(upbeat music)
- If you walk up to a child,
you can't change your facial expression now.
You walk up to and you're like, "Hello Clarice."
And they're like, "Aah!"
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] I understand why people fear clowns.
(playful music)
- If we look at the indigenous significance of clown
and what the societal impact that the clown had,
is they are the ones that are supposed to poke holes
in whoever says they have authority.
- A lot of people have never met a clown
that is really good at doing makeup
or has put a lot of thought into creating their character.
- Especially if you run into a clown who doesn't know
what they're doing.
I've seen whiteface clowns that don't understand that.
They put this big like Jekyll and Hyde smile.
Can't change your facial expression now.
You walk up to, you're like, "Hello Clarice."
And they're like, "Aah."
You now have scarred this child for life.
- I think that if you are pushing it
and trying to force somebody to be into it,
it's just a recipe for disaster.
- We also have problems with people who like
to try to freak out their friends.
I'll be at a pride and they're like,
"Oh, you should come and say hi to my friend.
"He loves Clow..."
No, no.
- [Narrator] Having sex in my clown get up would be hot.
(feet thumping)
- See, it's not us.
Everyone else is the weird one.
They think we are the weird ones,
but it's somebody else's...
And I can speak to this because
while I was doing a news interview for Ringling Brothers,
the reporter kept hitting on me.
It's 5:30 in the morning.
I look like this.
What is happening?
- I had some guy on Facebook
who just started plop off with,
"Oh, so you do this for real?"
And I'm like, "Yeah."
And he's like, "You know what I'd really like?"
He said, "I want you to come over,
"and I want you to tie me to the bed with the balloons.
"And then I want you to completely cover me in clown white
"and then I want you to make me your bitch."
Yeah, that no, that's not happening.
- I think if we had more people here,
there might be some people over there
because there are many different sub versions
of clowns and there's Clowncore,
and there's some people that identify as a sex clown
- [Narrator] Clowns hate children.
(playful music)
- Gotcha.
- Oh, was that a fake out?
- That was a fake out. - It was a joke?
- They will tell you if you're funny,
they will tell you if they don't like you,
they will tell you if they don't like the way that you look.
- I think people shouldn't assume that clowns like children.
- Children are people
and there's a lot of people that suck.
And so some kids suck.
- But they are our best audience.
- [Narrator] Clowns are uneducated.
- To be funny, you have to be really perceptive,
you have to have an opinion,
you have to be emotionally intelligent,
you have to be tapped into what's going on in the news,
like reading the room, what works, what doesn't.
- And there's something to be said
for a lifetime of experience,
the clowns that I learned from,
we've been doing this for 30 plus years
and they have a lot of knowledge.
If they make it look easy,
then they're doing the job right.
- [Narrator] I am sometimes embarrassed about being a clown.
- Not because of the work that I've done
or my peers that I personally have worked with have done,
but because of other people,
what they have done or what they do,
and then people point at that and they say, "You do that?"
And you're like, "That does not...
"That's not what I do."
- I've been accused of being a child murderer.
I've been accused of being a child rapist.
So I'm like, so sometimes I just don't wanna talk about it.
I just don't need that aggravation.
(air whooshing)
- [Narrator] I'm not always happy while clowning.
3, 2, 1, go.
(feet thumping)
- So at this thing,
my father's just been put into memory care.
He's level six of Alzheimer's and that was terrible,
and then I lost my job.
And all these awful things are happening to me,
but I had to be to say, "Oh you want a balloon?
"Sure.
"What kind of balloon do you want today?
"Oh, I can do that."
Squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak.
And I had to be on,
but at the same time, my inside, my head was like,
"Oh, the hell with this noise."
- There's a such thing as toxic positivity.
But at times where I felt sadness putting on the makeup
and going to see folks, kid,
brightening their day for sure improve my mood.
- Part of my gig is a therapeutic medical clown.
I'm working in the hospital
and I'm witnessing and seeing some really sad stuff.
And naturally it hits you at your core
and it can affect you emotionally.
- I too work in pediatric hospitals
and it's sometimes very very heavy.
And your job is to be...
At the core of it, is to be a human, is to connect.
- [Narrator] What's in your backpack?
- The thing that's in the backpack
kind of smells a little bit
so I am a little bit embarrassed to share what it is.
It's a little baby skunk.
- [Narrator] Clowns are based on racism.
3, 2, 1, go.
(feet thumping)
- I think if you look back at the minstrel shows
in America and Canada, the old shows
with the white folks pretending to be black folks
and picking their knees and stuff with the makeup up,
this type of art style has been used to hurt my people.
Halloween's coming up
and there's gonna be folks going probably pull
that minstrel clown makeup look.
They think it's just makeup, but it's not.
- We need more black clown educators
within our community that can teach people
that the way that they're clowning or the choices
that they're making isn't appropriate.
If you search for a clown wig on Amazon,
the first thing that's gonna come up
is a curly Afro wig, right?
That is the butt of the joke.
- If we look to the French as well,
like the most famous Auguste clown or the dumb clown,
was a black man named Chocolat,
and he acted as the slave in the show.
So there's a lot of physical violence that happened
and coliseums essentially full of people
that would laugh at this.
(air whooshing)
- Go G.
- Oh no.
Now I'm like, oh geez.
Oh God, I'm sorry.
Oh God, nothing but shame.
- And you call yourself a clown.
- Shame in my house, shame upon my household.
Hm, hm, hm, hm.
(shoes screeching)
Oh!
(all cheering)
- [Narrator] I have always wanted to be a clown.
3, 2, 1 go.
(feet thumping)
- I had no idea that clown was an option.
Even three years ago when I started clowning,
I didn't know.
When I heard someone say it to me,
when I said that I liked changing the air in the room,
they're like, "Oh, are you clown?"
It was like my heart was like, "Yeah, you're a clown, okay?
"You need to do this."
And I just went full throttle.
There's lots of clowns like us that don't dress up,
don't do the red nose.
Steve-O from Jackass is a trained clown,
Sacha Baron Cohen who does some costume,
but not with makeup and stuff.
And yeah, I wanna keep pushing that forward.
- I think I came out the womb like a clown. (laughs)
Just growing up, always being the trickster
and the jokester and wanting to make a laugh.
- I saw an audition on backstage.com
and it was really cryptic.
It was just like, "Looking for physical improv comedians."
And I went, and then at the end they were like,
"This is for the Ringling Brothers circus."
And I was like, "For what in the Ringling Brothers circus?"
They're like, "We need a new girl clown for our alley."
But it wasn't until we did our hospital PRs,
where we go and we visit kids in the hospital,
and I saw what this could be, what this truly could be,
this connection with people that really, really need it.
For that kid, that family in that moment
that maybe haven't laughed in days
cause their kid's been in the hospital,
that changes their world,
it might change the whole trajectory of their week.
I didn't always wanna do it,
and now I'm like, "oh well, you'll do it forever."
- [Narrator] And that's when we take a wrap.
(all cheering)
- Sadly, we'll be the first ones to go
during the zombie apocalypse.
You know why?
Cause I always go straight for the juggler.
(G laughs)
- The juggler.
(all laughing)
- [Narrator] Off you go.
(all laughing)
(gentle music)