So Brian already fucked up his New Years Resolution. Guess it’s time to bury another hooker.
Topics on the day include more hellish new years eve shows, the glory that is the comedy condo, Doing it yourself has become a necessity (and I don’t mean masturbation…although that is also true), Seinfeld’s movie revisited and why festivals ain’t what they used to be. Can someone fix me a hot tottie?
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
Talking about non-comedy open mics. I went to a open mic for a couple weeks during the summer, where I signed up as a comedian, and ended up closing a couple times.
Our open mic was less successful last night then in weeks past. We started the show about 15 minutes late to allow a few more people to come in, but it was really lightly attended compared to previous weeks. By 9:00PM about half the room was full and they finally started to warm up, but it never reached the critical mass to allow a really big night. Most of the comics did reasonably well; it just wasn’t everything we wanted it to be.
Someone said American Idol was having a big night and there was important basketball game, so maybe that was a factor. I know last year we would get a real slow night during the debates or World Series games.
Oh well, a ½ empty room of civilians is still better than doing one of those open mics where it’s all just a bunch of comics staring at the stage waiting for their turn to go up. I had ½ dozen people grab my arm to say how funny I was, so not a bad night really.
I just realized my last post had no content at all. ‘Closing’ (basically last one to go up, and did like 5-8 minutes) was kind of weird, and meant I wasnt really allowed to experiment. I sorta liked it, but wished I actually tried out material, rather than using proven stuff.
Oh and talking about Joel’s thing. I was discouraged by the ‘club’ i was doing an open mic at. I use quotes, because it was in a hotel room which sat literally fifty people max. Anyways, I was encouraged by the manager to perfect five minutes, and THEN start to try stuff out. So I was wondering what you guys thought about that? Getting your tv set perfect versus just developing more solid material.
Mike,
Try not to look at it as an either/or situation. The five minute TV set is kind of a drag. It makes comedy seem much more about editing than writing, which is true, but no one goes into comedy because they feel the overwhelming urge to share their editorial skills with the public at large.
My advice, and I’ve swiped it from other, more successful folks, is to have a standard set and only change up one thing at a time. Put in a new joke, or fuss with the order or something. Keep it enough the same so you can prove your material, but don’t let that keep you from doing something new. Eventually some of the new stuff will work its way into your 5 minutes and the formerly “solid” material might seem half-baked.
Also, there’s lots of ways to do the same material. If you think you have your perfect five minutes, come up with ways to perform it differently. Can you make it seem like its all coming off the top of your head? Can you wink at the artificiality of the set-ups and punchlines? What’s comfortable, what suits your writing?
I’m glad you keep us updated on your development. It’s almost like you’ve been sponsored by BtB.
Hey guys,
Its John[go play in traffic] now going as raven.
back from a nice break, but am certainly glad to be back.
sure hope Brian hasnt fucked the show with a pitchfork (just kidding brother)
anyway – just wanted to stop in and say hi.
Raven
I think getting 5 perfect minutes is a pretty good method when starting off. But you’ll need to develop a greater wealth of material down the line. The thing is, it’ll have to be good material, and if you want to someday have 30 killer minutes you have to start with one killer joke.
What I thought was my “first 5 good minutes” is stuff I don’t even use anymore, so your perception of what ‘good’ is will change over time. But before anything, I had to get the 5 best possible minutes, iron it out, labor over it for awhile, and do my best to kill with it.
You’ll be writing constantly anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about laboring over a five-minute set too much, for reasons already mentioned above. Once you’ve “proven” a bit a few times (not that a bit will always kill everywhere), keep it in your pocket and try new stuff. You can pull out the proven stuff when your heartwarming necrophilia material goes over like a lead Republican.
I have a new blog post up that newer comics might find interesting. In that blog is a link to an even better blog by Mike MacRae that I highly recommend. He’s an impressionist who does what I’ve always wanted more impressionists to do: impressions I haven’t heard before. I’m not a huge fan of impressions, but his Letterman set was kind of refreshing.
Dan–
I’m stoked to check out your blog and MacRae. I think I hate impressionists, but I know that part of it is a West Coast thing. Every hack out here has a “Governator.” I’m sure every region has its fake cross to bear.
Anyone have a most hated impression? Even more than Ah-nold, I think the worst are the third degree ones– I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard an impression of Dana Carvey’s impression of Bush1– and it didn’t even sound like Bush to begin with.
My favorite impression of all-time is probably Eddie Murphy’s impression of Bill Cosby or Michael Jackson. I know that wasn’t the question, but I was incredibly taken aback when I saw both of those from him.
Probably Jon Stewart’s Bush impression confused me the most. It really isn’t THAT good, but I still find myself laughing every time.
My most hated impressions are the usual overdone hack ones , always prefaced with a “Can you imagine if (fill in celebrity’s name) did something you wouldn’t normally expect them to do?” device.
I though Dennis Miller nailed this brilliantly in the below clip:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoKKldS6QI
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My most hated impressions are the usual overdone hack ones , always prefaced with a “Can you imagine if (fill in celebrity’s name) did something you wouldn’t normally expect them to do?” device.
I though Dennis Miller nailed this brilliantly in the below clip:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoKKldS6QI
.
.
My most hated impressions are the usual overdone hack ones , always prefaced with a “Can you imagine if (fill in celebrity’s name) did something you wouldn’t normally expect them to do?” device.
I though Dennis Miller nailed this brilliantly in the below clip:
[url]http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoKKldS6QI[/url]
.
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I think that Bush impression works because its so bad. Bush has become such a caricature over the years that he actually seems like that. I think the same thing happened when Nixon was in office.
Most impressions are, in a way, dated because the voices have to be easily recognizable – Shatner, DeNiro, Pacino, Walken, etc. Not a lot of celeb voices are that distinct, so the same ones keep getting recycled. MacRae does a good Harrison Ford and Vince Vaughn, though. Don’t know that I’d love it for an hour, but it’s different.
I find most impressionists a bit tiresome beyond 5 minutes. Even if the impressions are spot on, their schtick of “Imagine a famous celebrity in an unxpected situation” gets too predictable.
I thought the short Dennis Miller bit below nails the whole subject of Impressionists brilliantly :
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=UEoKKldS6QI
I love MacRae’s Rip Torn, but that might just be because I prefer Rip to pretty much everyone else.
I think my most hated impression, going back to the third-hand thing, is the Asian parent. Always generic, often racist. I know I’ve stood up for Margaret Cho in the past, but as bad as she is now (totally unwatchable reality show, bad dancer) her impersonators are excruciating. Makes me long for fake Dana Carvey.
I don’t do very many voices, and when I do they are pretty accidental, but the crowd always loves it. I hate that about impressions/voices– they are big screaming roadsigns that say “this is the laughing place!”
I feel the same way about laughs from the crowd recognizing something– I have a joke where I mention “Wheel of Fortune” and folks start laughing as soon as I say the name. I should take all the laughs I can get, but does anyone else feel like some shit is just way too cheap?
We had a guy at our club who was frustrated with the” intelligence” of our fairly young room because they didn’t seem to “get” his impressions of Nixon and Kennedy. It might be time to write a new joke. Just my $.02
That said, I’m probably just jealous because I can’t do voices. I think it would be hilarious to have a phone sex line that’s been outsourced to India.
I can’t do voices either, so for the time being I work hard at making do without a lot of act-outs. I do throw in some impressions.
Impressions typically don’t go over very well. I had a student in my comedy class last semester who tried to do them in his final exam routine, and they failed — miserably. Not only did he not sound or act like the person he was trying to emulate, his material was also decidedly not funny. It was one of the few times I’ve taught the class and the student was actually booed while performing his routine for his final exam. Actually, it was the second. The first was a guy whose language and jokes were just obscene, without being funny. I guess two booed off stage out of 10 classes now isn’t that bad. You have about a 1 in 100 chance of getting booed off the stage.