Julio Torres in 'Color Theories.'

Photograph by Emilio Madrid/HBO

For a brief off-Broadway run last fall, Julio Torres performed his first one-man show. A TED Talk masquerading as absurdist stand-up, Color Theories explained how Torres views the world — not by the colors he sees, but by the colors that represent everything from Real Housewives and step mothers to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and war crimes.

“It’s less of a thesis and more of a mission statement,” says Torres. “And the mission statement is to attempt to make sense of the world using color as a tool. So it is not so much analyzing colors as it is using colors to analyze.”

Torres says he was not interested in extending the show. Fortunately, HBO captured the performance. And the hour-long results that premiere on the platform Friday are a mix of the cerebral and silly that audiences have come to expect from the Problemista filmmaker and former Saturday Night Live writer. Speaking during a recent episode of The Hollywood Reporter podcast I’m Having an Episode (Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple), Torres explained the one shade that’s coloring everything unpleasant about modern life, what you’re really communicating with a red car and why past collaborator Tilda Swinton is his “interdisciplinary twin flame.”

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Much of the hour is preoccupied with navy blue and the entities and systems in this world that you have assigned that color. Can you define navy blue for me and give me some examples?

Navy blue is the category I give to systems of law and order and bureaucracy and behaviors that masquerade as being purely logical but have hidden biases or agendas. For example, primary blue is, to me, the color of logic. Two plus two is four. That is a primary blue fact. Navy blue is what happens when you combine logic with black. Black is the color of the unknown. There is something hidden in black. Laws that masquerade as being common sense but have a hidden something are navy blue. For example, people with breasts not being able to show them in public is navy blue.

Because the breasts are the unknown?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. (Laughs.) Some people can be topless and some other people cannot be topless. That is a cultural bias masquerading as logic.

Gotcha. What is the most navy blue system that has interrupted with your own life recently?

Immigration is the biggest, in terms of my biography. A big part of the Julio pie chart has been historically dedicated to that, which is a prime example of navy blue in action because it’s a lot of laws that are masquerading as being something that makes common sense. But there’s a lot of hidden corners in there. Something else that came to mind recently is this idea of the type of ID that is being posed to being required for voting. The Republican phrasing is, “Well, it is logical that if you want to vote, you have to prove your identity.” It’s phrased in a way that sounds perfectly logical. It sounds like, well, yeah, that makes sense. You have to prove that you are who you are in order to vote. Now, that is masquerading as blue because actually there are a lot of hurdles. You need like a birth certificate in order to get that ID. And how much does it cost to get a passport? Who has changed their name and has to reprove their identity? Women who have taken on the names of their partners. There is a lot of rigmarole there that is conveniently hidden when positing this as a common sense thing. That is navy blue.

The last time we spoke, right when Fantasmas came out, was when they were getting really alarmist about how we all needed to get a “REAL ID.” It’s as if the driver’s license we have is no longer real.

It’s not real. Everything you’ve known is a lie! All the phrasing is you need a REAL ID. If you don’t have one, you’re not real, right? So I’m like, whoa, I don’t have a REAL ID! Then, two seconds later, you look it up and see that, if you have a passport, you don’t need it. That is already a real ID. So what is real?

Blue fascinates me. More than the other primary colors, there are so many versions of blue that are still just considered “blue.” It’s like the bit from The Devil Wears Prada.

I would argue that scene is one of the most famous color theories in cinema. On its face, it’s a monologue about the fashion industry. But it is really about how nuances really matter and how we think that paying attention to color is a sort of artsy fartsy, hoity-toity thing. In reality, we all do. If you don’t like the color, you’re not gonna buy it, right? It’s that simple. People tell me, “This [show] is so unusual

Julio Torres Talks Color Theories, ICE at Airports and Tilda Swinton