite young in his cho­sen pro­fes­sion of com­ic, but that role as assis­tant to Shore helped him achieve the lev­el of study­ing he nev­er felt inspired to achieve in tra­di­tion­al school or even at film school. After return­ing to Chica­go for his last semes­ter at film school Sul­li­van threw him­self into study­ing. But not for his film school classes.

Instead Sul­li­van stud­ied every­thing he could about com­e­dy, whether it was books or Steve Mar­t­in’s Mas­ter Class (a Mas­ter Class I am per­son­al­ly fond of), after which he high-tailed it back to LA to begin the task of putting his self-study into action. Did he lever­age his work with Shore to land gigs? ​“You know, talk your­self up at all costs even If you’re untal­ent­ed and under qualified.…which I was,” he admits. But that like­abil­i­ty and his hard work even­tu­al­ly start­ed get­ting him noticed. That and land­ing a job as one of the Com­e­dy Store’s ​“door guys”, a posi­tion he is quick to point out was not a gimme from his role as Shore’s assis­tant. He had to inter­view for it just like any oth­er door guy (he was silent on the role of wet carrots).

As things start­ed click­ing for Sul­li­van on and off stage, he got more and more oppor­tu­ni­ties, includ­ing one incred­i­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty giv­en his time as a per­former. He was invit­ed to per­form on David Spade’s Lights Out, a show that was too short-lived in my hum­ble opin­ion. He loved the atten­tion, but was­n’t men­tal­ly pre­pared for the haters. As some­one who is lik­able, he rel­ish­es know­ing that peo­ple like him, so when the inevitable online haters start­ed sur­fac­ing, he was­n’t pre­pared for it. His intro­spec­tion about this incred­i­ble cred­it comes out as he reflects ​“com­e­dy has a real­ly mag­ic way of just, when­ev­er you feel like you’re the shit, of just smack­ing you down in your place again.” It was­n’t just the online vit­ri­ol. It was that his appear­ance on Lights Out occurred in Jan­u­ary 2020, and we all know what hap­pened in March 2020. The glob­al shut­down due to Covid-19.

After lan­guish­ing in LA, Sul­li­van decid­ed to pur­sue what Bri­an Red­ban (recent trans­plant from LA to Austin, and pro­duc­er of some of the world’s most famous pod­casts) had been encour­ag­ing Sul­li­van to do: move to Austin, with assur­ances that Red­ban could offer stage time. It’s impor­tant for me to urge you to lis­ten to the har­row­ing tale of Sul­li­van’s move from LA to Austin, it’s the kind of visu­al sto­ry­telling that Sul­li­van is so good at and why it’s so easy to like him both off and on-stage.

As a trans­plant from LA, I asked Sul­li­van about the divi­sion in the scene between the recent trans­plants and the old guard comics, the comics who hung back from per­form­ing out of a sense of loy­al­ty to pro­tect­ing the com­e­dy scene and audi­ences. Sul­li­van is quick to point out that he under­stands both camps, and in a nod to uni­ty, thinks that what both sides want is ​“a basic respect, I think is the key because it would ben­e­fit every­body if every­body’s ben­e­fit­ing from each oth­er’s shows and spots. Every­one just wants to get on stage and be fun­ny, right? So it’s a bal­ance. I think the answer is a bal­ance of respect and help­ing out peo­ple that you would­n’t nor­mal­ly go out of your way to help out.” It’s a very thought­ful response to a very com­pli­cat­ed issue. Or maybe it isn’t. If com­e­dy is what you want to do, then the new real­i­ty of the brim­ming Austin com­e­dy scene, is there’s a stage for almost every taste and expe­ri­ence lev­el. Find the one that brings you the respect you deserve.

Turn­ing back to Sul­li­van, I for one am glad he chose to fol­low the siren call of Austin. He’s a fan­tas­tic com­ic, he adds to the diver­si­ty of the LGBTQ+ com­e­dy scene, and for heav­en’s sake, he’s so damned like­able. He may just be the LA to Austin com­ic trans­plant that we need to bridge the Austin com­e­dy divide.

Fol­low Dylan

• Twit­ter — @dylanraysull
• Insta­gram — @dylanraysull
• Do 512 — Do512​.com/​D​y​l​a​n​S​u​l​livan

Dylan can be seen and heard:

• Pod­casts Host­ed — Pork Butt with Coop­er Lyden
• Lights Out with David Spade — Youtube/​LightsOutDavidSpade/​DylanSullivan