Very true. I heard of a struggling young stand-up who noticed that, after the comedy club closed, the other comics would sit around drinking and yelling out numbers: “18”; “39”; “52”… and each yelled-out number would usually get a laugh. But by far the biggest laugh was after a comic yelled out “47!”.
The perplexed young comedian asked an older, more experienced comedian who was sort of his comedy mentor “what’s up with the numbers and the laughing?” His comedy mentor explained that those comics repeat the same jokes over and over to each other so often that they decided to just assign numbers to the jokes to save time.
So a couple weeks later, when the comics are sitting around drinking and telling number-jokes again, the young comic sees his chance to get in good with the other guys, and yells out “47!” But there wasn’t a laugh to be had. Crickets. He asks his comedy mentor what went wrong, since the joke killed the last time.
Then a guy yells out “22!” and the place erupts. Everyone cracks up, a couple people roll off their chairs they’re laughing so much, and shouting over the raucous guffawing, and the young guy asks “WHY are they laughing so much?”
I saw a youtube clip of Dave Chapelle where after the show he chatted from the stage, taking questions from the audience.
One person asked Chappelle what advice he would give to a newbie comic.
Dave asked him “have you done standup before?” The guy said “not yet”.
So Chappelle’s answer was:
"Well maybe you should go to a hospital and watch some heart surgeons at work. Look over their shoulders and say, “yeah, I could do that , Can I start tomorrow?”
I’ve heard comedians on podcasts say that it takes about 10 years to develop one’s unique comedy voice and really get good at the craft. That is almost as long as pre-med, med school and a residency.
(Or maybe it’s just something comics tell newbies to scare them off )
I think a lot of people have the passing “Hey, I’m funny - I could be a comedian!” thought, myself included. But I know darn well that having a couple of good original jokes is still a long, long way from being able to even get laughs at open mike night, let alone make some money at it.
Being a stand-up looks to me like an absolutely soul-destroying profession. If you can’t even come up with enough material on your own to start out, you ain’t gonna make it.
I will recommend the documentary Dying Laughing as a decent behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like doing stand-up. Even the successful ones bomb occasionally in a big and painful way.
There’s also the fictional series Crashing about just starting out comedians with many real standups playing semi fictional versions of themselves. It’s excellent.
It’s not even that, the jokes are the therapy that specific unsettled mind needs. It’s not just what they’ve made, the Standup Comedy act is essentially stewing in self reflection.
It would be like a culinary student looking to hon their craft is asking us the best place to buy pie.
Tangent but, since there are so many pros and semi-pros in the thread, I’m curious how you count “jokes”? E.g.:
I feel like, when I hear a professional routine that, usually, they’re telling some story and that story has some personal moments and ultimately a punchline. You might get a minute, a minute thirty, out of one story.
I can imagine that it’s hard to come up with 60 minutes or even 5 minutes of personal stories that follow that pattern. But 25 jokes per 5 minutes would be a joke every 12 seconds. That doesn’t match my experience. It seems like it would be more like 4ish jokes in that timeframe, other than maybe one quickie about your name/former occupation.
Or do beginning comedians need to start with a more traditional “joke you could find on the web” sort of format and move up to the larger stories as they find their pace?
I’ve heard stand-up comics say that bombing on the way up is actually necessary to becoming a great comedian.
Not just for the obvious reason, that it thickens your skin and toughens you up, but it’s possible to never bomb by sticking to safe, middle-of-the-road material that will always get some laughter. But you can only really develop your own unique comic voice by pushing your comedic boundaries and not being afraid to fail.
No, they all tell jokes, in the sense that term is meant in professional circles. All standups tell many, many jokes, wov\en in to the stories and tales and patter. (Well, a very few, like Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg, just tell one liners.)
In standup, a joke is any setup followed by one of more punchlines. It may be within a story, but it is still a joke, and a big part of learning to be a good comedy writer is maximizing your joke-to-words ratio.
I’m wondering where you think you are going to be booked to do a headliner gig as an unknown who has a couple of open mics under your belt. An hour set is a headliner set.
You could have a decent hour but you would never get to do it unless you pay for it yourself. No one is booking an unknown even as an opener. You have to make connections through open mics along with having a decent 5 minutes.
Or just put yourself on YouTube and hope people watch. There have been some who put themselves in front of a brick wall, pretended to be in a club and added a laughtrack.
I was referring to a stand-up of one-liners in the Henny Youngman/Rodney Dangerfield style, the kind created by jokes from a writer, the stuff the OP was referring to at the time. Stories are a different kind of humor.
Stories are much more difficult to write for someone else. A good joke writer can tune a one-liner to the style and presentation of the teller. Stories have to be in the teller’s voice. (Comic stories: plays and monologues are also different animals.)
One of the best sets I ever saw was from Whitney Brown. (The SNL “I’m A. Whitney Brown. Someday I hope to the The Whitney Brown” guy, that most perfect match of one-liner to personality.)
He wasn’t in a club. As a remember it, the venue was like a hotel room. A small grouping of chairs around him sitting. He told one very long story after another. They were riveting and hilarious and to a fine point. Sheer brilliance.
If you’re brilliant you can get away with almost anything. (Andy Kaufman) But brilliant comics start by knowing something special.
That introspective anecdotal form is one style of stand up but it is hardly the only one. There are plenty of “the best” comedians whose sets are essentially a string of satirical observations or dead-pan jokes. Sometimes the jokes aren’t even all that objectively funny; it is the delivery that makes them so.
That’s a little too much Rupert Pupkin for my tastes. Maybe get a job driving a taxi instead.
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