Comedian Stavros Halkias has seen his career skyrocket recently with a Netflix special and a starring role on the Shane Gillis show Tires. Now Halkias starred and co-wrote the comedy movie Let’s Start a Cult, which is out today in select theaters from Dark Sky Films, and talked to ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese about the film.
“Having missed out on his cult’s long-awaited ritual suicide, an obnoxious loser teams up with his bogus ex-messiah to rebuild their doomsday commune. Traveling together through middle America, the constantly-bickering duo induct a military wannabe, a mentally unstable mom, and a mysterious foreign hitchhiker into their cult… but will this family of outcasts fulfill their transcendent destiny, or decide this life might be worth living after all?” says the synopsis for the Stavros Halkias movie.
Tyler Treese: I saw you do stand-up comedy in small clubs. Now you’re doing movies and you have Netflix specials. It’s been incredible seeing this growth. What I like about it is you really bet on yourself to succeed because you went on your own and you left Cum Town. Can you speak a little bit about just putting yourself out there.? Because it’s really paid off.
Stavros Halkias: The way I’d look at it is when I was like 19, I was like, “All I want to do is whatever I want to do,” right? When you decide to do stand-up comedy, when you’re like, “I don’t want to make a living. I want to be poor. I wanna live with four other grown men,” and the only thing you get out of that is never having to wonder what if I tried or never having to answer to anyone. I haven’t had a real boss since I was maybe 22. Even when I had those bosses, I could always quit that no matter what. Every time something good would happen in my career, I just kind of felt like this is awesome. I want to keep doing this.
But the thing that I prize the most is always being able to, whenever I just kind of have an idea, just go for it. I don’t really see it as a risk. I see it as the whole point of doing something creative with your life is let’s try something new. Whenever you’re feeling like you wanna do something, don’t get trapped in complacency. Ultimately, yeah, bet on yourself.
Because the way I looked at it was I just want what I’m worth. If I’m shit? Great, I’ll fail. You know what I mean? I don’t wanna game the system. I just want what I think I’m capable of. I always just kind of thought like, yeah, I think I can have specials. I think I can be kind of funny on screen. I’ve always loved movies. My first love, even before stand-up comedy, was the kind of dumb, over-the-top zany comedy that doesn’t really make any sense with the protagonist that’s really f—ing stupid. I did the Netflix special I got to be on a TV show, shout out to Shane Gillis, Steve Gerben, and John McKeever for Tires.
Really, the next thing that I was interested in was movies. I didn’t wanna wait around and pitch to a bunch of big studios, and hopefully, someday, they would give us a lot of money to make a movie. Dark Sky just kind of came in and offered to work with us on a low budget. But who gives a f—? Everything I started, like you said Cum Town, what first launched my career, was me and two of my friends with a Zoom recorder and no plan whatsoever. I know most of my career has been a podcast, posting clips on the internet changed my life, ad so I was like, yeah, I don’t need this [big budget]. The second we had the opportunity to make a movie, it was like, “Let’s do it, and we’ll figure it out.” My whole career has been kind of like a low-budget risk, and so let’s just, let’s just have fun, and whenever you have the opportunity, let’s do it.
So yeah, man, I always just felt like betting on yourself was a no-brainer. Just whatever happens, happens. When you’re prepared to fail, everything is just kind of a bonus. I can’t believe it’s gone this well, either, but I’ll take it.
I love that DIY attitude and I love that you want to create and bring something new into the world. Talk to me about the genesis of Let’s Start a Cult. How did this idea come about? I read that you had like filmed a short a few years back and this built off that.
Again, it’s kind of that same ethos of let’s just make stuff and not worry about it. We did a short. Ben Kitnick, who’s our director, this was his idea. He was like a young filmmaker who just wanted to get a lot of funny people that he knew in New York. He kind of cold approached me. I didn’t really know him at all. He got me and a bunch of other funny people, and we literally just had a rough outline, and it was just this idea. It was the basic idea that became the movie, which is, “What if a guy in a cult was so obnoxious that everybody killed themselves without him?” That was pretty much it. We just went to the Catskills, and we took like a three-hour drive, and we had literally like 70 hours in this Airbnb, and we just filmed a short out of it.
It was one of those things where [there was] no money, we were just like, “It sounds kind of fun. We’re all free. We all just like making stuff.” After we did it, we all liked working together. It was one of those things where we were like, “Hey, someday this could make a good movie.” Never expecting it to become a movie, to be honest with you. I thought like, “That was fun. We’ll see what happens”. Then the production company just approached Ben and he kind of pitched this idea to them, and we were able to make a movie because of that.
I think they thought they were gonna get a one-location cult movie where it wasn’t gonna be very difficult, but we were like, “We got a chance to make a movie.” We wanted to be [bigger]. There are a lot of different characters and locations. It’s more of a travel movie, which is really hard to do on the budget, but it was, again, just so fun. We just wanted to bring our vision to life. So, yeah, it just started from taking a chance on a little short, on a why not. I mean, why not really should be the attitude when you’re being creative. What’s the downside? So that’s how it started.
You’re also a co-writer on this project. Obviously, you write a lot of jokes, you come up with characters on podcasts, and there’s a lot of creativity involved. How is it channeling that into a film script and working on building a narrative rather than just characters?
It was awesome. Like I said, I’m such a fan of movies, but you’re absolutely right where this is not really my skill set, right? I have no [background]. I just know what I like in a movie. But that’s what was so exciting to me because I’ve been doing stand-up for, I mean, it’s hilarious, but 16 years. So, I think I’m good at it. It’s not that I can’t learn anything else from it, but I think now the challenge is just getting deeper with it. But the most I ever felt engaged was the first four years of stand-up where I was like learning how to do it, where everything was new, everything was a learning experience, and that’s what this was.
I was lucky that my friends I wrote it with, Ben Kitnick and Wes Haney, both had some more narrative experience. Not like they had really done [films], they had just pitched stuff. So I loved it. Actually, in a weird way, loved the writing process more. There was something really fulfilling about the writing process because there didn’t need to be anyone. It’s you with a laptop, and you’re figuring something out, where my whole life has been, I gotta get at least 20 people in a room so that they can listen to me, so I can figure it out.
Getting a narrative together, working off an outline, and thinking about it was just a really rewarding experience. I think we came out with a really good film. I think it makes sense as a movie, even though it’s, again, a very stupid movie. You’re not gonna learn anything from this, but it has the structure of a movie. I think our characters all change. It’s all that basic shit that you want out of a movie. We wanted it to be a ton of jokes. Jokes were first and foremost, but we also wanted it to feel like something that had a very clear beginning, middle, and end. I’m really happy with how it turned out. I saw it at the premiere for the first time since we edited it. Obviously, there’s stuff you wanna change or tweak stuff, but I think it really turned out great, and I’m really excited for people to see it.
From the trailer, your character is just completely obnoxious. How was it really crafting that character of Chip and defining who he was on screen?
My favorite trope, like what I grew up on and what I think is one of the funniest characters possible, is [a guy that’s] very confident, very stupid. If you have somebody who’s both of those things, it’s gonna be funny, right? Like from literally Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Danny McBride to now Tim Robinson, right? He pushes it to the extreme with like the dumb, angry guy, but like passionate, dumb, and wrong. So funny always. I think this was just kind of like my spin on it.
So starting there, that was the idea. Let’s start with dumb and wrong. Then that was the fun part of writing the movie. How does a guy like this exist? We see a little bit of his backstory. You get to see how he becomes the way he is. But it was easy to portray a stupid, confident guy. I have 35 years of experience doing that, so that was no problem. But yeah, I wanted to play with that trope and play a version of the characters that I loved growing up.
Yeah, always good when you can bring in that life experience. There really is a great cast assembled here. One interesting member is CM Punk, the WWE star How was it working with him? He’s a very smart and witty guy too.
He was awesome. Our cast, in general, that’s what struck me watching it again because when you’re editing it, you’re so in the thick of things that you just take things for granted. You’re just like, how can we make this work? It’s been probably six months. I’m really proud to toot our horn here because the entire cast is very funny.
Like, there are people who only get to say one or two lines that could star in their own comedy. Just like Edy Modica, who I’ve been friends with since I moved to New York, she was so funny in Jury Duty. That whole cult is so funny, and they’re just in the beginning of the movie. We have Bobby Kelly, who is a legendary, hilarious comedian. He’s in there for like a couple scenes. We have very funny people who pop in for a couple scenes.
CM Punk, it was funny. Obviously, I was a fan of his, but I didn’t know the guy at all. He’s funny, but like wrestling funny. It’s like, is that gonna translate to a movie? You’re kind of nervous. So we have this whole super-talented cast, and then the wild card is the most famous guy in the movie, and he was great. I was so happy and so surprised. He took it so seriously. Not to say he wouldn’t, but it’s like, you just never know where you’re gonna get from somebody who you don’t know personally.
That was the thing. We knew most of these people personally for the rest of the cast, and he was so cool. He took it so seriously. He really wanted to get the lines right, he cared about the jokes, he cared about the timing. He was open to notes. He was just like a great guy to collaborate with. My scenes, unfortunately, were not really with him. I had like a little. Most of his scenes, he’s crucial for a couple other characters. But just on set, I was around every day, and I helped write it, so I was just there talking through it with everybody whenever they were filming big scenes. He was just awesome, dude. He’s so, so funny in the movie. The way it came out is so great, and he has a couple lines that get as big a laugh as anything a comedian says in this movie.
Were you much of a wrestling fan? Are you a wrestling fan?
I was, yeah. Me and my brothers were big wrestling fans — I grew up in the height of the Attitude Era — until I [hit a] Stone Cold Stunner [on] my brother in a way that his eye hit my knee, and then he had a humongous black eye. My mom and dad banned wrestling for two years. By that time, we were just kind of out of the [fandom]. We still would see some big pay-per-views and that kind of thing, but that injury stopped my extreme wrestling fandom.
I loved playing No Mercy on N64. So the attitude era, the WCW versus WWF Feud, that was kinda like the height of it. The NWO, obviously, I was a big Wolf Pack fan, but yeah, just me and my brothers beat each other up so much that our parents, that was the only thing they really banned that they were really adamant about. But I still like to pop in. There’s nothing more fun than out of context, just throwing on an old Royal Rumble and just getting stoned and being like, “Let’s see what Rikishi is up to at this Royal Rumble.”
You said you really enjoyed the, uh, the writing side. Is this something you’re looking to do more of, I assume?
I just love these comedies. I love dumb, joke-forward comedies that get to show off really funny people. That’s the other thing. Starring in a movie was obviously a dream and it’s so cool to have done, but these movies are great because you can get really funny people in for one or two scenes that really do something great for the movie. I mean, even our cast, like I said, we have funny people that pop in for a scene or two. Eric Rahill, Katy Fullan, and Daniel Simonson, who kind of come in later in the movie, they’re so funny in it.
The movie industry is in a weird place, and I’m not an industry scholar or anything like that, but just as a consumer, as a fan of movies, I have found myself kind of detaching from new releases. I feel like everybody… I certainly have superhero fatigue, and I’m not even somebody who’s like expressly anti-superhero; I’ll go when I’m bored and watch a superhero movie, and I’ll have a great time, and I’ll never think about it again. I’m never rewatching any of those movies, but I’m having a good time at the theater. But even that is starting to fade. I feel like we’ve seen that.
I love the John Wick franchise because I used to love classic action movies. Clearly, people like genre stuff. We’re seeing some action come back. Horror is obviously always kind of cost-effective. They’re gonna keep making them. The one thing from my childhood that I feel hasn’t really come back are original, semi-low budget comedies. These don’t have to be expensive movies. Stupid comedies and just the whole betting on yourself thing. This is what I like. This is what I want to do.
If I was probably taking my career more seriously, maybe the smart thing would be to pitch a TV show and try and get steady work. But you know what? I’ve worked on some of those, and they’re a lot of work, dude. It seems like a real job. What I love about movies is you can just make a fun movie. You write it, you work on it for a couple months, and then it’s done. People will get to see it. I [spent] the last couple of years exploring what I’m interested in. I just love the product of a movie, and I think funny comedies are just not being made.
For my lifestyle, I also just like working on movies. It’s fun. Stand-up is a very individual thing, and this feels like you’re on a team with people. It really is. Everybody is trying to get the same goal done. So I just loved it personally. Creatively, I think it’s one thing that I think people love rated R comedies. They all do, and for some reason, they don’t get made. So if I can use whatever weird little internet fame I’ve been able to carve out to make mid-budget to low-budget really dumb comedies, I would love to do that in addition to touring. I love being on Tires. I’ll do that show as long as they want me on it, I’ll be on it. But yeah, I really love making comedies, and hopefully, as long as things are going good in my career, I think that’s gonna be what I’ll be trying to get accomplished myself.
Awesome. I’ll keep on watching them for sure. Congrats on this release, and thank you so much for your time, Stav.
Thanks, dude, and I guess it really depends on people seeing the movie, so everybody listening or reading that impassioned speech, please buy a ticket. I’m begging you, my whole life depends on you seeing this movie if you’re in one of the 40 cities that we’re in.
Thanks to Stavros Halkias for taking the time to discuss Let’s Start a Cult.