I write jokes by talking to myself, out loud, in my car or on the streets of Philadelphia. Yes, I look like a crazy person. I don’t care. My best jokes weren’t written in my head, they were spoken out loud over and over until something started to click.
This process initially felt weird to me, mostly because I was so used to writing scripts and essays for school. I would sit at a computer, bang out a few words at a time, and read it back the next day. But writing for stand-up is different. The words you’re writing are meant to be heard, not read. As a result, I usually need to hear a joke out loud to tell if it’s working or not.
This process of hearing a joke out loud also makes me worry about how fun it is to listen to my jokes. Even beyond the content, I want people to be entertained by my choice of words, my pacing, and my cadence. I have a phrase in one of my jokes, “metropolis of equality.” Say it out loud. You hear that parallel emphasis on the second syllable? That’s the sort of thing I love, when the words just sound good together. Yes, I’m conveying a funny message, but I think jokes are funnier and more memorable when you find those little hooks that stick in the minds of your audience.
Driving and walking while I write also gives me the opportunity to divide my mind. My lower level brain is focused on a simple physical task, allowing my creative ideas more space to breathe. There’s a reason why writer’s rooms are full of tennis balls and stress relievers; it’s easier to focus on a creative task if you’re also occupied with something simple, repetitive, and physical that is totally unrelated to your brainstorming goals.
I recently listened to an interview with Donald Glover on The Sound of Young America. Donald, if you’re not familiar, was a writer for 30 Rock for a few years before becoming a costar on the excellent show Community. Basically, he left the best job in the world to take the other best job in the world.
This is why Donald is so frustrating. On one hand, he is immensely talented and deserves every bit of fame and success that he receives. In fact, whenever I get discouraged by comedy, I can point to Donald to prove to myself that on some level, Hollywood is a meritocracy where talent is rewarded. On the other hand, I am deeply, deeply jealous of him.
Part of my jealousy stems from the way in which he seamlessly transitioned from college life into professional success as a writer for the best show on television. He’s living the dream, and the description of his hiring on TSOYA certainly reinforces this idea. As Donald tells it, he just got an email from the producer of 30 Rock asking to see some of his material. So Donald replied that night with two spec scripts and a bunch of his sketches, and he was hired almost immediately.
When I hear that story, it sounds like a classic overnight success, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone. But it couldn’t. Because Donald had two spec scripts just sitting on his hard drive. Two spec scripts that were good enough to impress the best writers on television. Sure, he got a great opportunity. But he only succeeded because he was ready.
And that’s the problem for me. Because I don’t have two spec scripts. I don’t even have one. If I got that email today, I would be absolutely unprepared to impress anyone with my writing skills.
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I am terrified that when opportunity knocks, I’m going to get caught with my pants around my ankles. Donald Glover comes correct, and that’s why he’s successful and I’m not. Yet.
A lot of white comics in Philadelphia never go to the Laff House. These comedians will trudge over to Helium every Tuesday for a 1 in 6 chance of getting stage time, but when Wednesday rolls around they pass up a much better shot at the other major club in the Philadelphia area. Why? Because it’s a black room. Not that you hear that excuse, at least not explicitly. Usually it’s just some comment about how the crowds tend to be rowdier. You know, the urban crowds.
Mostly, I think that white comics don’t play black rooms because they don’t have to. To be honest, it’s easier to just hit the white rooms and hone your act in places where you feel comfortable. Black comedians don’t have that luxury, unfortunately. Sure, there are plenty of comedians making money solely on the black circuit, but if a black comic wants true mainstream (read: white) appeal, he’s gotta play the white clubs. He’s gotta make sure his jokes are funny outside of his own comfort zone. This, in my opinion, is why so many of the all-time great comedians (Cosby, Pryor, Murphy, Rock) are black. In order to cross over, they had to be really, really funny.
There’s no reason why a white comic can’t use the same method to improve his craft. Bill Burr has been working black and white rooms for years, and anyone who’s seen him over the past few years can tell how gut-wrenchingly funny it’s made him.
Seriously, white guys. What does it say about your comedy if you’re only funny to people who look just like you?
You guys remember this? How about this? Oregon Trail? Original Nintendo? That cartoon about the turtles? That one commercial?
Familiarity can be a powerful smokescreen in comedy. You reference something from your childhood, the crowd starts laughing in recognition. But when you step offstage, the crowd doesn’t think “That guy was hilarious!” They think “I gotta look up that commercial on Youtube.”
And therein lies the problem. Familiarity doesn’t sustain itself. It’s hollow, fleeting. The empty calories of stand-up. Without a truly funny insight to undergird your joke, you start to sound like Chris Farley. “Remember when we listened to the Beatles? That was awesome.”
A great comedian doesn’t need the audience to be familiar with her subjects to get laughs. A great comedian brings the crowd into her world, describing her memories in a way that lets the crowd share in the fun, even if they never played that video game or saw that movie.
Above is Patton Oswalt’s great bit about Robert Evans’s radio ads for the NFL Network. Those who have heard the bit all remember the amazing torrent of punchlines at the end of the joke (The human rectum is almost nightmarishly elastic!), but pay attention to the first half of the bit. Patton spends two minutes setting the stage, allowing the crowd to catch up on Robert Evans’ history and personality. He invests some stage time on exposition, ensuring that everyone in the crowd is prepped and ready to go when he starts his Evans impression. And most importantly, his set-up is funny. Not punch-your-friend funny, but funny enough to get everyone excited for the avalanche to come.
Robert Evans was the first Patton Oswalt bit I ever heard. At the time, I had never even heard of Robert Evans before, but I didn’t need to. Patton let me in. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know who Angie Dickinson was, I could pick up enough clues from Patton’s imagery and context to get the joke. If Patton Oswalt relied on familiarity in this bit, he would have lost me. Instead, he made me an instant fan.
If you rely on familiarity, you can only tell your jokes to people with your exact same set of reference points. Let the crowd into your world, and you expand your audience immeasurably.
I learned about the First Law of Stand-up Comedy before I even wrote my first joke. Patton Oswalt, no doubt reciting from memory for the thousandth time, told an interviewer that the best way to become a comedian was to get on stage. Just do it. Over and over. Et cetera, et cetera. Since reading this interview, I have seen countless versions of this advice. Paul F. Tompkins has a particularly nice version. For a novice, it’s really powerful and affirming advice, expressed in a manner that demystifies the process of comedy.
But this advice is also deeply, deeply obvious. It works for people, sure. But those are the people who are really searching for some sort of motivational credo, and the First Law meets that need in a tight, Zen-affirmation-of-the-day sort of way. But for the person who has already resolved to be a comedian, it’s not really helpful.
“How do I become a better basketball player?”
“Shoot the basketball at the goal.”
“….sigh…”
The First Law of Stand-up Comedy is good advice. But it’s not particularly insightful. Or rather, it’s insightful on the same level as a yearbook quote. One foot in front of the other and all that. It’s also fundamentally important, much like the First Law of Motion. But you can’t get through AP physics by reciting the latter, and you can’t write a blog about stand-up by reiterating the former.
So, for the purposes of this website, let’s agree that the First Law of Stand-up Comedy is valid, true, and accepted. Feels good, right? Now we can get to some actual discussion.
Hi there everyone, and welcome to my new website. So just what kind of site is this, exactly?
The Long Drive Home is my best attempt to distill my experiences as an aspiring comedian into a series of essays about comedy and the creative process. I want this site to be more than a bunch of disconnected notes about how my set went last night (not great).
So who am I? I am a pretty typical rising comedian. I’ve been on TV, once, but I still have a day job. I have just started looking for road work in earnest, but most nights I do short unpaid sets at bars and comedy clubs. I live in Philadelphia, but I plan to move to Chicago and then to Los Angeles, where everyone ends up anyway.
I know that most people find analyzing comedy to be boring, but to those of us who do care, there is precious little being written online. Most writing about comedy online tends to be journalistic, news-based commentary. Sean at The Comic’s Comic is the best game in town, but he only occasionally digs into the nuts and bolts of jokecraft. The best writing about the craft of stand-up is Matt Ruby’s work at Sandpaper Suit. I love what Matt has done with his site, and I hope to be a welcome complement to his writing.
Essentially, I want this site to reflect the conversations that I have with other comedians about comedy. Analysis, theories of humor, occasional rants against hackery and laziness. Talk to anyone about their passions for long enough, you’re bound to find some insight. So I hope this site captures those snippets of conversations: in the back of the room, at the bar after the show, on the long drive home.
