# Are (successful) stand-up comedians exceptionally intelligent as a rule? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 31, 2009, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139 "2009-12-31T03:17:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/21 "2009-12-31T14:14:46Z")
I havent time just now for a full answer, but I wonder if the OP has ever seen QI, a show that illustrates just how intelligent many comedians can be. My own quick WAG, I think the ability to deal with hecklers requires at the very least a sharp wit, which wouldnt be a terrible indicator of at least some intelligence. I would think that slow-witted, genuinely dumb stand-ups simply wouldnt survive in comedy to any high level, even taking into account those whose “act” is to play dumb. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/22 "2009-12-31T14:35:38Z")
To do stand up you have to have a different way of looking at things. Does that make one exceptionally intelligent? Who knows? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/23 "2009-12-31T14:57:35Z")
> [@Arkcon](#): > > Bobcat Gothwait, for example, seemed to just screech his act, back in the day. Now, he may have worked at perfecting the character, and he may be a prolific writer of comedy skits for stage and screen, and maybe some movie stars aren’t – but I don’t know if I’d rush to him, or Jerry Seinfeld, for political opinions, or the ethical considerations of a new technology, or the social impact of a new astronomical discovery. I dunno, [in this interview](http://www.louisville.com/content/bobcat-goldthwait-talks-normal-voice-about-his-embarrassing-body-work-self-inflicted-gunshot) he sounds pretty perceptive and on top of the implications of new media & new technology. See, that’s what I mean – Bobcat looked like he was a screeching moron, but how much thought went into that act? ---
**Author:** ![Crawlspace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Crawlspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crawlspace)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/24 "2009-12-31T15:20:12Z")
Hm, the hamsters must have eaten my post last night. I don’t think successful stand-ups are any more or less likely to be highly intelligent than successful people in other fields. They are going to distribute along a bell curve that peaks slightly to the right of normal, and for every high IQ outlier (Greg Giraldo went to Columbia University then Harvard Law) there is going to be a an idiot (Jim Carrey latched onto Jenny McCarthy’s autism theory coattails). What distorts our perspective of them is that we only see the ~45 minutes of gold that they were able to separate from thousands of hours of dross. Then they go on interviews and do panel (performing their act in the context of a conversation). What’s more, some even admit to being dumb: [Brian Regan - Stupid in School](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxenUzZPFiQ) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/25 "2009-12-31T16:41:43Z")
Woody Allen was probably the most intelligent stand-up ever. Yet, he started writing jokes professionally in high school and barely attended college. Failing at college gave him a knockout line that no other stand-up even today would use. “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” Yet he became the most successful stand-up of his day because he studied how far he could push his intelligence into his comedy. He built up a persona that would be instantly recognizable. “Woody Allen” was at most a caricature of the real him but that persona was an icon in the tradition of Groucho Marx and W. C. Fields. That’s an older tradition that few comics follow these days, but it worked for him. Stuart Hemple could and did run a Woody Allen comic strip for many years playing off that persona. And that persona could say incredibly intelligent things and yet balance it out with sex jokes and self-deprecation that would connect with an audience. A lot of Woody’s lines could be done by any comedian, and get at best a mild chuckle. They worked because he knew how to create himself. “I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.” “I failed to make the chess team because of my height.” That’s why it’s hard to gauge the intelligence of comedians from their acts. Their acts are acts. They have to connect with the drunken boors that Gallagher mentions as well as the smart hip crowd. I was going to write college crowd, but while smart comics built their careers on colleges in the 50s and 60s - Robert Klein, George Carlin - I’m not sure that’s true any more. You do have to be exceptionally facile with words. That correlates with intelligence, but isn’t the same. I know many writers who are incredibly facile with words but moderately intelligent at best. The vast majority of people aren’t facile with words in that way and automatically consider anyone who is to be intelligent. It ain’t so, Joe. ---
**Author:** ![dhkendall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a9adbd/32.png) [@dhkendall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhkendall)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/26 "2009-12-31T18:25:53Z")
I’ve been a standup comedian off and on for the past 20 years (first time on stage was 20 years and 3 days ago), and I also consider myself intelligent, so there you go. I am also nowhere _ **near** _ “successful”, so, there you go. FWIW, I agree with most of the stuff in this thread, especially about the “private lives of comics”. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/27 "2009-12-31T20:01:34Z")
> [@bucketybuck](#): > > I havent time just now for a full answer, but I wonder if the OP has ever seen QI, a show that illustrates just how intelligent many comedians can be. Or **Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me** , the NPR quiz/game show. A number of their panelists are comedians, and they’re very quick and funny. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/28 "2009-12-31T20:14:58Z")
I wonder if comedians who are good at improv are more intelligent than those that happen across a schtick and milk it. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/29 "2009-12-31T22:21:31Z")
I don’t know about comedians necessarily being intelligent in any way that you’d notice in everyday life. But being a successful comedian (assuming we’re talking about those that write and develop their own material) does call for some creative mental quirks that are rare. Some are good at observing things in a new way, others can devise interpretations and connections that the rest of us tend to miss. And they all necessarily have very strong communication skills, in the sense of knowing how to express an idea in the most efficient way possible. Alexander Pope put it quite nicely: “True wit is nature to advantage dressed / What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed”. Okay, so he wasn’t using ‘wit’ quite the way we would use it today, but it’s still an astute observation that applies to a lot of modern-day comedy. ---
**Author:** ![lissener](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lissener/32/6139_2.png) [@lissener](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lissener)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2009, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139/30 "2009-12-31T22:31:08Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > I dunno, [in this interview](http://www.louisville.com/content/bobcat-goldthwait-talks-normal-voice-about-his-embarrassing-body-work-self-inflicted-gunshot) he sounds pretty perceptive and on top of the implications of new media & new technology. See, that’s what I mean – Bobcat looked like he was a screeching moron, but how much thought went into that act? World’s Greatest Dad, written and directed by Goldthwaite, is my current pic for best movie of the year. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-successful-stand-up-comedians-exceptionally-intelligent-as-a-rule/523139.md?page=1)