Johnny Gaffney, photographed by Zach Sokol.
Johnny Gaffney takes the age-old art of clowning and updates it for the Instagram era. “I’m trying to subject people in real life and on the internet to a guy getting kicked in the balls in slow motion — and like writhing and reeling in it,” says the comedian and filmmaker. In his latest film project Seeking Engagement, streaming now on NoBudge, Gaffney embraces his inner Pierrot and explores the relationship between public humiliation and virality by staging fake marriage proposals in extremely public places, including SantaCon, the DMV, a New York Liberty game, and the Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest.
For more than eight years, Gaffney aggregated dozens of videos of himself getting rejected by “girlfriends” at New York tourist traps. He roped in comedians like Chloe Fineman, Nina Tarr, Ena Da, Edy Modica, and Kayla Dawn-Marcus (his real-life girlfriend) to assist in these mortifying spectacles, which have landed him on multiple jumbotrons and, on one occasion, ESPN. “No way he got rejected like that in my jersey,” wrote WNBA All-Star Sabrina Ionescu on Instagram. “I was HURT!” After years of “getting cucked by the world,” as the comedian describes his masochistic and durational performance art, Gaffney and his co-writer and director Jacob Halpren decided to turn the conceit into a narrative film with some meta flourishes. It follows a man named Johnny Gaffney who compulsively stages public marriage proposals, weaving together all of the original iPhone footage as a kind of bookend to this experiment in self-abasement.
Gaffney’s comedy aims to blur real life and performance with a dash of meta-commentary about the sometimes-nefarious motivations behind content creation. On a swelteringly hot night earlier this month, we met up in the backyard of his Lower East Side apartment, where the artist sat shirtless and wore mismatched socks. Over cans of Bang Energy and many cigarettes, we discussed the film, what makes his work more nuanced than just viral stunts, and why public marriage proposals are a manipulative act even when done in earnest.
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ZACH SOKOL: All right, shirts are coming off.
JOHNNY GAFFNEY: [Laughs] Yeah.
SOKOL: We’re in the backyard of your apartment. You call this place the Manic Bean.
GAFFNEY: Yes.
SOKOL: Will you explain what the Manic Bean is?
GAFFNEY: The Manic Bean is on [address redacted], which happens to be where me and Kayla Dawn-Marcus, my girlfriend, sleep and live. But the Manic Bean is not in our apartment; our apartment is in the Manic Bean. The Manic Bean is a cafe, but more so an ideas emporium. We have a French press, we have a Vitamix. We’re thinking about getting a panini maker. And most importantly, we use the space to host conversations with friends and foes alike.
SOKOL: So it’s like a come one, come all, stop by, have a cup of coffee and shoot the shit thing?
GAFFNEY: It’s less about coffee and more about an ethos. And the ethos is based on one of me and Kayla’s favorite quotes from Eleanor Roosevelt: “Small minds talk about people, medium minds talk about events, and great minds talk about ideas.” We do not get bogged down with inconsequential shit. We do not talk about people or events; we talk about big-picture concepts, ideas, to really look at the big picture instead of looking at isolated incidents.
SOKOL: We’re going to do that now and talk about your film project. I’m curious about what sparked it. You said that you witnessed a marriage proposal at a Rangers game once and it inspired something in you, including this idea about the manipulative nature of public proposals.
GAFFNEY: Yes. In 2016, I was at a Rangers game. My former boss had a Rangers tattoo on his calf and season tickets to the Rangers, and a man in the bleachers got on the Jumbotron and proposed to a woman who was presumably his girlfriend. And she took a minute or 10 seconds to respond, but it felt like an eternity. The crowd was going apeshit and 20,000 balding men were screaming at this woman to say “yes,” and eventually she did. And I thought about how the odds were stacked in this man’s favor and that woman didn’t really have free will. She had 15,000 men with goatees screaming at her. So what if that girl just fully said “no,” on the world stage, and cucked this dude? Then I got obsessed with doing that.
SOKOL: How long was it between that and your first staged public proposal?
GAFFNEY: The first one I ever did was at an M&M store in Times Square, and I was having M&M’s personalized with a proposal. And as the employee was engraving the M&Ms for me, I said, “I’m pretty nervous.” She’s like, “What are you nervous for, sir?” I’m like, “I hope she says yes.” She’s like, “Says yes to what?” I’m like, “Look at the M&M you’re engraving.” And she’s like, “Oh my god, are you serious?” I quickly got bored of yeses, but I got really excited by nos.
SOKOL: So did you have a longer-term goal in mind, that this would eventually build into what became this film project, or was it just a public performance art thing?
GAFFNEY: I think I was just chasing the dragon. I did it at SantaCon with Ena Da. I did it at a Cyclones game. I did it at the DMV. And eventually, I emailed the WNBA’s [New York] Liberty and I was like, “We’re going to a game on September 17th and I want to propose to my girlfriend, can you guys help me out and put me on the Jumbotron?” And they’re like, “Absolutely! We’ll put you on right before the first half.” And I’m like, “Can’t wait.” This was 2022, after woke summer 2020, so I’m wearing this turquoise Sabrina Ionescu WNBA jersey that says “Equality.” I proposed to my friend Alina Carson. And when she said no, the crowd erupted. And it went on ESPN, and they interviewed Sabrina Ionescu about it, and I’m like, “Holy shit.” This was too good to just crap out on Instagram. I wanted to elevate this and talk about the behind the scenes of what goes into this and the dickish things I do to my friends and family, the sinister pleasure I get in lying to marketing assistants. So I was like, “Let’s make a movie.” So my friend Jacob Halpren and I wrote the movie together. Jacob directed it. My best friend Pette Reinstein shot it, my long term collaborator John Albano scored it. My mom acted in it, too.
A still from Seeking Engagement, photographed by Camilo Fuentealba Brevis.
SOKOL: So there’s meta aspects to it as well?
GAFFNEY: Totally, totally.
SOKOL: How many proposals did you have in the bank?
GAFFNEY: I had probably done a little more than 20. Since then, I’ve done another four or five.
SOKOL: How many recurring female participants are there, and how did you wrap them into this? There are some well-known comedians in the mix, including Chloe Fineman. Was it a slog, or were people generally on board?
GAFFNEY: Chloe was down 100%, Ena Da, she’s a comedian, she was 100% down. Nina Tarr was 100% down. Some of the people were like, “Eh.” The first one I did with my friend and the mother of my goddaughter, Amanda, she gave me the blueprint for what to say as a rejector. It’s a really fun exercise, because most acting doesn’t have stakes. If you watch a movie it’s like, “Whatever, I know it’s a movie ‘cause I bought it on fucking Amazon.” But this is like, you’re at the DMV and this guy is saying some crazy shit and you’re trying to make sense of it in real time. So you get to make a little magic in a bottle, and that’s how I convinced the people that were on the fence. I would have done it even if there were no cameras.
SOKOL: What is that about your sensibilities as a comedian that you get a thrill from public performance?
GAFFNEY: I just think there are stakes. And making someone laugh when they know what the bit is… that doesn’t really wet my whistle. It’s cooler to try to convince people that something’s real. And my greatest fear is someone being like, “This is a fucking TikTok stunt.” I’ve never heard that. And if I ever heard that, I would walk out.
SOKOL: What makes this a little bit more unique or elevated?
GAFFNEY: I think I’m trying to play out something that’s compelling in real life. And yes, it’s turned up to a comical effect, but we try to keep it grounded enough that it’s plausible that it’s a real thing. One of my earlier ones at the Hard Rock Cafe, the woman I was proposing to had a quippy response and it totally took the air out of the moment. If a person was blindsided at the Hard Rock Cafe by a guy they’re not in love with asking to get married, they wouldn’t have an improv “Yes, and..” answer. They would be fucking befuddled and angry. So we always lean into the reality of it. Because if it was just a silly prank, I would moon my girlfriend and it would be fucking cartoonish, right?
SOKOL: Was there ever a time where people were like, “This guy’s a comedian, we know that this is performative.”
GAFFNEY: The only one that ever got flagged was at the Brooklyn Cyclones game. I did it with Edy Modica, she’s an amazing actress and comedian in New York, but she acted on the show Jury Duty. So she was high-profile and the video ended up going hella viral online. And then someone was like, “That’s Edy Modica, she’s a comedian from Jury Duty.”
SOKOL: What would onlookers say to you after you got rejected?
GAFFNEY: I was welcomed with open arms by the populations I was rejected in front of. I was met with what Ellis Island should be, what it used to be. I was greeted by profound empathy by everyone, and sometimes with words of affirmation like, “It’ll be okay.” My fear at the beginning was that mobs of men would fucking boo, call the woman a bitch, throw a beer bottle at her. The most nervous I ever was was at the 4th of July hot dog eating contest at Nathan’s in Coney Island, where I proposed to Annie Rauwerda from Depths of Wikipedia. That event is 104 degrees and it’s 104% men drinking beer, eating hot dogs, being patriotic as fuck on the 4th of July. I’m like, “When she says no, they’re going to call her mean names and throw beer bottles at her and spit on her.” And holy shit, was I wrong. They laughed at me, they applauded her. The point’s not to shame a woman for saying no, the point is that this dude’s an idiot and an asshole and he’s wearing a fedora in case it wasn’t clear that he’s an idiot and an asshole. And I was really pleased by that reaction because I thought, “If ever this was going to go left, this would be it.” And I was totally wrong.
SOKOL: Even though it was under the guise of performance, has being rejected publicly so many times actually had an effect on your own relationship with insecurity?
GAFFNEY: I think it’s a chicken and the egg thing. I think I feel stupid a lot, and I sometimes seek to be the stupidest person in the room so that other people who are stupid can be relieved of feeling that they’re the stupidest person in the room. So it’s like, “I’ll take the bullet.” There was this kid in my third grade class, Jason, who was one of the last kids to learn how to read. We were reading buddies, and he’s struggling with an easy book. And I was like, “I feel the same way. I can’t read. When I can’t read, you know what I do? I chew on my pencil.” And then we started chewing on our pencils together, and I’m like, “This is how when I feel stupid, I fucking chew on my pencil and it makes me feel better.” And he’s like, “Okay,” and we started chewing on our pencils. And that’s kind of what I always want to do, because I do feel stupid a lot and I want to relieve people of that duty of being the stupidest person.
SOKOL: It reminds me of “Pissing your pants is cool” from Billy Madison.
GAFFNEY: Dude, absolutely.
SOKOL: Talk a little bit about the filmmaking process. What were the most difficult aspects of making Seeking Engagement?
GAFFNEY: It was an absolute communal effort. All my friends worked for free. We shot it at a bar I used to work at—shoutout 310 Bowery. We shot at my friend Anthony DiMieri’s apartment. So everyone chipped in, and making the film was pretty easy. I mean, it was work to edit it, and Jake is a super talented editor, so I was blessed with that. But it all kind of came together. The film takes place on my birthday, and I leveraged the fact that it was my birthday to guilt-trip the people in the movie to do something they don’t want to do. But it was actually my birthday while filming, too, so that same idea translated into real life —using the birthday to pull favors. My mom has a job, and she got two days off and took the train from Boston to New York and stayed with my sister and filmed on my birthday. It was the best day ever.
SOKOL: Your mom plays your mom in it. Can you talk about some of the other meta aspects?
GAFFNEY: Alina, who’s a star, was the woman I proposed to in the movie. She was down, but I had to kind of walk her through it and not guilt-trip her and instead reiterate the importance of it. My mom has a line where she’s like, “This is why your sister doesn’t come around anymore.” A couple days before we shot, I sent her the script. She was like, “Wow, I really said that didn’t I?” And I’m like, “You said it, mom, that’s why it made it into the script.”
SOKOL: Have you shared the film with any of the unwitting participants, such as the marketing team at the WNBA or people from Nathan’s?
GAFFNEY: I’m currently waiting to send it to Sabrina Ionescu, who discussed it on ESPN. I’m sure she remembers it. So I have a line out to someone who does stuff with the WNBA, and I hope to get it to her so maybe she can have some closure or confusion about the event.
SOKOL: At the film premiere, you had a bunch of fun interactive elements. There were all the rings that you used for the 20-plus proposals, including Post-it notes that said the date, location, and the name of the actor you proposed to. There was a “Wall of Rejection,” which was a compilation of all the original wedding proposal videos. After the film screened, you had two more elements that I want to talk about—the guy from Guinness World Records who gave you an award, and then when you proposed to your real-life girlfriend in front of the crowd.
GAFFNEY: Well, it wasn’t a fake proposal, because I did get down on one knee and say, “Will you marry me?” The proposal was real. The fact that she knew it coming makes it premeditated.
SOKOL: Sure.
GAFFNEY: Someone was like, “I wonder if you’re the Guinness Book of World Records holder for most rejected wedding proposals?” So I poked around on Guinness. Growing up, Guinness was certified real street cred. But you can pay for certificates. I think it’s lost its luster. It’s not the crème de la crème anymore. So I’m like, “I don’t want to go do paperwork and pay $80 to be a certified record breaker, but it would be an interesting distinction.” So I commissioned someone to make a trophy and anointed myself. Kayla, my girlfriend, brought a French man and American man on stage, who were “representatives” from Guinness, and they awarded me the title of “most rejected man.” In that moment, I was all verklempt and really going through it, and I was brought to tears. I had a ring in my pocket and I was like, “This is our moment, will you marry me?” She thought it was a joke and ran off the stage.
SOKOL: So you’re saying it was not a joke?
GAFFNEY: No, it was real.
SOKOL: If you were to propose to your girlfriend again, would you do it in a public setting or would you actually avoid that entirely and make it a very private moment?
GAFFNEY: God, that’s a good question. I’m kind of the boy who cried wolf, so I don’t know if she’ll ever believe that it’s real, which is what happened at the screening. I think out of love for the game, I would like to do it in public and wink to her in some way. On a cosmic level, she’ll understand that the bit is done, and this is the real deal, and she’d say yes. Hopefully.
SOKOL: I’m curious if you’d ever do a project again that was, for lack of better term, a stunt series, or something viral in nature. Or are you kind of burnt out on virality?
GAFFNEY: I was never really chasing virality, so I’m not burnt out. And I’m not burnt out on real-world shit, because that is what makes me happy. Putting scripted things in front of real people in real places and real environments is what excites me, so I don’t think I’m ever going to be done with that. I’m addicted to doing shit in front of real people. I don’t really do much stand up. Most of the work that I’m producing is a version of myself, but dramatized.
SOKOL: Do you relate to someone like Andy Kaufman or Eric André? Do you see yourself in that same lineage?
GAFFNEY: I don’t, out of sheer respect for what those people do. I would put Sacha Baron Cohen in that Mount Rushmore of people who are real performance artists—married to the game forever, in perpetuity, eternally married to a bit. I don’t have that level of immersion that those people do, and I wildly respect that, but I don’t see myself as that. I don’t have that level of commitment yet.
SOKOL: Speaking of Sacha Baron Cohen, I’m curious if you see any connection between your work and the formal craft of clowning. These public rejections have a sad clown energy to them. Does that art form resonate with you at all?
GAFFNEY: Absolutely. I think clowns can show a world of pain and suffering on the canvas of their face. It’s so wildly impressive, and that’s what I’m trying to do with the public proposals. I’m trying to subject the people in real life and on the internet to a guy getting kicked in the balls in slow motion and like writhing and reeling in it. Yes, I’m totally inspired by clown work. And like I said, the response at some of these proposal rejections was so heartening and heartwarming because the onlookers were all on the woman’s side, which they should be. That was a truly pleasant surprise.
SOKOL: You’re connected to this ecosystem of comedians and entertainers and content creators, people like Kareem Rahma and New York Nico. I’m curious if you think there’s a shared sensibility amongst you guys.
GAFFNEY: Yeah, I think Kareem and Nico and I all share the sentiment that a lot of the best talents and the coolest stories in New York City and in the world are from people who are not trying to be famous and not trying to be actors and not trying to have a TikTok. They’re just effortlessly charismatic and they have a unique POV. And all three of us like to engage with and cultivate those types of people. Kayla and I are making this show right now called Senior Centertainment which shoots at real senior centers and casts real seniors, so that’s next and it’s a continuation of this philosophy.
A still from Seeking Engagement, photographed by Camilo Fuentealba Brevis.
