Jerry Seinfeld: Comedians aren't supposed to like awards

Re: Jerry Seinfeld's great Clio speech...



...he's given a similar acceptance speech before. See: "All Awards Are Stupid."

Who are you and how did you get in here?

I actually LOL'd. (via CK)

Team Lena

Post by Matt Ruby.

"This fall after Modern Family...it's IS-ish!"

Post by Matt Ruby.

How Larry David creates a Curb Your Enthusiasm scene

How does Larry David come up with Curb scenes? Watch him create a funny on-the-spot Curbish scenario based on "I donated money in your name" charity donations. It's at 40m10s in to 43min of this KPCS interview.

NSFW Logo make Airbnb's logo look tame

More at Vooza.com.

Aim to convince one out of ten

An excerpt from Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running." The gist: It's ok if 9 out of 10 people don't like you, as long as that other 1 REALLY likes you. Seems like you could apply that to standup too.

In other words, you can’t please everybody.

Even when I ran the club, I understood this. A lot of customers came to the club. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and decided to come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it another way, it didn’t matter if nine out of ten people didn’t like the club. Realizing this lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to do that, I had to make my philosophy absolutely clear, and patiently maintain that philosophy no matter what. This is what I learned from running a business.

After “A Wild Sheep Chase,” I continued to write with the same attitude that I’d developed as a business owner. And with each work my readership—the one-in-ten repeaters—increased. Those readers, most of whom were young, would wait patiently for my next book to appear, then buy it and read it as soon as it hit the bookstores. This was for me the ideal, or at least a very comfortable, situation. I went on writing the kinds of things I wanted to write, exactly the way I wanted to write them, and, if that allowed me to make a living, then I couldn’t ask for more.

Reminds me a bit of Kevin Kelly's 1,000 True Fans. You don't need everyone, you just need a few true devotees.

Why we should let Ray Rice keep playing football

Post by Matt Ruby.

Joan Rivers: "I would never tell a lie onstage"

Joan Rivers on telling the truth [via AK]:

From the beginning, and to this day, I would never tell a lie onstage. So now I walk out, I go, “I’m so happy to see you,” and I really truly am so happy to see them. The one thing I brought to this business is speaking the absolute truth. Say only what you really feel about the subject. And that’s too bad if they don’t like it. That’s what comedy is. It’s you telling the truth as you see it.

I like this idea as the inverse to Steve Martin's old approach (i.e. everything he says onstage is a lie). Also, some of her advice to comics from that piece:

First of all, don’t worry about the money. Love the process. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. Louis C.K. started hitting in his 40s; he’d been doing it for 20 years. And don’t settle. I don’t want to ever hear, “It’s good enough.” Then it’s not good enough. Don’t ever underestimate your audience. They can tell when it isn’t true. Also: Ignore your competition. A Mafia guy in Vegas gave me this advice: “Run your own race, put on your blinders.” Don’t worry about how others are doing. Something better will come.

And I love what Howard Stern said at her funeral.

The Racial Joke Test

In Ironic Racism, Victor Varnado offers up The Racial Joke Test:

THE RACIAL JOKE TEST
The test is “DO THAT JOKE IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE MOSTLY COMPRISED OF THE GROUP YOU MIGHT BE IN DANGER OF OFFENDING”. If if doesn’t fly or you don’t feel comfortable then drop that joke.

The last line of the piece: "Please go to harlem and pull that puppet out and see how it goes."

How Nora Ephron gave Woody Allen a happy ending

Interesting piece on how Woody Allen influenced Nora Ephron.

The film opens with simple, white-on-black titles, backed by an elegant, evocative jazz standard. The story that follows, framed by documentary-style straight-to-camera interviews, concerns a witty, urbane Jewish neurotic and his relationship with a sunny, fashionable shiksa. They stroll in through an autumnal Central Park and discuss death, sexual hang-ups, and New York real estate; the borough of Manhattan is captured in loving beauty shots, often backed by the music of Louie Armstrong. From that description, it would be easy to assume I was describing any number of Woody Allen films (Annie Hall in particular). But no, I’m talking about director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally.

So why did Harry/Sally do so much better at the box office than any of Woody's movies? Bring in the happy ending.

Yet the key to When Harry Met Sally’s initial financial success and subsequent cultural ubiquity most likely lies in its third act, when it takes some turns decidedly its own. To be clear, it’s not all an Allen carbon copy; the famous Katz’s Deli sequence, for example, is a funny scene, but it’s also a “funny scene,” an entirely unbelievable set piece with a (hilarious, mind you) sitcom punchline that one can’t imagine within Allen’s more grounded world. But most strikingly, once Harry and Sally take the plunge and their relationship becomes more serious, it becomes more of a conventional romance — and more of what we would come to define as an Ephron movie.

Most importantly, the picture culminates with an apologetic Harry coming to his senses, sprinting through New York City on New Year’s Eve, and delivering a big, heartfelt speech so he can win back Sally, who he really loves after all. This happy ending is When Harry Met Sally’s chief divergence from the Allen playbook. It’s not just that his best-known comic romances, Annie Hall and Manhattan, end with their focal couples apart rather than together; in Allen’s nearly 50 films as writer/director, only six (Zelig, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah and Her Sisters, Oedipus Wrecks, Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and Melinda and Melinda) feature a couple that meets, falls in love, and lives happily ever after.

Allen’s jaded view of love — all broken relationships and heedless infidelity — may be the more realistic one, but realism don’t sell tickets, kids.

Happily ever after is where the money's at.

How Larry David gets laughs with silence

Love this Curb Your Enthusiasm scene. Interesting to me how different this kinda humor is than doing standup. He's milking the shy, quiet thing here – for a while – in a way that'd never work onstage in front of a big crowd. On a screen, you don't have to "command the room" in the same way. You've already got the audience's captive attention. The camera does the heavy lifting for you. That means you can get laughs from subtle looks or simple/quiet things that'd get lost in a live, "you need to reach the back row" setting.

Wellsplaining to sick people

Post by Matt Ruby.

Yelp for doctors?

Crazy how there’s Yelp for restaurants but not doctors. Need cupcakes? 562 detailed reviews. Need surgery? Spin this random wheel of death!

— Matt Ruby (@mattruby) August 20, 2014

Vulnerable vs. confident

How do you seem confident and vulnerable at the same time? Are they opposite feelings? Thought about that while reading this bit from an interesting profile on Jeff Tweedy from Wilco.

“The way I see it is that I was always pretty comfortable with being vulnerable, but not particularly confident,” Tweedy said. “I feel like I’m a lot more confident, but I still embrace the fact that I am pretty vulnerable, if that makes any sense. I don’t have to be somebody else. I don’t have to be as good as somebody else, I just have to keep making stuff that I am excited by. That is one of the only things I have had control over. I am more aware of it — I am more aware of the things that I have control over.”

Read the rest.

Trying to understand the other side

Writer and comedian Alex Blagg on people getting offended.

Almost no comedy will be inoffensive to everybody, and if it is it's probably pretty boring. With comedy you're relieving tension by saying and doing the unexpected, and a lot of times that by its nature will lead to people not liking the results or saying it's offensive to them — that your representation of their particular experience is unfair or inaccurate. That will always happen, but I think the likelihood of that happening is so greatly diminished when you're setting out as a performer or creator to try to be honest. Instead of just saying Okay, what's the first thought that comes to my head — what's the easiest stereotype I can make fun of? and then just going with that, thinking a little bit deeper and trying to understand the real motivations and attitudes and behaviors that make us human, and then looking at those things as the material you can focus the joke on — I think that's where the best comedy comes from and that's why people like Key and Peele are almost infallible. It'd be really tough to put together a legitimate case about them being lazy or insensitive comedians. They feel like humanists to me.

I like that notion: If you're coming across as human and digging deep and trying to understand people's genuine motivations and behaviors, it's gonna be tough for anyone to call you insensitive.

POOLJUMPERS trailer

Love how this video (above) is making fun of the format of documentary trailers for flicks like Dogtown and Z-Boys (below). The actual concept isn't that meaty but the editing and style of it make the whole thing shine.

Cigarillos, etc.

"Here's 19-page police report on theft of a box of cigarillos." "How many times was the kid shot?" "WE'LL GET TO IT WHEN WE GET TO IT."

— Matt Ruby (@mattruby) August 16, 2014

When my band ran into Robin Williams while he was filming Patch Adams

My one run-in with Robin Williams was when he was filming Patch Adams in Chapel Hill. Back then I was in a rock 'n roll band and we were on tour playing a burrito joint that night near UNC. After sound check we wandered around the campus and ran into the place on campus where they were filming outside.

About 100 people had gathered around to watch the goings on. When the director called cut, Williams didn't head for his trailer though. He jumped out into the crowd and signed autographs and started riffing with everyone who was standing there. It was that manic energy that we've all seen from him. He cracked jokes and worked the room (well, lawn actually) until he got to us, four shaggy looking rockers with mustaches. I thought he'd give us both barrels but he actually had a pretty sincere conversation with us about music, touring, being on the road, etc. He signed an autograph for our drummer, we invited him to the show, and he said he'd think about it. And then he moved on to the next available target and kept going until they needed him back on set about 20mins later.

It was just a brief encounter but it def seemed like he had an energy level that didn't go down. "Always on" would be an understatement. I thought this line from A.O. Scott's piece on Williams summed him up well: "His essential persona as an entertainer combined neediness and generosity, intelligence and kindness, in ways that were charming and often unexpectedly moving as well."

Fun Williams in-the-wild clip: 1986: Jonathan Winters and Robin Williams improvise on 60 Minutes.

The scene that Roger Ebert called "the sexiest and funniest at the same time in all of romantic comedy"

Roger Ebert's review of Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve” calls out this scene...

If I were asked to name the single scene in all of romantic comedy that was sexiest and funniest at the same time, I would advise beginning at six seconds past the 20-minute mark in Preston Sturges' "The Lady Eve,” and watching as Barbara Stanwyck toys with Henry Fonda's hair in an unbroken shot that lasts three minutes and 51 seconds.

Stanwyck plays an adventuress who has lured a rich but unworldly young bachelor to her cabin on an ocean liner, and is skillfully tantalizing him. She reclines on a chaise. He has landed on the floor next to her. "Hold me tight!” she says, holding him tight -- allegedly because she has been frightened by a snake. Now begins the unbroken shot. Her right arm cradles his head, and as she talks she toys with his earlobe and runs her fingers through his hair. She teases, kids and flirts with him, and he remains almost paralyzed with shyness and self-consciousness. And at some point during this process, she falls for him.

Bill Burr: When was the last time you went on stage and you killed so hard the person after you bombed?

Bill Burr was asked, "Can women be funny?" His answer: "Yeah, of course." And then he went on...

Become undeniable. When was the last time you went on stage and you killed so hard the person after you bombed? If you're fucking doing that on a regular basis, people are gonna notice, regardless of what you have between your legs.

Kill, kill, kill. The rest will sort itself out.

The problem with hating hipsters

People love attacking "hipsters" yet no one self-identifies as a hipster. Important lesson: Start getting more specific with your insults.

That's when things get a little more challenging...

"Hipsters = skinny jeans" Eurodudes have been rocking those for decades.

"Hipsters = indie rock fans" Plenty of douchey bros love The Black Keys and Spoon.

"Hipsters = facial hair" Every goddamn dude in NYC has a beard now.

"Hipsters = hating on everything" If you're hating on hipsters, then that's kinda the most hipster thing of all.

Barry Katz on how much comedians make, finding a manager, etc.

Barry Katz did an AMA at Reddit. ("I've managed, developed and produced for Louis CK, Dave Chappelle, Tracey Morgan, Jay Mohr among others and host the Industry Standard podcast on the business of comedy. Ask me anything.") In it, he breaks down the typical rates that comedians get paid...

If you're going to a comedy club in your city and seeing a person headline that you don't know that well, he's probably making between $1500-$3000 a week. The person going on before the headliner is probably making between $500-$1000 a week. The person MCing probably $300-$500 a week. If you go to a special event with a name that's a household name, you can probably figure out how much they're making by looking at how much you paid for the ticket and the people in the room, and normally the artist is making 50% of that gross, up to 100% depending on their pull. It the tickets are $25 apiece and 300 people in the room, you're talking about $7500 for that show. 6 Shows, about $40-$45K coming in. Chances are a headliner of that nature could make $20K or even up to $50-$60K that week, maybe more. That's usually how it works.

...and gives his advice on finding a manager (hint: don't).

Don't worry about finding a manager. When you're doing the right thing, when your comedy is undeniable, when you go to your home comedy club ten times in a row and you have the best set of the night by a landslide every, single, time and every bartender, every waitress, every manager, every comedian that hates you, every audience member if they had a truth serum in their veins would say you had the best set of the night. If you can figure that out, and do the kind of comedy that you love, embody the kind of material that blows you the fuck away when you watch it, when that starts happening, managers like me will chase you like your ass is on fire. But until then, keep working hard, keep doing the right thing and don't lose faith in yourself. You will prevail.

Katz also has a podcast where he interviews industry types.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict explained in baseball terms

Post by Matt Ruby.

Louis CK and Howard Stern wind up crying/laughing together

At 31:20 into this interview, Howard presses Louis CK to talk about having a dog lick cottage cheese off his balls. They both completely lose it. It's pretty cute.

Key and Peele's "Insult Comic"

Why clapter – clapping plus laughter – is the enemy

SNL's James Downey on Working with Norm Macdonald:

To tell you the truth, Norm and I had done Update for three and a half seasons. I felt like we had made our point. What I did like about the way we approached Update was that it was akin to what the punk movement was for music: just real stripped down. We did whatever we wanted, and there was nothing there that we considered to be a form of cheating. We weren’t cuddly, we weren’t adorable, we weren’t warm. We weren’t going to do easy, political jokes that played for clapter and let the audience know we were all on the same side. We were going to be mean and, to an extent, anarchists.

I enjoy how "jokes that played for clapter" is the enemy here.

People who use Airbnb love to smile. You like smiles!

Post by Matt Ruby.

Vooza: "Earnings Call"

I channel my inner Donald Trump on this one. More at Vooza.com.

Alan Watts on technology's "fantastic vicious circle"

Orgasm Without Release: Alan Watts Presages Our Modern Media Gluttony in 1951.

The “brainy” economy designed to produce this happiness is a fantastic vicious circle which must either manufacture more and more pleasures or collapse –providing a constant titillation of the ears, eyes, and nerve ends with incessant streams of almost inescapable noise and visual distractions. The perfect “subject” for the aims of this economy is the person who continuously itches his ears with the radio, preferably using the portable kind which can go with him at all hours and in all places. His eyes flit without rest from television screen, to newspaper, to magazine, keeping him in a sort of orgasm-without-release through a series of teasing glimpses of shiny automobiles, shiny female bodies, and other sensuous surfaces, interspersed with such restorers of sensitivity — shock treatments — as “human interest” shots of criminals, mangled bodies, wrecked airplanes, prize fights, and burning buildings. The literature or discourse that goes along with this is similarly manufactured to tease without satisfaction, to replace every partial gratification with a new desire.

More Alan Watts.

Upworthy is piousbragging

Post by Matt Ruby.

How improv gets the imagined typer out of the way

Long piece on Steve Carell and the meticulous art of spontaneity:

Most comedy directors now believe that even an expertly written script can’t reliably elicit belly laughs. Nicholas Stoller, the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Get Him to the Greek, both of which were substantially improvised, said, “The movies we’re trying to make, which have a hard laugh every minute, could not be made without improv.” Traditional comedies have a sleekness that calls to mind the typewriter. Consider the moment in the 1980 film Airplane! when two passengers chat before takeoff: “Nervous?” “Yes.” “First time?” “No, I’ve been nervous lots of times.” The point of improv, Apatow told me, is to make scenes feel fresh and unstudied—“to get the imagined typer out of the way.” When an improv really works, it has a skewed specificity that bears the stamp of an actor’s subconscious. In Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, it’s the scene where a vexed Mike Myers, as Dr.. Evil, stifles his son, Scott, with a whole run of shushes: “Let me tell you a little story about a man named Sh!” Scott opens his mouth—“Sh! even before you start.” Tiny pause. “That was a preëmptive Sh!” Scott opens his mouth again—“Just know I have a whole bag of Sh! with your name on it.”

Getting the script outta the way and replacing it with the performer's subconscious makes an entirely different cake.

Rick Rubin on opening people up

Rick Rubin… pic.twitter.com/dId6fmuodU

— Matt Ruby (@mattruby) June 20, 2014

5 things I love about Ted Alexandro

5 things I love about Ted Alexandro:

1) His energy onstage. So many comics rely on being high energy – practically yelling toward the crowd. Ted takes the opposite approach. He leans back. He draws you in to his worldview. There's a zen calm to his approach. Yet he still manages to be hilarious.

2) And I dig the way he's political. See, there's the kind of comedian who preaches and lectures about his political views. Ted doesn't do that. He's a "be the change you want to see in the world" kinda guy. He's super involved in the Occupy movement without being in your face about it. And he seems to constantly be doing things like making calls for Obama or cleaning up after Sandy or volunteering somewhere in Astoria.

3) He also founded the New York Comedians Coalition which got clubs in the city to raise spot pay for comics. I can only imagine how hard it was to bring together a group as lone wolf-ish as NYC comedians in any sort of organized way. But Ted managed to pull it off.

4) Then there's his most recent standup special. Most comics tape specials in a big room in front of a juiced up crowd. Ted taped his at The Creek in front of a few dozen people. It's a special about the reality of doing standup, not the "on steroids" version that's usually released. (And he was able to put it out without lining the pockets of a big corporation.)

5) A lot of big name comedians look down on comics who are less experienced. They ignore them or do the ball busting/hierarchy thing. I've never seen Ted do that. He's always been patient and kind in conversations with me and other less-experienced comics. No wonder he gets so much respect from his peers.

It's easy to measure the wrong things in this business – to look at who's got industry heat or a pilot deal or a high iTunes ranking. But sometimes the person who's really winning is the one who redefines success. When I look at how well Ted does both onstage and off, I see true success. I see someone who is an example of how you can make people laugh and be an artist and a nice, authentic human being.

If you feel the same (or want to take my word for it), Ted is now raising money on Kickstarter for his "Teacher's Lounge" web series. It's created & written by Ted and Hollis James and stars lots of comics you know. There's less than 70 hours to go in the campaign and they're close but still need some more funds. I just pitched in some cash and I encourage you to do the same.

Related: Ted Alexandro on letting jokes breathe

How large a part of your life is it?

In Being a comic and a punchline, Cameron Esposito talks about when she hears comics doing “I’m for gay marriage but…” jokes.

When I hear comics tell those jokes, I wonder what other, more personal experiences they might have to talk about.. You say you worry that people think you look like a lesbian and you aren’t one? Okay, sure. How large a part of your life is that fear? The audience you are in front of tonight might never see you again, so is it a crucial enough aspect of your life that you’d want to it be the only topic an audience ever hears you discuss? If not, talk about something that is. If so, why is that? What are you so afraid of?

I think that's an interesting frame: If an audience is only going to see you once and hear you talk about one thing, what would you want it to be?

Bob Dylan on the supernatural artist

Bob Dylan's system for rating artists (according to author Robert Hilburn):

Artists fit into one of three categories-the natural performer, who does the best they can within their limits on stage; the superficial performer, who shouldn't be on stage in the first place because they've got nothing original to tell you; and the supernatural artist, who, in Bob's words, 'is the kind that digs deep and the deeper they go, the more gods they'll find."

It's like artistic limbo. How low can you go? Also brings to mind another question: What happens if you find demons in the depths alongside those gods?

Assume you have to make it yourself

Oren Brimer on Producing 'The Pete Holmes Show'.

I’m not saying it’s everyone’s path, but my path was being really good at everything. I can write something, I can direct it, I can edit it, I can produce it, because at the end of the day you have to assume no one’s going to make anything for you. Assume you have to make it yourself and then whenever someone will help you or you get money for it, that will only be a bonus as opposed to being an expectation. I feel like people get bogged down by feeling like they need someone to validate their idea before making it as opposed to just making it.

Good thinking. Waiting around for the industry to "discover" you puts your fate in the hands of others. Not to mention, a lot of industry folks operate from a place of fear and not wanting to get fired as opposed to caring about what's good or not (if they even know what's good). Make something you think is great and prove it's worthwhile. Even if it gets you nowhere, at least you made something. Makers make stuff. Complainers complain about stuff.

TMZ vs. Satan

Post by Matt Ruby.

The college scam

Post by Matt Ruby.

The lesson Norm MacDonald learned from Steve Martin

From Normcore: Norm MacDonald's Quest to Host 'The Late Late Show':

The one thing you don't want to do is say, "I'm going to be different than anyone else — I'm wearing jeans!"...Steve Martin told me when he started out he was dressed as a hippie, and that shocked me. He was like, "Well, I was doing avant-garde stuff. Then suddenly I realized avant-garde comes out better from a guy in a white suit." I thought that's pretty fucking smart.

People laugh at odd combos. High-low, skinny-fat, smart-dumb. Comedy is in the contrast.

Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them tell you that they're all the same

Los Angeles friends: I'll be in your city next week. If you want to see me tell jokes, I'll be performing on the following shows...

Jun 10 - 8:00pm - Put Your Hands Together @ UCBLA
Jun 11 - 8:00pm - Pints & Puns @ Angel City Brewery & Public House
Jun 12 - 8:30pm - Josh and Josh Show @ Bar Lubitsch
Jun 13 - 8:00pm - Peachy Keen @ Bar Lubitsch
Jun 15 - 9:00pm - Neal Brennan and Friends @ Mi's Westside Comedy Theater
Jun 15 - 9:45pm - French Toast @ Le Taix

Simon Amstell's amazing psychedelic story

People talking about drug trips are like people talking about their dreams: You had to be there – and you weren't. That's what makes this chunk by Simon Amstell on doing Ayahuasca so amazing. It's deep and it's weird and it's funny throughout.



From syllabus to ‘It's Funny Because It's True’ - Exploring The Buddhist Truth Of Suffering Through Comedy.

Future Insights interviewed me about Vooza

Future Insights interviewed me about Vooza. Questions include: "Was there a specific viral internet video that made the light bulb go on for Vooza?" "Is it harder for you to play the straight man or the guy who delivers the punch lines?" "Which is your favorite Vooza video, and why?"

Vooza takes the piss out of ‘branding’:

You know those self-indulgent videos where people talk about creativity, inspiration and their approach to branding as motivational music plays in the background?

Since launching (and doing we’re-still-not-sure-what), Vooza's made it its business to demystify the startup journey by zeroing right into the smarmy “thought-leader” attitude that so readily shuts people out before they've begun.

See the video on branding and read the full piece.

The benefits of doing it on the side

J-L Cauvin wrote an interesting piece recently: Comedy Career Advice: Keep Your Day Job. Seriously. (Excerpt: "When opportunities are coming in that cannot be missed and that a job is actually in the way of, then you should quit.")

Was reminded of it while reading Why ‘Side Projects’ matter?

1, They don’t have to provide you with a living. You can still eat if they fail.

2, They don’t have a deadline. And as there is no time pressure, you don’t revert to your usual formula. You try new things. You experiment. You take risks.

3, This is a Labour of Love. You provide the ‘Labour’. And you provide the ‘Love’. So when you spend time on it, it is because you really want to. That keeps you coming back and pushing it on. That’s important. This thing will require you to keep plugging away at it, maybe, for years.

Love pays well in the end. But in the early years, it doesn’t pay at all.

I think the experimentation part is important. The more you're trying to make money off of comedy, the more you start to follow the rulebook. The industry has a way of homogenizing people. It all starts to look, sound, and feel the same. The time when you're not getting paid offers you freedom. It gives you the ability to do whatever the hell you want.

Louie is constructed like a standup set

Interesting angle: Why Is Louie Such a Remarkable TV Show? Because It Makes Stand-up Comedy Cinematic.

The segmented nature of the series — disconnected tales, anecdotes, moments, and reveries, some of them just a few minutes long — evokes the stop-and-start rhythms of a stand-up routine, an art form in which it's perfectly acceptable to pivot from one subject to the next with a blunt transition: "Women." "Football fans are the worst." "Now I'm gonna talk about things that you can do to keep people on their toes." He's talking to you directly, in the way that a stand-up comic would talk to you from the stage at a club, but he's doing it through the language of film — a translation that's not as simple as it sounds, given that stand-up is pure performance, just words and gestures. Theater...

The only transitions between these stories are the commercial breaks between acts, or the seven days separating one full episode from another. This temporal black space is the equivalent of a stand-up saying, "Can we talk about Obama for a second?" or "It is so friggin' hot right now!" Every such transition means the same thing: "Now I'm going to talk about something else, and hopefully I'll be interesting enough that you'll keep listening and not heckle me." Richard Pryor could do routines in which his dog or his pipe talked to him, then ramp down into more personal stories. Eddie Murphy could do a filthy routine about Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton as gay lovers and a childhood reverie about kids and ice cream within the same performance. George Carlin could mix wordplay, social satire, religious and political commentary, personal memories, and even an extended fantasy about the destruction of the world and somehow make it all seem to fit. And if you didn't like one or another of these bits, all you had to do was wait a few minutes, and the comic would be on to something else.

Good points I think. Most TV feels more like watching a storyteller. The random leaps at play in Louie do evoke a standup set more than most of the narrative-driven things on TV.

One other CK thing I read recently from GQ: That's Not Funny, That's C.K. I think the part about anger coming from fear and shame is interesting – how much great comedy comes from those things?

This is worth noting only because a decent amount of his material seems to emerge from a place of anger—or maybe more accurately, anger's parent streams, fear and shame—and when he's standing there in his black T-shirt and jeans, sweating and red-faced, you get the sense that however much that joke has been honed for comic effect, it also isn't totally an act. The signal seems to be beaming from someplace real and not completely peaceful inside him.

And Louie was just on Charlie Rose.

The wrong way to judge a joke

Interesting story from one of Lenny Bruce's trials (article). A witness transcribed his act and started reading it back in court. Bruce was furious: "I'm going to be judged on his bad timing, his ego and his garbled language."

But Richard Kuh, an ambitious assistant D.A., was eager to take on Lenny Bruce. The chief witness against Bruce was Herbert Ruhe, an inspector for the city's licensing division and a former C.I.A agent. At the Café Au Go Go in Greenwich Village, Ruhe took notes on Lenny's performance, which he read from at the trial. (By the way, Ruhe told me later that he was just doing his job, that he had nothing against Lenny.)

Lenny was in a state of desperate frustration. He begged—he literally begged—presiding judge John Murtagh for permission to do his own act and not have it dismembered by an agent of the prosecutor.

"This guy is bumbling" Lenny told me, "and I'm going to jail. He's not only getting it all wrong, but now he thinks he's a comic. I'm going to be judged on his bad timing, his ego and his garbled language."

An unusual witness for Lenny was the syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, an active Catholic and political conservative. But she had a keen sense of humor and had attended some of Lenny's club gigs in New York. In taking the stand, she was treated with great respect by the judges and court attendants. Kuh, the Torquemada-like prosecutor, had put together—out of any context—all of Lenny's "dirty words" from the tape of the Café Au Go Go performance, which Bruce was not permitted to give to the court in his own way.

Kilgallen, demurely dressed, wearing white gloves, sat coolly on the witness chair as Kuh circled her and then, in a loud, accusatory voice, roared a barrage of "dirty words" at her. Pouncing, he shouted: "You say that Mr. Bruce is an artist of social value. What is your reaction, Miss Kilgallen, to these words—these words—he used in his act?" Dorothy Kilgallen looked at her gloves, looked up at Kuh and then, with precise constitutional logic, said: "They are words, Mr. Kuh. Words, words, words."

Reminds me of the whole Colbert tweet debacle or when blogs reprint what Tosh or Tracy Morgan say onstage. Seeing words written down or said by someone else is WAY different than hearing how they were delivered in the room from that performer.

I pretended to be an idiot startup CEO who's overly obsessed with Steve Jobs at a tech conference

Because of our Vooza show, I got to give a keynote talk at a big tech conference in Amsterdam two weeks ago. I pretended to be an idiot startup CEO who's overly obsessed with Steve Jobs. I told 'em to embrace failure and ignore their families. I think they figured out I was joking? Here's a clip...

"Proof of concept" pilot

Good backstory to Cristela Alonzo’s semi-autobiographical Cristela show:

Cristela didn’t make the cut. However, the producers, who also are behind ABC’s Last Man Standing, and 20th TV took the $500,000 penalty, a fraction of what a normal pilot costs, and used it to budget a presentation with ABC’s blessing (the network called it “proof of concept”). Cristela ended up filming a full-length pilot on the stage of Last Man Standing using that sitcom’s crew, led by director/co-exec producer John Pasquin, with two days of rehearsal and prep time, doing the blocking in a windowless room using paper plates and metal chairs. Cristela, originally not even budgeted to get a testing, tested through the roof, with Alonzo, who has no previous acting experience, scoring higher than Allen, New Girl’s Zooey Deschanel and The Crazy Ones’ Robin Williams.

I like the lean "proof of concept" approach they took to making the show. Do it as cheap and easy as possible and make something good and prove it works. Then build it from there. Everyone's always hoping to win the lottery and get the BIG DEAL but the organic way to do it is to build slowly, make sure it's a good idea, and then double down from there.

Neal Brennan & Ryan Hamilton on HOT SOUP tonight (May 6)

Tonight (May 6) at HOT SOUP we've got:

Neal Brennan
Ryan Hamilton
Nathan Macintosh
Joe Pera
Sabrina Jalees
Andrew Short
Matt Ruby
and special guest host Simeon Goodson!

Full details.

Vooza's intelligent pokes

Article at solidsmack with some good words about our Vooza show:

Silicon Valley is definitely worth a watch…If HBO isn’t your thing however and you still want to have some laughs at the expense of start up culture, the collection of shorts over at Vooza intelligently pokes fun at everything from crowdfunding concepts to product pitches and business card exchanges to product launch videos.

See the videos at Vooza.com.

I don't like musical comedy

A reader writes: "I think you should do a blog post on musical comedy. Even if it's about how you think it sucks. I want to hear your opinion. Because I respect it."

I did think Flight of the Concords were pretty great. But mostly, I don't like musical comedy. The dickish way to say why: I think it's mostly done by people who are not good enough at comedy to succeed as comedians and not good enough at music to succeed as musicians. But they mix the two and deliver an inferior version of both things as a sort of magic trick that audiences like in the same way audiences like prop comedy and guys dressed in drag.

Look, I love music and I love comedy. I just don't get off on them being mixed. Probably because I'm very binary and take a purist approach to things. (Overall, this is an unnecessary and unhelpful way to live life but c'est la vie.)

Also, I think music hits people on some sort of reptilian wavelength and then makes anything that goes along with it easier to swallow. Think about how stupid most song lyrics are. Or the painful in-between song stage banter of most musicians. People let it go because, hey, music!

But, y'know, do your thing. It takes a village and all that. And anything can be done artfully and worth watching.

Sam Mendes: 25 Ways to Be a Better Director

Closet businessman

"I’m really a closet businessman. I think the happiest artists generally are." From Who Are The Happiest Artists?

How Stephen Colbert defined his character slowly

I’m Happy for Colbert, But Let’s Be Clear: We’re Losing One of TV’s Greatest Characters:

The formation of a sitcom character is like a sculptor laboriously chipping away at marble; what Colbert did was more akin to a rock slowly being smoothed by the motions of the tide. 150 nights a year, Colbert defined the character slowly but surely, segment by segment.

What Colbert did on his show is/was amazing. To carry the entire show every night (Stewart has others that help out on-camera, Colbert does it all on his own) and to do it in character is something else. I understand why he wants to shift into being himself. But I'm gonna miss how vicious and mean "Stephen Colbert" could be. Like here...



"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." I got a feeling the real Stephen Colbert will be nice and uplifting and the kind of guy we can root for. But we've got plenty of those already. The truthiness of "Stephen Colbert" was a special thing in the ocean of Upworthiness and it's gonna be missed. See this related tweet.

Sontag and Hedberg on photography and time

Susan Sontag in "On Photography":

All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

Or, as Mitch Hedberg put it:

One time, this guy handed me a picture of him, he said,"Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture is of you when you were younger. "Here's a picture of me when I'm older." "You son-of-a-bitch! How'd you pull that off? Lemme see that camera...what's it look like?"

Btw, Buzzfeed posted A Complete Ranking Of (Almost) Every Single Mitch Hedberg Joke.

Vooza tackles Kickstarter and projectors

Some recent Vooza fun...

The Honest Kickstarter Campaign
This video shows what’d happen if people told the truth about their Kickstarter campaigns.



Hooking Up The Projector
No one ever seems to know how to hook up the projector. Maybe it’s a missing dongle. Or maybe it’s haunted by evil spirits.



More at Vooza.com.

Spinal Tap's "Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare"

This 1979 short, spoofing The Midnight Special, was the seed that turned into This Is Spinal Tap. Love the beer bottle!

Hashtag activist vs. selfie revolutionary

Hashtag activist, eh? Starting a hashtag is to activism what Like-ing a baby photo is to raising a child. All you did was type a couple of words and hit Send. If you want to be a real activist, do something difficult. Volunteer for a cause. Go to a city council meeting and speak up. Take some action that involves more than 3 seconds of effort. Otherwise, you’re not really an activist. You’re just a heckler.

Plus, I'm worried about what's coming next if "hashtag activist" becomes a real thing...

Selfie revolutionary - “if you photobomb, I drop real bombs”
Groupon militant - “30% off lipomassage or we storm the gates”
Retweet jihadist - “I detonate an IED of Upworthy and Buzzfeed all over your Twitter”
Yelp extremist - “We showed up with 20 people and we want a table NOW or else”
Snapchat warrior - “my willingness to fight for this cause will disappear in 10 seconds”

Getting the references doesn't really matter

A good parody is one where ya still think it's funny even if you don't know the original that's being mocked. Fred Armisen talks about this at Splitsider in response to a question about the obscure references on Portlandia:

I just think of my memories watching Saturday Night Live as a kid, I didn't know who the hell they were talking about. There were jokes on Weekend Update that I would laugh at but I didn't know what they were talking about. So I think it doesn't matter — references don't really matter. Even Bugs Bunny is that way, they throw in some jokes for adults and sometimes you just laugh at the way it's being done. That's something that is a lucky break — we get to have Jello Biafra in a sketch, and if you know who he is great, and if you don't it's still a sketch.

Full interview.

Winning the first minute

Non-comedy article on ageism in tech had this quote I found interesting: “There are people in a room whose talent is to win the first minute. Mine is to win the thirtieth or the sixtieth.” Seems like it can work that way in comedy too. The guys who have the best TV set or tight 5 aren't always the ones you wanna watch for 45mins. Alas, you often don't get to the 45 unless you can nail the 5. And so it goes.

What networks/advertisers really want (aka why our entire society winds up held hostage by the most naive among us)

Just read that advertisers, whose main target is the 18-34 year old demographic, are starting to skew even younger (12-34). I remember being in the heart of that age range and feeling good about that: “We’re the ones who get it. We’re still alive. Move outta the way, old man!” But now that I’m becoming that old man, I’m starting to think everything on TV is aimed at people in that age range because they’re the only ones dumb enough to actually believe advertising.

That athletes eat Subway. That Coors is made from fresh Rocky Mountain water. That being an NBA player is like working for State Farm. That ladies flock to a dude who sprays Axe on his crotch.

What networks/advertisers really want is to capture the attention of the most gullible and easily manipulated segment of the population. Because that’s who can be twisted and fooled into wanting whiter teeth or whatever. And the end result is that our entire society winds up held hostage by the most naive among us as we’re all force-fed a steady stream of schlocky, dumbed-down entertainment for pawns. [This post sponsored by Samsung!]

Plane vs. ocean

I don't think the story is about the missing plane. It's about the ocean and how tiny we are compared to it. We think we're always being watched and that satellites know it all and technology rules everything around us. But then the ocean goes and swallows a hunk of metal. And all our cell towers, radars, and navy ships ain't shit compared to this 2/3-of-the-planet-covering pit of mystery and darkness. Part of me likes to think the ocean is saying, "Here's how lost you can get when you dance with me." But actually, the ocean doesn't give a fuck. I hope we never find that damn plane.

Just another basement show until...

So this happened last night.

Neuroscientist explains why unhappy people are funnier

Cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems thinks humor is worthy of serious academic study and writes about in his new book “Ha!” He explains why unhappy people are funnier.

Yet in tests measuring the ability to write cartoon captions, people who were more neurotic, assertive, manipulative and dogmatic were actually funnier. As the old saw holds, many of the best comics really are miserable.

Perhaps, Dr. Weems writes, unhappy people are “more likely than others to speak out in awkward or socially unacceptable ways to make a good joke.” Or, as people from Aristotle to Gertrude Stein have pointed out, unhappiness can breed creativity, and the best jokes require both intellectual gymnastics and astute observation of human nature.

Related: Nick Griffin on trying to make depression come out joyful

Club Scale is coming soon

Unless you are a model, Tiesto, or Leonardo DiCaprio, our doormen probably won't let you in." VERY excited to learn more about this hot club that's coming to NYC. Also excited: Dan Soder and Joe List. Spend 30secs at ClubScale.com and you'll see what I mean...

3 of NYC's best pregame their Comedy Central sets at HOT SOUP

Tonight (3/18): Watch three of NYC's top comedians run extended sets of their best stuff which they'll be taping next week for their Comedy Central Half-Hours.

Lineup:
Michael Che (Letterman, SNL writer)
Chris Distefano (Guy Code)
Mark Normand (Conan)
Special guest: Louis Katz (Comedy Central)

I'm hosting. Full show details at Facebook.

How genre signifiers build a scene in a single shot

Why do video parodies work so well? You immediately understand the scene so the action can speak for itself. From How Director Peter Atencio Acts as the Unsung, Essential Third Member of 'Key and Peele':

Many of the most popular K&P sketches are genre parodies, which play on our collective cultural understandings of the signifiers of a particular genre. In perhaps their most famous sketch, the East/West College Bowl, part of what makes us laugh immediately is the recognition of the codes of the sketch. Giving the viewer this comfort of recognition then allows them to play within the genre. As the names and characters get more and more ridiculous, much of what works about the joke is that it's still rooted in an extremely familiar framework. Atencio’s ability to appropriate semiotic codes as a way to build a frame for a sketch sets up K&P’s writing and performance perfectly.

What genre signifiers can do is build a scene in a single shot, before a word is spoken. No words need be wasted on setting a scene or tone because that work is done in advance by the director. All K&P need to do is inhabit the scene and build their characters and jokes. We've all seen many beginning level improv scenes fail because the actors spend too much time talking about where they are and what they are doing before they work to find what is unusual. Atencio gives K&P the ability to immediately go for what is unusual through creating authentic and real-feeling genre beats. Seemingly counterintuitively, because of Peter Atencio’s thoroughness in his direction and the creation of the aforementioned cinematic look, the performance is able to be the most tangible element in a scene because it's the element that feels the most uncomfortable or unusual to a viewer. If it looks like a horror film, and sounds like a horror film, then it’s funny when people don’t act like they are in a horror film.

We've seen something similar in our Vooza videos. When you're working within an understood framework, the jokes have that much more zing/surprise to 'em (see this Radimparency video). It's like the setup is already there for you.

Advice from Comedy Central’s Head Of Talent

5 Things You Can Learn From Comedy Central’s Head Of Talent On Ari Shaffir’s Podcast:

Larsen explains that advertising sales are ultimately what runs a TV network and that “controversy is not a good thing to sell advertising.” This means if you want to get on TV, being unnecessarily blue or racy will hurt your chances...

[Ari] said Louis CK told him that if he was all of a sudden not allowed to do any of his old jokes, that he wouldn’t stop being a comedian – he’d just write new stuff. He used that mindset as motivation to keep his nose to the grindstone and keep working on new material until he came up with 15 minute chunks he was proud of.

Lots more interesting posts/advice for comedians over at Connected Comedy too.

The surprising rhythm of Bill Murray

Splitsider's The Collected Wisdom of Bill Murray is a fun read. One of the excerpts is from GQ's Bill Murray Is Ready To See You Now.

But you asked how you get the comic pitch. Well, obviously a lot of it is rhythm. And as often as not, it's the surprising rhythm. In life and in movies, you can usually guess what someone is going to say—you can actually hear it—before they say it. But if you undercut that just a little, it can make you fall off your chair. It's small and simple like that. You're always trying to get your distractions out of the way and be as calm as you can be [breathes in and out slowly], and emotion will just drive the machine. It will go through the machine without being interrupted, and it comes out in a rhythm that's naturally funny. And that funny rhythm is either humorous or touching. It can be either one. But it's always a surprise. I really don't know what's going to come out of my mouth.

I'm fascinated by how/when jokes stop working. I think this surprising rhythm thing has a lot to do with it. When you first tell a joke, you're not sure where the laughs are, what to emphasize, etc. And that can create some real magic. Words pop into your head and you're surpised so the audience is surprised. But once you hone it into a polished bit, you often smooth over those rough edges. And that can take away the surprise. And that can kill the laughs. And then you gotta figure out a way to make it seem like the first time all over again.

Comedy that takes down the powerful

Interesting piece by Kyle Smith: "Where’s their nerve? Today’s comics mock poop, not the powerful."

’70s comedy ruled from an anti-throne of contempt for authority in all shapes. College deans, student body presidents, Army sergeants and officers, country-club swells, snooty professors and the EPA: Anyone who made it his life’s work to lord it over others got taken down with wit.

When the smoke bombs cleared and the anarchy died, comedy turned inward and became domesticated. It also became smaller.

“The Cosby Show” and Jerry Seinfeld didn’t seek to ridicule those in power. Instead they gave us comfy couch comedy — riffs on family and etiquette and people’s odd little habits.

Now, in the Judd Apatow era, comedy is increasingly marked by two worrying trends: One is a knee-jerk belief, held even by many of the most brilliant comedy writers, that coming up with the biggest, most outlandish gross-out gags is their highest calling.

...

Today’s comics have abdicated their responsibility to take down the powerful. They tiptoe around President Obama, but comedy has to be fearless.

These days they’re more at ease mocking their social inferiors than going after the high and mighty. Comfortably ensconced inside the castle that Richard Pryor and George Carlin tried to burn down, they drop water balloons on the unspeakable middle-America drones of “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office.”

...

Even comics who present themselves as the loyal opposition to the political leadership, like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, expend most of their effort simply repackaging Democratic Party talking points as jokes. The ’70s hang-’em-all anarchist spirit lives on only in the margins, in a few brave outposts like “South Park.”

Interesting points though I think one could argue that dramatic movies and TV shows have devolved in a similar way too. I think you need to consider the context of the times too. The 70s were responding to the 60s and Watergate which was a very different vibe than the Reagan era stew that Cosby and Seinfeld emerged from. That said, it'd be cool to see more "stick it to the man" comedy.

Stephen Tobolowsky on Groundhog Day, Harold Ramis, and why you should expect the horrible

Stephen Tobolowsky — Groundhog Day’s Ned Ryerson — on What He Learned From Harold Ramis:

When the scene called for Bill to punch me out on the corner, I went to Harold and asked if there was anything he wanted me to do. He leaned in and whispered with that half-smile, “Do whatever you want. I’m setting the camera up wide. No close-ups. Comedy only happens when there is a relationship. We’ll see both you and Bill at the same time. Comedy lives in the two shot.”

Tobolowsky talks more about Groundhog Day in The Tobolowsky Files podcast episode 29.

And he's got a blog too. The post "Why Acting Is So Horrible" talks about crisis management as a key skill for performers: "You never have the right circumstances to do your job. The horrible isn’t the exception. It is the rule...Don’t look at calamities as a wall between you and your work. Think of them as little surprises life is giving you to keep it fresh."

I’m sick of finance guys

I’m sick of finance guys. They call others “takers,” yet they make nothing. They deride "welfare queens" yet demand bailouts. They slander politicians for being “socialist” yet line up to suckle on the government teat. They preach “personal accountability” and then claim to be too big to fail. They break the law yet never face prosecution. They destroy the economy and reward themselves with massive bonuses. They bribe our government and then complain about any hint of regulation. They praise economists while paying academics hush money that corrupts the study of economics itself. They make dumb bets yet never lose a thing. They rig the game yet act like they genuinely earned their spoils. They’re self-described “risk takers” who take no actual risks. And we let them get away with it. How it works in this country: If you steal $5,000, you go to jail. But if you steal $50 billion, you get to shake the President’s hand.

Vooza on Branding

More at Vooza.com.

Why Harold Ramis "stopped being the zany"

Animal House. Stripes. Meatballs. Ghostbusters. Caddyshack. Vacation. Groundhog Day. Helluva run. This Harold Ramis obit talks about a realization he had after a performance at Second City in 1972.

“The moment I knew I wouldn't be any huge comedy star was when I got on stage with John Belushi for the first time," he said in a 1999 Tribune interview. "When I saw how far he was willing to go to get a laugh or to make a point on stage, the language he would use, how physical he was, throwing himself literally off the stage, taking big falls, strangling other actors, I thought: I'm never going to be this big. How could I ever get enough attention on a stage with guys like this?

"I stopped being the zany. I let John be the zany. I learned that my thing was lobbing in great lines here and there, which would score big and keep me there on the stage."

Related: The spiritual lessons of Groundhog Day

How mean and vulnerable need each other

Funny = Money is a look at comedy manager Peter Principato. He says, “You have to get yourself out there. You have to make your little YouTube videos. You have to write things yourself instead of waiting for a real Hollywood writer to come along and write you a vehicle.”

One interesting bit from it is the talk about All in the Family. According to Principato, what made Archie Bunker work was his vulnerability/humanity. That's why he could "go there" on race and other stuff the way no one else on TV had up to that point.

In the show, [Rob] Riggle aims to play a Bill O’Reilly-like newscaster, a conservative blowhard with a tremendous ego in the vein of Ted Baxter, from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Principato said the network was concerned about the central character’s likability. He didn’t seem vulnerable enough. Riggle was ready to adapt, but worried about overcompromising. “I think we need to defend a little,” he said. “You know, you could always count on Sam Malone, Woody and Norm from ‘Cheers’ to be themselves. You could always count on Coach to be Coach. You could always count on those characters. Frank Burns was always going to be Frank Burns. . . . ”

Principato interrupted. “But Frank Burns wasn’t the lead in the show.” He cited Archie Bunker, from “All in the Family.” Bunker was a chauvinistic, racist, irascible bully, but his comeuppances were so severe and so frequent, you were always reminded of his frailties.

Riggle’s eyes got a bit misty. “Remember when he got locked in the basement with Meathead and he told the ‘Shoe-Booty’ story?”

Principato laughed. The story was about how poor Bunker had been as a kid — he had to wear one shoe and one boot to school, and the other kids teased him: Shoe-Booty.

Riggle continued. “I cried — I was a kid then, but — that was good stuff.”

Principato pressed his point. “Yeah. So . . . it had the humanity. I think that’s what it was. And I don’t think Hardaway — we didn’t show enough of his humanity. You know what I mean?”

If you want to be dark/mean/edgy/etc, ya better also get it back in some way that makes you seem vulnerable too.

How the Beatles used jokes to go viral

How the Beatles Went Viral talks about how the group went from unknowns to the biggest pop stars in the USA in just six weeks. Their humor was a key part of it. For example, an early gig in front of the Royal Family...

Famously, Lennon introduced the band's finale that evening, "Twist and Shout," with the quip, "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry." It was a display of cheekiness that heretofore one simply didn't exhibit before the Royal Family.. And yet, by narrowing the distance between the monarchy and the working-class foursome onstage, Lennon brought down the house-and in the process managed to make the band all the more beloved in an England where notions of one's proper place were evolving rapidly. Even the Queen Mother came away a fan, calling the Beatles "so young, fresh and vital"...

At 1:20 p.m. on Feb. 7, the Beatles arrived stateside on Pan Am flight 101, greeted by the high-pitched squeals of approximately 4,000 teenagers, plus more than 200 reporters and photographers and 100 police officers. The crowd was larger and louder than that which Sullivan had chanced upon three months earlier at London Airport. At the famous press conference conducted inside the airport, defying the low expectations journalists had of rock'n'rollers in that era, the Beatles' charisma and wit wowed the skeptical crowd. If anything, it was the reporters who appeared to be the dullards, asking banal questions-"What do you think of Beethoven?"-which the Beatles fielded with their patented cheekiness-"Great," Ringo Starr replied. "Especially his poems."

Nothing like a good zinger to get folks on your side.

Jealousy, bitterness, and life after the Half Hour

Two recent thoughtful pieces by comics reflecting on standup:

What Jealousy And Bitterness Can Do For Your Comedy Career by Andy Sandford.

There is very little value in everyone knowing what level you deserve to be on as soon as you have reached that level. You shouldn’t want to get seen by industry people just because you “can” hold your own with the big dogs…it is much better to get as good as you possibly can under the radar so that when you do get seen, you blow everyone’s mind and are more than ready for whatever big break that might come your way. No one owes you anything for your hard work. The only benefit of your hard work is how good it has made you. This is why “years” in stand up almost means nothing. People progress at different rates, and sometimes someone has a breakthrough many years in; or maybe it just took a while for people to be able to appreciate their style. If you have the time to make a note of every thing that some undeserving peer got, then you have the time to put a little more effort into your act, which is the only thing that speaks for you, or should speak for you.

And Ben Kronberg wrote this Facebook post about the year he's had following his Comedy Central Half Hour.

I did a Half Hour last year and am agent-less and manager-less. I booked less colleges this year than I ever have. The guy at the St. Louis funny bone won't return my emails along with a slew of other bookers and gatekeepers who seem to only want to deal with agents or at least not me. I feel the disparity between the singular success and the longevity it should be contributing to. It's like getting married, having a great wedding with lots of love and hugs and gifts, but you get home and you still have all your flaws and insecurities, and the constant nag of that thing that should make it all right, but doesn't...But it's really just the thoughts that sting. The reality is beautiful. I got to perform in Korea and am recording my first album and my mom got to watch me perform the other night. I've used Facebook to correspond and get gigs I never would have known about or thought possible. I'm a comedian. I'm a fucking comedian. I am a lucky fuck to even be able to do this ridiculous thing. WE are lucky fucks. Wake up everyday and look at yourself and say: "I am a lucky fuck." Cuz you are.

Both are solid pieces worth a read.

Bill De Blasio vs. tall Al in Naked Gun

Post by Matt Ruby.

An analysis of "breaking"

An analysis of "breaking" character in comedy, from SNL to this Dean Martin/Bob Newhart sketch:



"More Cowbell" is the one that always comes to mind for me. According to the piece, the conventional wisdom on breaking: You might get a laugh, but it's a cheap one. However: “You’re allowed to break if the audience would never expect you to break.” Also interesting: It's known as corpsing in Britain.

HOT SOUP tonight (Tue) with Soder, Glaser, and more

Fun lineup at HOT SOUP tonight:

Dan Soder (MTV's Guy Code)
Nikki Glaser (MTV, Conan)
Louis Katz (Comedy Central)
Greg Warren (Comedy Central)
Mike Drucker (Fallon)
Kevin Barnett (Comedy Central)
Matt Ruby (MTV)
Gary Vider (AXS TV)

Full event info here. We can't always reveal entire lineup but surprise guests in recent weeks included Aziz Ansari, Nick Kroll, Wyatt Cenac, and Judah Friedlander.

Candor as bond between artist and audience

Lena Dunham profile in Vogue. Get past the pics hubbub and it's an interesting piece for Girls fans.

She came to regard candor as a powerful inventive tool: one that offered the energetic release of an uncorked bottle but also created a bond between artist and audience...

She thinks about an observation Antonoff made one day when she was feeling low.. “He’s like, ‘You know what’s hard? People want the person who wants to share it all.. But they want the person who wants to share it all minus foibles and mistakes and fuckups.. They want cute mistakes.. They don’t want real mistakes.’ If I placed that many censors on myself, I wouldn’t be able to continue to make the kinds of things that I make.. And so I just sort of know there are going to be moments where I take it one step too far.”

The candor-as-bond thing reminds me of Howard Stern's approach ("the secret to my show is honesty") and how he's gotten his legions of admirers.

Bill Burr on Jerry Seinfeld

Bill Burr goes onstage at a charity event right before Seinfeld. Burr apologizes for cursing so much to Jerry. Jerry couldn't care less...



Burr on Seinfeld's act: "There's not a line of fat." [Thx MN]

This just in: Comedians are kinda crazy

In a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers analyzed comedians and found they score higher than normal people on traits like being impulsive, anti-social behavior, and a tendency to avoid intimacy.

"The creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis - both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder," said Gordon Claridge of the University of Oxford's department of experimental psychology, who led the study...

"Although schizophrenic psychosis itself can be detrimental to humor, in its lesser form it can increase people's ability to associate odd or unusual things or to think 'outside the box'," he said.

"Equally, manic thinking - which is common in people with bipolar disorder - may help people combine ideas to form new, original and humorous connections."

So basically: If you want to be funny, it's good to be schizophrenic but not TOO schizophrenic.

Vooza: Power Pose and The 5 Whys

A couple of recent Vooza videos:





And we were featured on the front page of Metafilter recently too.

George Burns on Johnny Carson: “When it comes to saving a bad line, he is the master”

Fifteen Years of the Salto Mortale is a fascinating 1978 profile of Johnny Carson. In it, director Billy Wilder gives this eloquent explanation of why Carson was so good.

“By the simple law of survival, Carson is the best,” he said.. “He enchants the invalids and the insomniacs as well as the people who have to get up at dawn. He is the Valium and the Nembutal of a nation.. No matter what kind of dead-asses are on the show, he has to make them funny and exciting. He has to be their nurse and their surgeon.. He has no conceit.. He does his work and he comes prepared. If he’s talking to an author, he has read the book.. Even his rehearsed routines sound improvised.. He’s the cream of middle-class elegance, yet he’s not a mannequin. He has captivated the American bourgeoisie without ever offending the highbrows, and he has never said anything that wasn’t liberal or progressive. Every night, in front of millions of people, he has to do the salto mortale”—circus parlance for an aerial somersault performed on the tightrope. “What’s more”—and here Wilder leaned forward, tapping my knee for emphasis—”he does it without a net. No rewrites. No retakes. The jokes must work tonight.”

The author also talks about Carson's great way with savers. He could dig himself out of any hole.

The unexpected impromptus with which he rescues himself from gags that bomb, thereby plucking triumph from disaster, are also part of the expected pleasure. “When it comes to saving a bad line, he is the master”—to quote a tribute paid in my presence by George Burns. Carson registers a gag’s impact with instant, seismographical finesse. If the laugh is five per cent less than he counted on, he notes the failure and reacts to it (“Did they clear the hall? Did they have a drill?”) before any critic could, usually garnering a double-strength guffaw as reward. Whatever spoils a line—ambiguous phrasing, botched timing, faulty enunciation—he is the first to expose it. Nobody spots flaws in his own work more swiftly than Carson, or capitalizes on them more effectively.

Seinfeld, the Heckle Therapist

How does Seinfeld handle hecklers? He turns into the Heckle Therapist:

Very early on in my career, I hit upon this idea of being the Heckle Therapist.. So that when people would say something nasty, I would immediately become very sympathetic to them and try to help them with their problem and try to work out what was upsetting them, and try to be very understanding with their anger.. It opened up this whole fun avenue for me as a comedian, and no one had ever seen that before.. Some of my comedian friends used to call me - what did they say? - that I would counsel the heckler instead of fighting them.. Instead of fighting them, I would say "You seem so upset, and I know that's not what you wanted to have happen tonight.. Let's talk about your problem" and the audience would find it funny and it would really discombobulate the heckler too, because I wouldn't go against them, I would take their side.

Reminds me of Paul F. Tompkins' advice on dealing with hecklers: "It's worth talking to hecklers to see if they are just goons who are trying to ruin your set or if they are just enthusiastic folks who want to get in on the fun."

Seinfeld's quote is from his recent AMA at Reddit. Another interesting bit is how he claims the show Seinfeld wasn't actually about nothing.

Yeah, I'm always annoyed by people who describe Seinfeld as a show about nothing.. Even in the later years when you guys strayed from the "how a comedian gets his material" formula, it was still about social faux pas and ridiculous social customs.

Seinfeld: FINALLY I have met someone that understands the show.. Thank you for your rare and perceptive analysis.
permalinkparent

Here's a good summary of other interesting bits from it.

Big guests tonight (Tue) at HOT SOUP

TWO huge guests tonight (Tue) at HOT SOUP. These guys normally sell out theaters so we can't name names but there are hints here.

Lineup:
TWO "HE'S SO BIG WE CAN'T ANNOUNCE IT" SPECIAL GUESTS FROM MOVIES/TV
Wyatt Cenac (Daily Show)
Michael Che (SNL)
Christian Finnegan (Conan)
Nikki Glaser (MTV)
Will Miles (Chicago)
Mark Normand (Conan)
Matt Ruby (MTV)
...and more!

Facebook event has more info.

Why Seinfeld works clean

Jerry Seinfeld on how to be funny without sex and swearing:

Keeping his act sex- and swear-free, the way he sees it, is part of this athletic challenge, since it denies him the easiest laughs: "A person who can defend themselves with a gun is just not very interesting.. But a person who defends themselves through aikido or tai chi? Very interesting." Likewise his focus on minutiae.. "It's so much easier when you're talking about something that really is important.. You've already got a better foundation than someone who's bringing up something that does not need to be discussed." Such as? "I do a lot of material about the chair.. I find the chair very funny.. That excites me.. No one's really interested in that – but I'm going to get you interested! That, to me, is just a fun game to play.. And it's the entire basis of my career."

Interesting perspective. Not sure I agree with the idea that it's easier to talk about important things. So it's easier for Carlin or Stanhope than it is for Seinfeld? Important stuff gets people tense and stiff. Observational stuff doesn't do that. And no one walks out on your set because they disagree with your opinion on chairs.

SF shows this weekend

I'll be out in SF doing shows this weekend in case you/someone ya know wants to come out:

Sat, December 21 - 8:00pm - Cynic Cave @ Lost Weekend Video
Sat, December 21 - 9:30pm - San Francisco Punchline (with Ali Wong) - Tickets
Sun, December 22 - 8:00pm - San Francisco Punchline

Merlin Mann: “People like you because of this, but you’re mad because it’s not this other thing.”

Merlin Mann (speaker, podcaster, tech guy) interview. Interesting thought on what to focus on...

It can be very frustrating to keep sucking at something without realizing that it’s not the thing you should be trying to get better at. It’s like when our parents used to tell us as kids, “There is something that you don’t even realize you’re good at,” or, “People like you because of this, but you’re mad because it’s not this other thing.” Part of successfully growing up is letting go of unrealistic ideas that stop us from recognizing something else we’re good at and might enjoy more than what we’re doing now. There could be something 10 times greater than what you’re doing, but you don’t realize it because you’re fixated on the thing you feel like you should be doing.

Fixation is good. Until it blocks out your vision of the bigger picture and alternate paths.

Last HOT SOUP show of the year

Last HOT SOUP show of the year is Tuesday (Dec 17). We're off for the holidays and then return on Jan 7. The lineup:

Reese Waters (Letterman)
Dan St Germain (Comedy Central)
Nate Fridson (Rooftop)
Chris Laker (JFL)
Taylor Ketchum (Rooftop)
Matt Ruby (MTV)
...and more!

Details.

The intersection of art/commerce/PR and making money off what ya do

Smart piece, by the founder of a denim label, on the intersection of art/commerce/PR and making money off what ya do: Ten Lessons from a Maker [via JF].

I) No one knows you exist.

You make a great product. But the world isn’t holding its breath waiting for you. It doesn’t know who you are. It doesn’t know you even exist. Currently, in the pecking order, you are at the bottom. It’s nothing personal. Everyone starts here.

You will have to make your reputation. You have will have to gain peoples attention. You will have to be as good at selling your product as you are making it. It is your job to get people to know you are on the planet.

II) You are not an artist.

You make things. You make things in order to sell them. The difference between you and an artist is you can’t wait years to be discovered.

You have to make what people want to buy. This is commerce. This is not art.

Selling is good. Employing people is good. Having apprentices is good.

Makers are here to make. Makers are here to sell - Van Gogh had to wait till he died before he sold his first painting. You can’t.

Sales after you die don’t count.

III) Make something that people want to buy.

Time is your most valuable resource. Spending your time making something that no one wants is one of the best ways I know to waste your life, and also to kill your business. So before you start, work out what people want. Work out why they will buy your product over your rivals. Work out what sets you apart.

One good way to make sure people want what you have to make is to do it better than anybody else. Another good way is to design it more beautifully than your rival. But the best way, is to do something that no else is doing. And do it so well, they don’t even try to copy you.

I know, I know...you're an artist and you shouldn't have to deal with this stuff. But maybe this is just part of being an artist now?

And speaking of makers, this is a beautiful short about a master woodworker in Eureka, CA. It goes deep. [via JK]

Wings or a gourmet meal?

Mike Birbiglia interview. He's asked, "How does it feel different to you, performing in that more personal style and with a purpose with more at stake?"

I wanted to pick my favorite things about one-person shows and my favorite things about standup comedy and merge them into a thing that is personal and, hopefully, knock on wood, as funny as a regular comedy album, but then also leads up to a point and has like an emotional weight to it in that, in some ways, I’m kind of giving something to the audience...

I always think of it as I like serving a full meal for the audience, as opposed to, like, chicken wings. That’s what I think of jokes — they’re chicken wings or pizza or ice cream or something. I love those things; I’d be the first to line up for all of those foods, but if a chef can deliver you a full meal, that to me is sort of euphoric. And that’s how I want people to feel about it. I want people to feel satiated from it. And I want it to kind of simmer in them. For them to be thinking about it the next day, like, “Oh, remember when we watched that thing?” [Laughs.] That’s really the hope.

I like the wings vs. a full meal analogy. Do you want to give 'em something fast and greasy? Or do you want to give 'em a gourmet meal they'll remember down the road? Both have their pros and cons. Also, it'd be weird if chefs had to prove they could cook wings first before they're allowed to do a gourmet meal. 'Cuz that's what it feels like with standup.

Johnny Cash and how people admire vulnerability

Interesting bit from this review of new book about Johnny Cash's life. It talks about Cash's late career comeback.

“Part of [Rick] Rubin’s genius,” Mr. Hilburn says, “was that he didn’t simply portray Cash as a rebel. He wanted to break through the public image of Cash as a superhero by capturing his human side — the struggle and the pain and the grit. Says Rubin, ‘When I asked artists what they admired about him, that’s what they often mentioned — that vulnerable, hurt aspect, the man who wouldn’t give up.’ ”

Cash persevered through heart surgery, neurological problems, a damaged jaw and failing eyesight and even continued to record music after the death of his beloved June in May 2003. He died four months later; by then, according to one estimate, doctors had him on some 30 medications.

His son, John Carter, later said: “I believe the thing about Dad that people find so easy to relate to is that he was willing to expose his most cumbersome burdens, his most consuming darknesses. He wasn’t afraid to go through the fire and say: ‘I fell down. I’ve made mistakes. I’m weak. I hurt.’ But in doing so, he gained some sort of defining strength. Every moment of darkness enabled him to better see the light.”

Interesting way to look at it: Admitting weakness is displaying strength. People admire that level of honesty – and your ability to overcome struggles.

Slut-shaming, gender essentialism, misandry, normative, gaslighting, etc.

I've figured out what slut-shaming means. But I'm still rather cloudy on a lot of the other terms used at "men are bad" posts I see online. Terms like gender essentialism, misandry, normative, gaslighting, etc.

Part of the goal here is to reach men and change their behavior, right? Because relying so heavily on terms that can only be understood if you took a Women's Studies class at a liberal arts college can't be the most effective way to do that. When a regular dude sees language like this, it's easy for him to think, "I've never even seen that word. This ain't for me. I'm outta here."

Femijargon builds a wall. It creates a we-agree-with-each-other cocoon for women. But it significantly reduces the chance of a teachable moment for men.

The real challenge is to explain gender issues while using simple, clear language that everyone can understand. Do that and guys might actually pay attention and examine their own behavior. And that'd be a healthy thing.

(AND THAT IS HOW I DEFINE MANSPLAINING!)

Lockdown

Post by Matt Ruby.