As they say: Your Mileage May Vary.
I’m reading The Perfect Amount of Wrong: The Rise of Alt-Comedy on Chicago’s North Side, by Mike Bridenstine. Talk about a limited subject book - the audience for it comprises only the people mentioned in the book and me, and I’m eccentric.
Anyway, the first half of the book is about the tiny little clubs the comics put together in the late 90s/early 2000s because the mainstream comedy world had gotten so stale. They did zillions of open mics, using humor as much to impress each other as to amuse audiences. Think Animal House with everyone loaded on cocaine, eye-gouging, and much more vomiting.
The line I want the OP to think about comes from the chapter The End of the Red Light. The Red Light had no set list, ever. Every night was open mic. Until the last night. The owner decided to reward the people who had performed most. The winner was Bill O’Donnell, a local comedy legend, whose specialty was sticking a toothbrush down his throat and forcing himself to vomit. His picture appeared with the legend “We Salute Your 50th Appearance and 400 stage minutes.”
That’s an average of 8 minutes per appearance, with dozens of appearances necessary in this ratty out-of-the-way location to amass those.
I’m loudly not saying that vomiting is the path to success in stand-up, just that the path is filled with endless application to get even the basic experience with real audiences.
Here’s another quote, about Chris Rock who used to “bomb all the time.”
But the thing is you’d see him bombing at 9:00 at Catch a Rising Star. Then you’d see him bombing at 9:30 at the Comic Strip and then bombing at 10:45 at Stand Up New York. But here’s what you realize in retrospect: he was developing. Not only just developing his art, he was developing the tenacity, that thing you need to pursue it.
The quote is from Dwayne Kennedy, who the author says is one of the two or three modern greats but who never had that tenacity.
One of the reasons why people love comedians is their personality and charisma. The jokes are important, but not enough. They are secondary.
The best comedians have honed their craft over many years of practice. For example, George Carlin, who is my favorite comedian, was not only a genius writer, but also a master performer. He had a confident and sarcastic style that matched his witty and provocative material. People could connect with his confident voice, his urban NYC accent and his cynicism.
It would be hard to imagine anyone else delivering Carlin’s jokes and getting the same laughs. Maybe Bill Burr could do a decent job (with his similar confidence, working-class Boston accent and cynicism), but it would not be the same. Burr’s jokes are tailored to his own experiences and views, just like Carlin’s were.
How about this interminable anecdote?
If they do, they are very close collaborators that have studied the comic carefully and tailored the jokes to the performer. This isn’t someone you find in the classifieds; it is a superfan willing to subjugate their talent to the career of an already successful performer. So how do you get a good joke writer? First, you become a successful performer.
Could be like musicians: one has a songwriting talent but realises they don’t have a good voice or stage presence? Carpenters or Eurythmics come to mind. Not to minimise the talent of Karen or Annie.
Meh. Pretty much telegraphed most of the way through.
OK, I see it’s making a point about stupid arguments about trivial doctrinal points of religion…
Monty Python did it better first.
Multiple Ivor Novello award winner Annie Lennox might disagree with your analysis,
Well, maybe not the best example. Though I did say credit where due, and I sort of get the impression that Stewart was the primary driving force in the early days?
The best Carrot Top joke actually comes at his expense, by Norm Macdonald, when he was on Conan O’Brien’s show alongside Courtney Thorne-Smith.