Good point.
Ack! Yes, I was. I had a show on Friday night. Ah well, next time. 
As for the other responses, yes, I can see how all of those points make sense.
Wordman, no, I don’t have any problem suspending disbelief when I go to a movie or go watch a play. I don’t have to analyze the actor’s performance simply because I’m an actor, any more than anyone else would. But you’re right, maybe that’s the exception to the rule.
However, again, I find myself wondering why more comedians don’t laugh at least a little, to support their peers. Kind of like how, if you were a musician watching a musical performance, you would very likely applaud in the appropriate places, even if you spent much of the show analyzing the musician’s performance. For comedians, laughter is an integral part of the performance. I mean, if the comedian is terrible, fine. But if they’re funny, and they’re doing a good job, I have no difficulty laughing at the jokes.
As for books… one of my favourites is Leading With My Chin by Jay Leno. He describes many times when he and the other “Golden Era” comedians would go see each other’s performances, and would be laughing themselves sick, even though they already had each others’ sets memorized. (According to Leno, if you watch the tape of the first time he appeared on the Tonight Show, you can hear Robin Williams laughing hysterically.)
I think you may be - I can’t not focus on that, and can only transcend when the performance and/or overall sound is stellar. When a guitarist isn’t “on,” or their tone is awful, I focus on that straight away - it can be a pain.
As for why comedians don’t laugh - I am not a comedian insider, so can’t say, but if it is like music, they may simply be so dialed in on the technique stuff that they are distracted from laughing. You cite Jay Leno - the one thing that comes to mind is that he was close friends with those guys back in the day. Are you friends with these comedians you are thinking of? If they see you as an outsider, and they are picking apart your technique, it doesn’t take much to see how they would end up not laughing. That doesn’t mean I agree with their behavior, only that I am not surprised, you follow?
Sure, I can completely see that side of the discussion.
No, I’m actually not even talking about myself in this thread. It’s more a discussion on what I’ve observed as an audience member and comedian sitting in the audience. I’ve seen people go up on stage with a huge crowd of their comedian friends in the audience–close friends, mind you, like what you were saying about Jay Leno–and bomb horribly despite a solid performance of solid material. From where I was sitting, it made no sense. I’ve seen this on several occasions, and after asking around to other comedians, I’ve gotten the response indicated in the OP. Which confused me… but as you said, maybe it’s that some people can’t get out of their head and just enjoy it. (Which is a shame, 'cause laughing is way more fun than overanalyzing. 
)
A person that has unique stuff will make people laugh. I’m not saying you’re not original (especially because I’ve never heard your stuff before) but if a comedian is preying on one theme, you can tend to tell where the jokes are going.
I used to write for a comedian buddy of mine in college.
Yoinks!
I’ll say it again: I’m not talking about whether they’re laughing at ME. I’m actually speaking as an audience member, having witnessed this dozens of times, even when the comedian has been really funny and really original. The other comedians generally sit back, stonefaced. Which, although I understand the whole “they’re analyzing because they’re also comedians”, strikes me as kind of rude and uppity. After all, I’M a comedian, and as such, I laugh MORE. Because a) I love and understand comedy, b) I know how important laughter is as support, and c) Why wouldn’t I?
Luckily for me, I haven’t bombed yet. (I’m sure it’s coming, though, every comedian bombs at some point) But it’s frustrating to see other comedians bomb when they’re actually really good, only because the audience is comprised of stone-faced comics.
There is definitely an air of competition. When my band first got started, there was a well-established other mid-life crisis band in town. They usually got decent crowds. I would go to their gigs and be up front and cheer loudly and praise them during breaks, because it sounds like you and I have a similar mindset about that stuff, Carlyjay. But at my band’s first gig, those guys showed up, stood off to a corner and watched us like hawks. The guitarist didn’t say a word to me and showed no emotion while I was playing. The bass player is a really nice guy and did what you and I do. But it was bizarre for the guitar player to come stake out a spot focus on my playing and not say a word to me…I just assume he felt threatened; whatever.
That’s funny. I’m taking notes as we speak.
You haven’t been at it long have you?
Not really. Only about a year. But I know I’ll bomb soon enough. Won’t make it any nicer, though.
Think of it as a rite of passage.
Gilbert Godfrey and Louie Anderson were on our local morning show about 2 months ago and commented on this exact thing. When Gilbert found something funny he would just think that it was clever. Louie runs a few the of local comedian competitions around here and evaluates it the same way.
CarlyJay’s my sister. I have two other theories you guys might want to consider:
- I went to one of her comedy shows a month or so ago. The other comedians were overwhelmingly dour, depressed, crude and obviously broken human beings, who were basically using the stage to air their personal problems because a therapist is too expensive. Carly was pretty much the only person there who wasn’t a dysfunctional weirdo and whose comedy was not based on “I am a broken human being.”
It may simply be that comedians are unusually likely to be dour, depressed jerks, and Carly is an exception.
- I don’t know about the other shows, but it may simply be at that most comedy shows are really bad, bad enough that even the good comedians are working to a room full of really depressed individuals. The last show of Carly’s I saw, there were two funny acts and five dreadful ones. The guy on before her was so indescribably bad that it sucked all the funny out of the room and took three or four solid gags to get any of the audience back into a funny mood. He couldn’t have been less funny if he’d tried.
This guy had followed a woman who had two minutes of good jokes, the problem being that she was on stage for ten minutes. Her act was all about how she’s a horny middle-aged woman. (This is the topic of choice of 86% of all middle aged female comics, so it wasn’t even an original kind of bad.) She was so joke-free that at one point, to get a rise out of the audience, she just pulled her skirt up and flashed us. It wasn’t part of any other joke; that’s just the only thing she could think of to elicit a reaction. That’s how pathetic it was.
A few comedians prior to her were a man-and-woman sketch troupe. They were onstage for fifteen minutes and I gotta be honest here; if you told me, “Rick, you have two options; either you have to watch their act again, or you have to let a diamondback rattlesnake bite your penis,” I would tell you, “Sir, I need no more time to make my decision; produce your pit viper, and let the cock-chomping begin at once.” It would simply not be possible for me to express in words how bad it was; to this day I am still in a little bit of disbelief that those two idiots actually believed they were funny.
It was just excruciating. And these were people who were actually trained comics; it wasn’t an amateur show. (The amateur show Carly and I went to a few years ago was even worse.) After watching that I think it’s a miracle she could make anyone laugh. Maybe the shows with real comedians are the same?
My actress girlfriend sure does!
Likewise, both as a guitarist and occasional standup comedian - although I lose myself in music more easily. It doesn’t make me incapable of laughing at a comedian who is doing his stuff well.
I think jealousy probably does factor into this, but some people are capable of analyzing and laughing at the same time and some aren’t.
Often true, but I really think Drew Carey was enjoying himself and genuinely laughing hard on “Who’s Line…?” He’s not that good of an actor, and several times it seemed like he really was going to wet his pants, he was laughing so hard.
I suppose I am a comedian, and I have thought about this.
I have a higher standard for laughing, I think, but when someone is funny I laugh really hard. It’s almost like an applause-laughter.
It is mostly originality. Hack stuff doesn’t make me budge because I’ve seen a lot of really great stuff- maybe that makes me callous, but I sure do laugh a lot in a given week, so on the whole I’m doing OK.