Julio Torres Makes Everything Funny—Including Color Theory
3/24/202619 min
Julio Torres got his big break as a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” and went on to make the cult favorites “Los Espookys” and “Fantasmas” for HBO. He also wrote and directed the film “Problemista,” about a toy designer facing deportation. There’s a particular kind of surrealism to Torres’s humor; “I just don’t think his mind works quite like anyone else’s,” the staff writer Michael Schulman says, comparing Torres to “a guest lecturer at an art school . . . laying out his very particular way of seeing the world.” They met in New York to discuss the unique, synesthetic ideas about color which Torres describes in a new HBO special, “Color Theories,” and to check out a few hues at a nearby dollar store.
Thanks to Home in Heven and Third Avenue Dollar and More.
Further reading:
“The Otherworldly Comedy of Julio Torres,” by Michael Shulman
New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:01
[upbeat music] This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
David Remnick· Host0:07
[upbeat music] 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 Espookys and Fantasmas. 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 Schulman profiled Julio Torres for The New Yorker, the piece ran under the headline Extraordinary Alien.
Michael Schulman· Guest0:49
[upbeat music] You 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 a 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. We met in the East