Life in Las Vegas is “utterly insane”, says Kiwi comic Sam Wills, who has become a hit on the Strip with the alter ego he created from black sticky tape and eyeliner two decades ago.
It’s late afternoon when the man America knows only as Tape Face leaves his home in suburban Las Vegas and heads to work on the Strip.
Some 45 hotel-casinos line the notorious 6.8km stretch of neon heading north from the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.
The MGM Grand megaresort, where Kiwi comedian Sam Wills performs as Tape Face six times a week, is the biggest of them all.
In his eighth year of an open-ended Las Vegas residency, he’s based at the 300-seater Underground Theatre after being poached a while back from Harrah’s.
Wills, whose silent stand-up act went stratospheric after he made the finals of America’s Got Talent, is possibly the first Kiwi entertainer to land this kind of gig. Some Tape Face “superfans” fly over from Europe just to see the show.
In May, his American understudy, Rob Ferries — affectionately known as T2 — will temporarily step up to take his place. Accents don’t matter when you’ve created a character that doesn’t speak.
Wills is heading back to Auckland for the NZ International Comedy Festival, where the whole phenomenon began 20 years ago, to perform a five-night anniversary special of The Tape Face Show.
For followers of the man formerly known as The Boy with Tape on His Face, it’ll be an unapologetic trip down memory lane.
“We’re very much bringing the Vegas show over, which has all the big hits in it,” he says. “A lot of the stuff from America’s Got Talent is in there."
That includes the smooching oven-mitt puppets that even Simon Cowell couldn’t resist. People complain if he leaves them off the playlist.
“Those oven gloves are my Stairway to Heaven. I’ll never get rid of the damned things.”
Wills then heads to the United Kingdom for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before returning to Las Vegas, where he’s already notched up roughly 1600 shows.
In this part of the world, Paradise isn’t just a state of mind; it’s an actual town that’s officially outside Las Vegas city limits, although the Strip runs right through the middle of it.
Wills lives a 20-minute drive away, in a nice neighbourhood that has houses with yards and a Walmart.
Six days a week, he leaves home for Paradise at about 4.30pm, in plenty of time to prepare for his 7.30pm show. For a boy from Timaru, making the transition from suburbia to Sin City sounds like something out of the TV show Severance.
“There’s that tipping point when you get off the freeway, go past the airport, and suddenly you’re surrounded by these casinos and lights and roller coasters,” he says. “It’s utterly insane.”
The MGM Grand has more than 5000 hotel rooms, a 2.5ha pool complex and a 45-tonne bronze lion statue out front. On the gaming floor, there are 2500 slot machines. Wills quickly learned to steer clear of them.
Down the road, Big Elvis — the Memphis-born singer once known as the world’s heaviest Elvis impersonator — does a punishing three shows a day at Harrah’s.
The other week, Wills came across an R2D2 droid on the sidewalk spitting out money — a promotional gimmick for a new burlesque parody, The Empire Strips Back, which opens at the Rio on May 4 (Star Wars fans will recognise the significance of that date).
Las Vegas was built on Mafia money, and in the state of Nevada, it’s legal to openly pack a gun and consume alcohol in the street.
“With such an open carry, drinking situation, you’d think it would kick off completely, but when you’re walking down Las Vegas Boulevard, everyone is pretty happy.
“Bad things happen in every city, but I’ve never seen any major problems or fights. People look out for the locals; there’s this weird kind of respect.”
Wills, who began doing magic tricks as a kid, once had a freak-show act where he hammered a four-inch nail up his nose and ate crushed lightbulbs.
His skin is a patchwork of tattoos, including Frankenstein stitches on his wrists, old crop circles and zombie rats. You can imagine his edgy vibe fitting right in.
“Vegas is full of weird celebrities who hang out doing their thing,” he says. “Head down Fremont St into old Vegas and you’ve got really off-the-wall things going on.
“There’s a guy you can pose in horrible, awkward positions by putting a dollar in his hat. That’s really fun. Twenty metres along, there’s another guy wearing a Borat thong, giving out free shots.”
Rowan Atkinson was one of the early influences on Wills’ particular brand of physical comedy. He remembers his dad dragging him out of bed when he was 9 or 10 to watch Mr Bean on TV.
A fan of the Wellington-based trio Laser Kiwi, Wills thinks a lot of good character comedy comes out of New Zealand and Australia, while there’s more focus on sketch comedy and stand-up in the US.
The concept for a new persona — an older magician, perhaps — is slowly taking shape in his head, but Tape Face isn’t done yet. He’s still trying out new material, and volunteers from the audience add an element of unpredictability each night.
“A lot of people think they’re not allowed to say no when they’re asked to come up on stage, but they 100% can.”
Americans are an easier crowd to engage, admits Wills, but there’s strictly no political or social commentary in the show.
“I try to turn my brain into thinking like a 9-year-old. As you grow up and become an adult, you forget how to play. I get to be silly and just muck around.”
International Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Shoshana McCallum’s one-woman show at the comedy festival, Merely Beloved, will make you laugh till you cry.
Newly widowed, Elaine should be grieving for her husband. Instead, she’s obsessing about the thought of him cheating on her in the afterlife with his ex-wife.
All the tricks we play on ourselves to avoid facing death and its messy emotions make for a show where comedy teeters on the edge of heartbreak in Merely Beloved.
Performed and written by Shoshana McCallum — co-creator of last year’s TV series Madam, about an ethical Kiwi brothel owner — it draws on some of her own experiences of loss.
An early trauma that left its mark on her as a child was the death of a young friend of her mother in a car accident.
“There was a moment where I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be sad any more.’ I wasn’t old enough to understand that these things are important to feel.
“I didn’t realise the repercussions of that in my everyday life for a very long time — how much of a wall I’d put up since that really sad day to protect myself against losing someone.“
Humour is an accessible way to tackle all kinds of taboos, says McCallum, who won an International Emmy Award for the Covid-inspired 2020 comic thriller INSiDE.
She and her best friend, comedian Donna Brookbanks, are currently turning their theatre show, Erotica by the Fire, into a podcast where well-known New Zealanders are invited to write something spicy and then share it on air. Comedian Josh Thomson was their first guest.
Merely Beloved is definitely a comedy, so expect bad singing and silly dancing, warns McCallum. The aim, she says, was to create an accessible piece that allows people to feel deeply by making them laugh.
“We turn our backs from death and then we’re absolutely screwed up when it happens, because we haven’t let ourselves accept it as something that doesn’t need to be anything but part of our life.“
Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.
New York Times: On screen, he was seen as a character both admired and controversial.