Wired: What, for you, is the toughest kind of audience to make laugh?
Neal Brennan: Black audiences are probably the toughest for me to make laugh. I’ve gotten pretty good at performing for them, but it’s still a challenge. The level of performance has to be higher. “Dry” doesn’t really work for them. They demand energy. I do racial material, so it needs to be nuanced and smart and true. And they will eat you up if they smell that you’re nervous.
Wired: Can you give an example of when one of your jokes failed badly? Can you explain why it failed?
Brennan: Last night I tried a joke about Irish people. I made the observation that every country on Earth has their own cuisine, their own restaurants. Irish don’t have restaurants; all we have are bars. And we don’t even make our own beer — except for one, Guinness — and we won’t even bother serving it cold, because we consider refrigeration too festive.
You may be thinking that this joke should have worked, and I would agree with you. The reason it didn’t is because I didn’t give it any setup. I didn’t say that I don’t like being Irish because we’re depressing and generally alcoholic. I’m going to do the joke again tonight with that setup. Hopefully, it will work.
Wired: What is the worst heckling you’ve ever experienced? How do you handle hecklers?
Brennan: I did a show about a year ago. At this point, I was a fairly experienced comic. I went on late in a predominately black/Latin room on the Lower East Side in New York City. I was pretty nervous for the set, as I am the first time I go on anywhere. I walk onto the stage, and some kid in the audience yells out, “Yo, are you scared?” Most of the audience didn’t hear him, and I ignored him. But he was right. I was scared. And he could tell. And then I was scared and embarrassed. The set was a C-plus, at best.
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