Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait

Bobcat Goldthwait: I have a blue collar background so my whole thing is actually trying to go out and do a show for people, you know? I mean, it sounds corny and stuff but if you're there to see me I try to work really hard. Now if I end up on a bill with other comics then I don't mind screwing around. You know what I mean. On Comic Relief I would dress up as Christ and do magic tricks, you know, "Water to wine, wine to water, tap the deck, and back to rice again." And I was The Amazing Christo and stuff. That's an example of me just having fun. But if you come out to see my show I am going to work really hard. I mean, you don't want to disappoint people that have actually paid to see you. 

Joe Rogan: I feel the exact same way and I know what you're saying about, "It sounds kinda corny." But its admirable. That's the relationship, that's how its supposed to be. They're paying and you wanna do the best fucking possible job you can. Just the fact that you're asking people to pay to hear you talk sounds ridiculous.

BG: You gotta work really hard. But my friend John Evens and I always say this and its kind of true... Unfortunately in comedy, you're trying to keep the dumbest person in the room occupied. You know what I'm saying?  

Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait / aprox 1:48:00

Louis C.K.: "I have an insane amount of power over the audience"

"Stand up is crazy because I know what I'm going to say, and they don't know," he said in an interview for Elvis Mitchell's "The Treatment" Wednesday on Los Angeles station KCRW. "They are just sitting there, listening. So I can take a second because I know I'm about to ruin your life with this material."

He said he performs the same trick on "Louie," which he writes, directs and stars in. One of the show's trademarks is its willingness to go for long stretches without jokes.

"If I'm slowing things up a little bit, it's because I know the next scene is going to be an assault on your senses," he said.

Louis C.K.: "I have an insane amount of power over the audience" / August 22, 2012 / by Tim Molloy

Selene Luna

Punk Globe: Have you had any really bad shows?

Selene Luna: Ha! Yes, of course! Bad shows are learning moments for performers. I did a comedy festival in Maine last summer where I completely bombed. I simply wasn’t connecting with the audience, and that happens sometimes. I was tortured about the experience for months. I had the opportunity to return to Maine this January where it was much of the same audience. This time, my set went great and felt thoroughly redeemed. My work was simply better because I learned from previously bombing.

Selene Luna Interview from Punk Globe / Saturday, May 12, 2012

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Accidental Bear: What’s the best excuse you have ever come up with for calling in sick to work?

Selene Luna: Wow, it’s probably been like 15 years. Well, in showbiz nobody calls in sick, that’s like a foreign concept. Let me clarify, people think it’s all glamorous, but it’s not. There is no human resources, sick days, no calling in sick, there are no perks like that. It’s privileges to be working and nobody fuck with it.

Selene Luna Has a Passion For Bears and Her Spunky Career / accidentalbear.com

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Adam Lawton: Being involved in both standup comedy and acting is there one type of performance that has been more of a challenge than the other?

Selene Luna: I will do whatever I can get my hands on. To be honest it’s all equally challenging. As far as gratification goes I get the most gratification from performing live on stage. I love theater and live performance. That is my number one passion. Both types of performance are challenging and require tenacity and leather skin.

Selene Luna chats about her career and working with Margaret Cho / By Adam Lawton / May 18, 2012 

Comedy and Everything Else Episode 137: Jimmy Pardo

Jimmy Dore: Its just that thing that we’re doing is very… in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, “It’s amazingly delicate.” People have no idea how delicate comedy is, or even just performing. You know, and to do it at a certain level. You know it’s not just about doing it, we want to do it at a certain level… and the little things that can screw it up. And I don’t think its being a diva. Instead, comedians have such a trial-by-fire… we have everything thrown at us.

Jimmy Pardo: Everything is by fire.

JD: Yeah, everything. My wife Stef (Zamorano), who comes from the sketch world – she was at Acme, and when she comes to some gigs, stand up gigs, her mind is blown at how people act… there’s no reverence for the stage. There’s, you know, people on stage taking pictures before the show, or that kind of shit. Its not like Bill Cosby is going to sit down on the chair and everybody is going to….

JP: No, you’re right. “Hey its your birthday, get up there and take a picture.”

JD: And they’ll come up to you, “Could you fuck with…” This isn’t a carnival. This isn’t a side show. But people think that. Because when comedy is done well it looks effortless.

Comedy and Everything Else Episode 137: Jimmy Pardo / aprox 1:14:00

(thanks Mark)

George Carlin's Last Interview

George Carlin: You know, you get 2500 people, acting as a single organism: the audience is a single organism and it’s you and it. And to have that feeling of mastery up there—it’s an assertion of power: here I am, I have the microphone, you came here for this express purpose. You’re sitting not in tables at nightclubs with waiters and glasses, you’re seated all facing forward in order to enjoy this and here I am, and wait till you hear this! There’s nothing like it in my experience that I could aspire to. It has as much a payoff as writing, which has a big payoff.

Jay Dixit: So, sitting in front of a computer, “Wait till they hear this, this is great material.” What’s the difference between that and actually standing on stage hearing the audience roaring with laughter?

GC: The difference is, at the computer you can stop, think back, think forward, look around, turn the page as it were, you can see the whole world all at once. On stage you’re only in a single moment ever—your mind can hear what you just said. This is a funny thing that happens for me: when I’m up there doing something I’ve memorized perfectly, and it has pauses in it—and of course the laughs are all the pauses. As you’re going along, you’re thinking of what you’re saying, you want to give it the proper vocal values, so you are kind of thinking about it, not reaching for the words, but kind of thinking about them. You’re also aware of the echo of what you just said, and whether it worked or not, and what that might mean. It’s all part of the trigonometry, I guess. And then there is the faint anticipation of what comes next. 

It’s like the feeling of conducting an orchestra. It’s like conducting an orchestra, this group of people who already like you, predisposed to appreciate you, at your service, at you’re command, and you’re just waving the baton and bringing them in, leading them forward and it’s just a nice kind of feeling.

George Carlin's Last Interview / Psychology Today / Published on June 23, 2008

Born Standing Up

The new physicality brought an unexpected element into the act: precision. My routines wove the verbal with the physical, and I found pleasure trying to bring them in line. Each spoken idea had to be physically expressed as well. My teenage attempt at a magician's grace was being transformed into an awkward comic grace. I felt as though every part of me was working. Some nights it seemed that it wasn't the line that got the laugh, but the tip of my finger. I tried to make voice and posture as crucial as jokes and gags. Silence, too, brought forth laughs. Sometimes I would stop and, saying nothing, stare at the audience with a look of mock disdain, and on a good night, it struck us all as funny, as if we were in on the joke even though there was no actual joke we could point to. Finally, I understood an E. E. Cummings quote I had puzzled over in college: "Like the burlesque comedian, I am abnormally fond of that precision which creates movement." Precision was moving the plot forward, was filling every moment with content, was keeping the audience engaged.

- Steve Martin

Steve Martin / Being Funny: How the pathbreaking comedian got his act together

Steve Martin / Born Standing Up

The Joe Rogan Experience: Podcast #174

Joe Rogan: Well that bit was the only bit that, in the history of my act, where I had to change my act because of the bit… twice! Once I had to change my act because of the bit because it was bombing so bad I thought there was no… nowhere it was going to get good. This bit is going to eat me… I gotta get rid of it. Its fucking me up… sometimes you commit to a good idea and the good idea somewhere along the line, along the development process, falls apart. And then its not funny anymore but you’re still committing to it so you have to do this bit and while you’re doing this bit no-one’s laughing and its just weird.

And then somewhere along the line I realized that what I was doing was… The bit was about watching tigers fuck and it makes you feel like so inadequate… when you watch these wild predators and they’re just fucking on television and there’s no warning about it. And I realized that the only way… what I’m doing right now is I’m explaining how these tigers are fucking and the people are not feeling it… they’re not feeling it.

What I gotta do is  be the tiger. You gotta be that tiger. You gotta throw yourself  into that thing where he’s fucking and you know I forget the words to the bit but you know the point of it was that it was so primal that you know there was, there was nothing, no…

Eddie Bravo: Your tiger voice is amazing.

JR: I just decided… You gotta think like you’re an animal. I mean, I think its… look, the narrow perception of that animal must be pretty fucking simple, “Fuck, Kill, Sleep… that’s the menu” that’s part of the bit and that’s what I was thinking, like when if you’re thinking like a tiger there’s not a whole lot of variables going on.

Then I worried about politics and shit. They’ve got laser beam focus on fucking and killing. And they’re giant. You know, you gotta think like that. Then the bit became so strong that I had to put it at the end. Because I put it in the middle because it was dying, you know, I would do it and it would eat a dick and then I would still have my good stuff to pull myself out and maybe I could joke around a bit, “Well it was pretty funny to me when I was writing it, heh heh heh” and then I’d pull myself out of it.

But then it got to a point where I couldn’t leave it in the middle because it was just slaying. Once I figured out how to be the tiger, and I would do this violent fuck thing where I’d throw the fucking stool down and roar… (editors note: listen to the podcast to hear Joe Rogan growl like a tiger)

The Joe Rogan Experience: Podcast #174 / aprox. 2:06:00

Born Standing Up

In a college psychology class, I had read a treatise on comedy explaining that a laugh was formed when the storyteller created tension, then, with the punch line, released it. I didn't quite get this concept, nor do I still, but it stayed with me and eventually sparked my second wave of insights. With conventional joke telling, there's a moment when the comedian delivers the punch line, and the audience knows it's the punch line, and their response ranges from polite to uproarious. What bothered me about this formula was the nature of the laugh it inspired, a vocal acknowledgment that a joke had been told, like automatic applause at the end of a song.

A skillful comedian could coax a laugh with tiny indicators such as a vocal tic (Bob Hope's "But I wanna tell ya") or even a slight body shift. Jack E. Leonard used to punctuate jokes by slapping his stomach with his hand. One night, watching him on "The Tonight Show," I noticed that several of his punch lines had been unintelligible, and the audience had actually laughed at nothing but the cue of his hand slap.

These notions stayed with me until they formed an idea that revolutionized my comic direction: What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.

-Steve Martin

Steve Martin / Being Funny: How the pathbreaking comedian got his act together

Steve Martin / Born Standing Up

Fitzdog Radio: Merrill Markoe

Merrill Markoe: I heard this scary thing on this podcast that I was on yesterday. They said that guys get on stage now, and I haven’t been to clubs lately, so I’m…  but I mean really lately… He said they just get on stage now and read their tweets off their phones.

Greg Fitzsimmons: Really?

MM: And I just thought, you mean is there no place, not even on stage, where you’re not staring at your phone? You’re telling me you even, when you get on stage, you’re just gonna stand there and stare at your phone? That sounds like, I, I would kill myself if I were in the audience and a comic got up and just started scrolling on his phone…

GF: But that’s what I’m saying Alternative Comedy has turned into… Its like literally like, “I’m not trying… I’m just talking.”

MM: Well who needs that?

Fitzdog Radio: Merrill Markoe / aprox 00:51:01