Billy Eichner

An otter is like a younger bear, maybe more lean...

than a bear, kind of like a hairy, lean, athletic guy.

Yes.

Yeah, a twink bear.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, I think it's a heightened version of who I was as a kid.

And to me, Billy on the Street really is kind of like a man-child character.

One of my biggest influences was Pee Wee Herman, who, if you grew up in the 80s like I did, I was obsessed with.

with Pee Wee Herman.

And if you really think about it, and I talk about the parallels in the book, there are a lot of parallels between the Pee Wee character and the Billy on the Street character.

They're basically grown-up children being embodied by loud, brash gay men.

Billy on the Street started out as a way for me to satirize my own...

extreme, over-extreme interest in the entertainment industry.

And so I thought, well, what if I play the most intense version of a guy who is living and breathing pop culture and his opinions about it and theater and all of it to the point where I force normal people

in New York going about their day to stop and talk to me about whatever it is, you know, Kate Winslet's career choices or the Oscars or Meryl Streep, sorry, Meryl Streep or whoever it might be, you know, a pop singer, Madonna, whatever it is.

Oh, yeah.

And so much of the book, for me, the book is mainly a love letter to my parents.

um jay and debbie eichner who this was the 80s and 90s they knew i'm pretty sure that they had a gay kid um even before i came out it was pretty obvious and remember we i grew up in new york city as did they my mom grew up in brooklyn my dad grew up in the bronx i grew up in queens i went to high school in manhattan they had both lived when they were single before i came along in the west village in the 60s and 70s which is like the mecca for gay men at that time and so

The idea of having a gay child, probably not what they expected, but they were very quick to embrace me.