Copy editor Joe Westerfield reflects on comedy’s petrie dish.
Jamie Malanowski’s discussion with Richard Zoglin about his book, Comedy at the Edge was very interesting—and I’m not just saying that because Jamie’s my boss. The book will soon go up on my shelf next to Phil Berger’s The Last Laugh and Tony Hendra’s Going Too Far, which also cover stand-up comedy in the 1970s, and Betsy Borns’s, Comic Lives, which covers stand-up in the 1980s, as soon as I can get a copy—and a shelf.
I have more than passing interest in the present stand-up comedy scene. I performed stand-up in the late-1990s through September 2001, when something happened. I worked at several New York clubs, a couple of venues in Brooklyn and even a few of talent shows. I’d go anywhere there was an unguarded microphone.
I was particularly taken by Zoglin’s last comment on the state of stand-up today:
“When I go to the clubs in New York, I usually get a little depressed. Everyone seems so similar, and so desperate in their effort to push the boundaries.”
He’s so right. There are many reasons why I failed; foremost among them is that I sucked. But there were comedians who could perform, and their material was good. And they got nowhere. The problem was and remains: Comedy clubs have a lack of infrastructure. There are no middle rungs on the ladder of success, and the bottom rungs have termites.
Not to stoop to stereotypes, but anyone who can keep bringing in audiences at a rate comparable to the open mic–audition system, is probably not the needy, attention-deprived type who can come up with comic material. They are great with people and kind of shallow, and they probably have heads in their freezer.
Stand-up comedy is a blood sport. Killing is good; annihilating is better. And cutting and shaving—of material—is necessary. It’s not something that welcomes weekend warriors. They’ll die out there. Dying is not good. If the clubs want to keep the art—and, in turn, the business—alive, they should look back at what made them great.
In the golden age of club comedy, roughly from the late 1970s to early 1990s, every club had open-mic nights and maybe one audition a month. If memory serves, the Improv in New York had its auditions on every third Sunday. I would walk by on those afternoons and see dozens on wannabes lined up on 44th street, notes in hand, rehearsing for their big moments.
In New York City an aspiring comedian could go to seven or open mics a week and maybe one or two auditions a month. That’s 30 performances before a live—well almost live—audience. One could reword a comedic bit, refine it and shave a syllable here and there to perfect it.
And if you made the regular rotation, that was five nights performing the 1 a.m. slot. Granted you were probably performing for the comedian who had the 1:15 slot, but it was still something. The routine was grueling, but it enabled you to move up in the business. No only could you refine your material. You learned how to work an audience. You earned your chops.
Most if not all of the stand-up comedians you have heard of—Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Larry Miller-came up in the old comedy-club system. I am hard-pressed to name one of similar stature who has come out of the new system. There are good, new comics—the Tina Feys and Steve Carells, and I’m not just singling them out because they are Playboy Interviewees—but they are products of the improvisation-sketch groups—Second City, Upright Citizens Brigade and the like. It’s often good comedy, but it’s not one person alone on stage with a mic.
For a while there was alternative comedy, which might have offered some hope if not for its stated belief that getting too many laughs was a bad thing. Tell any club comedian that you’re getting too many laughs and you’ll be lucky to get off with just a withering look.
None of this really is the clubs’ fault I guess. It’s probably television and the Internet, the usual suspects. The clubs are just trying to pay the bills, but they are being shortsighted. Sooner or later that whole generation of comics brought up on Bringers will come center stage and suck, and people will go elsewhere to get their laughs—like the Party Jokes page.
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