Litsa Dremousis: A couple of years ago, Jerry Seinfeld said something in an interview that I thought made a lot of sense. He pointed out that Greg Kinnear went from stand-up to film and got nominated for an Oscar for As Good As It Gets, but Jack Nicholson couldn’t jump to stand-up. He said that stand-up requires specific skills and a specific personality type, but it’s not like film. A lot of people come to film acting later in the game, but with stand-up, if you can’t do it, you can’t do it.
Demetri Martin: That’s an interesting observation. I think there are so many little hurdles and impediments with stand-up that you’d need to have this insane desire to do it if you didn’t have something that clicked right away, you know? Most people would naturally select themselves out of that. For me, it really helped me redefine failure. When I was younger, I’d get very empirical with myself. “I have a hypothesis about myself. I’ll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I’ll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball.” So I’d try. “Conclusion: I cannot play basketball.” [Laughs] But what you learn is, conclusions are based in time. We live in time. So any definition of success is bound up with time. With other things you can say, “Can I yo-yo? Can I juggle?” Usually you have a pretty small window in which to get your answer. Stand-up is different. You can’t do stand-up for one night and say, “Am I a funny stand-up comedian?” In two months or two years you’ll start to realize it. When I did it that first night, I was nervous because I was like, “Can I be a comedian or not?” And that’s missing the point. It’s more like, “Will I enjoy this?” Because by enjoying it enough, now I have a nice big window. You can suspend judgment and make that hole very big. If I make my window ten days for stand-up, the conclusion is that I failed and that I’m not good at stand-up. If I make it ten years—if I just wait—the conclusion might be something totally different. I think it’s so cool to do things in which you discover the malleability of your own mind.
Demetri Martin: That’s an interesting observation. I think there are so many little hurdles and impediments with stand-up that you’d need to have this insane desire to do it if you didn’t have something that clicked right away, you know? Most people would naturally select themselves out of that. For me, it really helped me redefine failure. When I was younger, I’d get very empirical with myself. “I have a hypothesis about myself. I’ll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I’ll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball.” So I’d try. “Conclusion: I cannot play basketball.” [Laughs] But what you learn is, conclusions are based in time. We live in time. So any definition of success is bound up with time. With other things you can say, “Can I yo-yo? Can I juggle?” Usually you have a pretty small window in which to get your answer. Stand-up is different. You can’t do stand-up for one night and say, “Am I a funny stand-up comedian?” In two months or two years you’ll start to realize it. When I did it that first night, I was nervous because I was like, “Can I be a comedian or not?” And that’s missing the point. It’s more like, “Will I enjoy this?” Because by enjoying it enough, now I have a nice big window. You can suspend judgment and make that hole very big. If I make my window ten days for stand-up, the conclusion is that I failed and that I’m not good at stand-up. If I make it ten years—if I just wait—the conclusion might be something totally different. I think it’s so cool to do things in which you discover the malleability of your own mind.
The Believer / DEMETRI MARTIN [STAND-UP COMIC] / by Litsa Dremousis / February 2006
No comments:
Post a Comment