Hannibal Buress ‘Miami Nights’ Interview

During the New York Times review of Miami Nights, Jason Zinoman mentioned how you were “a go-to performer for supporting roles,” but that you were “not the focus of his own vehicle, beyond comedy specials”. I thought it was odd, primarily because he didn’t mention Why? with Hannibal Buress.

One thing that is a part of this and people don’t always know what decisions go behind what happens. You know what I mean? You only know what jobs somebody takes because they take them and then you judge or you say, “Oh, that’s where they at?” I like doing my work. I like putting out stuff, but it’s not necessarily fame or only that, that I’m chasing because if it was then you’d know. Because you’ve seen it in my decision making over the past couple of years, I didn’t do any film in 2019, at all. I did one small thing for an old friend in Chicago. A one-day thing. Just homie shit.

But that’s not because I wasn’t offered any film, it’s because I didn’t want to do any film. I got offered big indie movies as a lead. It was the whole gamut. It just wasn’t where my energy or wants were. [I’m] just doing and directing my time to shit that genuinely makes me happy.

I feel like I’m starting to understand you a lot more than I have in previous years. Because you’re in Spider-Man: Homcoming, but you’re literally sending someone to the premiere. You seem like somebody who doesn’t really give a shit about any of that.

It just varies. I honestly wanted to go to the Spider-Man premiere, but I was filming Tag. It was downtime on the set to be able to put that together and then it went way crazier than I could’ve imagined. I didn’t expect Inside Edition to just show up at Joe’s house. I haven’t taken a film since I stopped drinking. Now, I don’t know if that’s a coincidence.

It’s funny how that works though, right?

I don’t know if that happens to be a thing, but who knows? I make weird connections sometimes. If that’s a haze being cleared and me realizing that that’s not the work I want to do even if that’s available to me, maybe it’s that. And then obviously, I’m in a position where I’ve had some success; that’s an easier choice to make.

Without getting in anybody’s pockets, those do seem like good checks. We recently spoke with Giancarlo Esposito and he has two podcasts. He records them right at home. It’s really easy work if you’re willing to take the time to invest in it, I guess.

Now you can really streamline your producing processes. And now you can really strategize. I’ve been talking with my cousin for years about, “Hey, you should do 2K videos.” Because my cousin, Percy, is a hilarious dude. We play the game all the time, there’s a lot of laughs. I’ve seen a lot of the YouTubers that play 2K, I’m like, “My cousin is as funny as them and I think he has a good perspective on the game.” But now, with shit being slowed down in the world, I can think about the game in a different way. “Okay, the game drops in September. Maybe, we can get an early copy or something like that, and then let’s figure out what we’re going to play so we can start to schedule it out for September right now. What are we going Tuesdays and Thursdays? Okay. Let’s lock it up and then let’s get somebody over there to make sure that you’re getting the footage right, so we can really make shit happen in a way where if I was touring, my thinking would be the same.” I just can see things a little bit better from a plan of production and that’s really cool, too, because now I’m able to really see lanes for people. It’s a part of doing a podcast with my uncle called Splitting 10s. It’s a gambling podcast.

Wow. Just talking about the ins and outs of shooting dice and things like that, or how does that work?

Well, he dealt at casinos in the Chicago area for a while. I think that perspective is really interesting because he facilitated people losing thousands, millions of dollars. I don’t know what his overall stat is? Actually, that’s a question I want to ask him over time.

He probably dealt to somebody and saw them lose $350,000 in front of his face in an hour. That’s a wild way to see life through, eight hours at a time. It’s provided a focus, conversationally. Rambler was all over the place, but now it’s, “Oh, this is a narrow premise. You can veer off a little bit.” But, yesterday we did an episode with Kevin Bozeman, who is a gambler also, and talked about Sportsbet and just different things. I think we were really getting to the psychology of it and just why people do it; it’s been fun. We’ve only done two so far, but I can already feel that it’s different and thinking about the different guests we’ll get and just the real exploration of the topic, I’m excited about it.

Uncle Kelven’s worked in the casino, but it was also interesting to hear Uncle Kelven just randomly be like, “Yeah, I was talking to Monie Love, and Monie Love was shouting me out”. What does Kelven get into now?

He helps out with my spots out here, looks over. I don’t know what else. I think he’s done a couple of standup sets. The Monie Love situation, I got to find out more.

Your guys’ relationship has always been like that, just real chill? It sounds like he really appreciates the way you make him laugh. But also on the flip side, he’s got game and just information that he can impart on you. It’s a really dope back and forth, at least I caught, in listening to the first episode.

Yeah. He was that a lot of those early shows. We’ve been kicking it heavy for a minute.

Are you big into gambling?

I was.

Was that tied into your drinking?

They were cousins. They were close cousins, for sure. I stopped drinking in 2018 and then in 2019, I stopped gambling. It’s been about a year and a half.

The gambling wasn’t a problem early, but I was introduced to it early. Just shooting dice and whatnot. It’s just the rush. I think it plays into the same wiring. The comedian brain has immediate feedback and risk-reward escapism. You can get into a zone and it can be really fun. Yeah. I just found that whether you’re winning or losing you’re in a bit of an unnatural state. Even with sports gambling, spending a lot of time researching. I had to really look at it, “Okay. This is not really me at all.” It wasn’t killing me because I was doing all right but it just wasn’t, “Okay, I could do something else with the time and the energy.”

Our first conversation veered into a number of paths, from Internet Wormholes you can go down researching something crazy to some of the music that’s been getting Hannibal going (he not only bigs up DJ Taye, but we spent a lot of time talking some fire Teklife footwork talk. Chicago, stand-up). After saying our goodbyes, we scheduled another Undock session for some follow-up. This time, Hannibal was back in Chicago, and his mood was different. Our conversation flowed the same, but the week prior, Hannibal was definitely in a more isolated space. Sitting in a room, hearing the Chicago streets faintly through his microphone, Hannibal was going through his mail, mentioning a dispute at one of his properties. Uncle Kelven, his Splitting 10s co-host, was also in the building.

khal [to Uncle Kelven]: It was cool to listen to you guys. Your dynamic, your relationship is really interesting. What’s the age difference there? It don’t look like it’s that far off, honestly.
Uncle Kelven: Nope. I was a young uncle.

khal [to Uncle Kelven]: It’s also funny to hear you get your rap on a little bit at the end.
Hannibal Buress: Oh yeah, always. See, now my interview is going to have a little more, since I’m home and not just been quarantined. I’m catching up on shit. Somebody crashed into my building a couple of months ago.

What?

Yeah, they crashed into the building I got on the West Side. [Ed note: Uncle Kelven reads some of the information about the incident aloud.] You do it on Zoom. All right. Well, I’ll be there. I’ll be there, hater backgrounds, ready to go. Design team will be notified in August about our initiatives for October 6th.

As long as you’re hitting record on that one, I can’t wait to see what the hell goes down there.

Somebody smashed into the building. And I was in LA when I found out. I don’t know if it was because of quarantine or whatever, but I didn’t feel nothing when I saw it.

It’s just like “something else happened”. There’s too much going on to be that shook over anything.

It was just like, I just saw, and he took a chunk out. He mashed into the shit, man, and bricks just gone. Somebody might have to do a structural inspection or some shit. I saw, because it looked bad, I was like, “Is he dead?” He was like, “Nah.” It was one of those things like, “huh, what am I going to do? I don’t know.”

That’s one of the things you don’t get prepared for when you, when you go into real estate, what happens when somebody smashes into your building?

Somebody smash into building. Well actually, another building of mine that I don’t have, it got set on fire. I don’t remember being too… It’s just was like, “I guess stuff gets on.” But during quarantine, when somebody stole bowling balls from my car, that felt like such an affront. I drove around looking for the motherfucker, in Chinatown, downtown LA, which it was in deep lockdown so it wasn’t too many people on the street. So I was really like, “Okay, they not that far.”

I was looking, because they were in a rolling bag. I had two because I had gotten really into bowling at the end of last year, early this year. I was definitely on the path to rolling 200 games. I’d hit 181 or 185 in late February, early March. Since the bowling alleys got shut down, that messed up my arc. I was a rising star amongst my friends that bowl.

[Ed note: Hannibal is very into bowling. Like solo-dolo bowling. It got to the point where he legit was like] I was in talks with the PBA about doing events or popping up at stuff. I was pitching a show idea, 50 States of Bowling.

For like Travel Channel or something?

Anthony Bourdain… yeah, travel bowling show, these different bowling alleys that have characters and stories, and then maybe talking to folks, interviewing, going to town, maybe do a little performance at the bowling alley, have some convo, that type of thing. Everybody bowls, or a lot of people bowl, but there’s no good casual television. It’s all pro bowlers and you see them, but it’s nothing I’ve seen at a high level that was successful just casual, chill bowling, which is most of the public.