Steven Phillips-Horst’s Brand Guidelines for The End of the World

Words: Michael Whitham
Picture: Hiroki Tani

What if the last man on earth was still trying to sell you something?

“I’ve always worked in advertising and as I started to develop this show, I wondered, what would it be like if the last man alive were a copywriter?” Steven Phillips-Horst says of his Edinburgh debut. “He continues to try and brand everything as the world ends.

He’s trying to brand the apocalypse.”

The show that unfolds is part gonzo brainstorm, part psychological spiral.

“As he’s ideating, what starts to emerge is this narrative that he’s actually contributed to the apocalypse. He’s worked on a lot of projects that have helped hasten negative processes like climate change and overconsumption and ecological collapse…”

The real world of advertising in which Phillips-Horst built his career is actually not much less absurd or disingenuous. Most of the time, he admits, “I’m coming up with stuff where in my head I’m actively making fun of the client… and then those, of course, are the ideas they like.”

Take, for example, a real-life stint writing for a plus-size women’s boot company.

“I’m a relatively slim gay man in New York… writing allegedly to the experiences of plus-size women in middle America,” he says. “And the (male) corporate executive who’s running this company is like, ‘wow, your ideas are so beautiful. You’re going to really make our customer feel seen.’” He pauses. “This is a completely useless object that we’re creating to try and sell to these poor women based on their interiority… to make them feel better. When actually, it’s a piece of crap that’s gonna end up in a landfill.”

To Phillips-Horst, it’s emblematic of modern advertising’s central illusion. “I think the thesis of this show is: identity is a trap. Selling self-empowerment is what every product now tries to do. It’s not just like, ‘oh this makes you look hot’, it’s like, ‘the real you is going to finally be unveiled’. It’s this holy grail, transcendental language of: ‘we are going to access your inner child and your true authentic self’. And it’s this weird con because it’s still being sold to you by Unilever.”

He doesn’t shy away from implicating himself. “Gay men are really good at hating women,” he says. “And at thinking they could be better women. If only women understood their little observations. It’s like, ‘don’t cut yourself off at the ankle, babe’.”

The show reaches into something a little darker, too. “One of my deepest insecurities… is that I fear that I don’t have a true soul,” he says. “That everything I feel is just formed by Hollywood and rom-coms and all the television I watched as a child. I would get home from school and watch eight hours of TV every day. Sometimes I fear that there are people who genuinely are able to experience joy and happiness, and I only ever just think – oh my god, I’m so like Kate Hudson right now.”

This existential fear is explored in the show’s form. Eschewing stand-up or pure character comedy, he has called the show a “high-concept play.” Though he admits his theatrical knowledge is patchy. “My references for plays is like… Willy Loman. There are Death of a Salesman references in this play because that’s literally all I know. But one thing I love about a play is you can kind of do anything you want,” he says. “Like, you can go up on stage and read a book for 45 minutes and not say a word — and that’s a play. Although, in my first play ever, I’m not going to have that kind of hubris.”

“I do want to make people laugh”, he reassures. The show is directed by longtime collaborator Eric Schwartau, best known for co-creating the cult Talk Hole column. “He’s helping me make it funny”.

But humour doesn’t offer total carte-blanche. Does he worry a show skewering the industry that helps pay his bills might mean his branding clients turn their back on him?

“If this ruins my career, that’d be great, because that means the show is successful. Honestly, everything I do, I’m always imagining it’s the last thing I’m ever gonna do. Every time I write an article I think, well this has to be really good and funny, and I have to burn every possible bridge, because this is the last time I’ll get to do it.”

The branding world aside, I ask whether this fearless refusal to self-censor has kept him out of certain rooms or jobs in entertainment. Does he think he ought to bite his tongue to grease the wheels of his comedy career?

“To be clear, I’d be happy to sell out. I’d sell out in a heartbeat. But no one’s offering me the opportunity. So I guess the best way for me to continue writing and gain respect is to continue being a bitch and say what I think.”

“But if someone offered me the opportunity to shut the fuck up, I would happily do it.”

You can see Steven in his Edinburgh debut The Last Mad Man at 15:20 every day until August 24th at C Venues, and as part of A Bubbling Frisson of Unmistakably New York Energy on Mondays at 23:20 at Monkey Barrel.