Does it bother you when an actor known for making comedies decides to try his hand at stand up? No? Well it bothers the fuck out of Brian.
Topics on the day include praise for Robert Mac, the easiest job in America, bombing on purpose, butchering a legend’s act and Comedy Central actually doing something right. Why don’t you go out in the woods somewhere and stop bothering people?
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
Have a great gig , Patrick. Hope you kill.
(…but maybe just lay off cracking any impromptu off-the-cuff jibes about The Jonas Brothers!)
thanks guy’s that means alot. I’ll let you guys know how it goes.
I read the bill burr post eSchmiel put up and i gotta say that it was very entertaining and fascinating. i find it hard to believe Burr worked absolutely clean for like two years. But the part that stuck out most for me is when he talks about people coming up to him after a show when he started working blue and said “You shouldnt do that. It’s not you”. wow, that struck a chord. I’ve always held the principle that my act should reflect who i am as a person(dont know what my current act says about my mindset but it probably is’nt good). But I am shocked when somebody occasionally comes up to me after a show and tell me that I should’nt do such-and-such bit because “it is’nt you”, and i’ve never met them before in my life! How do they have any idea of who i am? I swear it would be infuriating if it was’nt so funny.
You’ll kick that shit dude. I demand a full report after you do it. Don’t spare us any gory little details.
Why do I say things like ‘kick that shit’? I wasn’t even a jock at school.
and away I go…
As Patrick goes on to his, another aspiring comic checks in.
Well I just got back from my first ever stand up gig and by all accounts I think I did pretty good. I’m happy with how I did and it certainly hasn’t put me off. I’ve just listened to my set and did do the classic first timer thing of rambling and talking too fast. I didn’t ‘give permission for them to laugh’ I think is the poncy actor phrase.
I said what I wanted to say and I did get laughs but I think I made the mistake of being too political. I was talking about Sarah Palin and politics and why having a family doesn’t qualify you for President and they weren’t really into it. But hey, that’s my problem.
I’m happy with my performance and I thought my stage presence was great and I didn’t need to look at my notes. The organiser was really keen to have me back. He said just do the same stuff and we’ll put you on a different time.
The reason he said that was that the place was absolutely packed and I thought great. First I was on second then they swapped me to second last. In between this time was two breaks and the main event… this student who had brought all his mates who made up of half the audience and were baying for him. To be fair he was really good but more than 2/3 of them left so the room was pretty dead and hot and etc etc.
I’m already making excuses like a comic! When the emcee came on after me he read out the note that the organiser wrote which said ’not a political audience’ which the audience laughed at. Peons! They just don’t get it! As I say, it wasn’t a swipe, they really wanted me back, I swapped a few numbers and the organiser was just get your name down for one soon.’
I really feel great I’ve finally done it; I feel I have a great springboard to work on.
I’m so happy I’ve finally done it after all that time of procrastinating. It’s a great feeling. I used to act in school and uni but there’s nothing better than having a crowd listening and laughing to what you have written.
…and I’m back. *sigh* well I did’nt win but i honestly dont care becase i went up did my set perfectly and left on a high note. so im surprisingly pleased with myself. the event itself was interesting. the crowd itself was small for an event like this and there was only five comics including myself and not including the MC. all the comics were great. the winners were interesting. one was a guy who has done it for five years and the other was doing it for the first time. i cant say im not a little bit jealous but im not bitter…not yet anyway. so there yah go. i recorded my set and I’m hoping to put it on my site. I’ll let you know if it goes up.
Hey, I’m not sure what the right protocol for posting comments here is, but if it’s a just a question of talking about stand up, then I have a topic, George Carlin and Bill Hicks. Did anyone else, like me, think that towards the end of his career Carlin’s comedy more and more resembled Bill Hicks? I’m not saying he stole from Hicks in a Leary-like fashion, just that Carlin may have, subconsciously, absorbed some of Hicks’ comedy? Maybe it’s ludicrous, but I made a video, showing comedy from different stages in Carlin’s and Hick’s careers in parallel, pointing out their similarities. Here’s the link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJQ2w77Z4wA
By the way, I don’t want to piss off Carlin fans. I think you’d have to be a Carlin fan to know his work well enough to notice its similarity to some of Hicks’ work. I own many of Carlin’s albums. I just wanted to make a good, entertaining and interesting video. I think it’s a shame than many people who love George Carlin don’t know about Bill Hicks; I think if you loved Carlin you’d definitely like Hicks.
I’m pretty sure that I can speak for everyone from the boards that we all know very well who Hicks is. Carlin stealing from Hicks is a ludicrous idea, having the same ideas maybe, but they also came from a similar mindset towards the government. I watched the Inside the Actors Studio episode with Carlin, and his antiestablishment really began in the 70’s with the famous seven dirty words. And since then, he definitely tackled topics, in which he saw hypocrisy. Hicks was very similar, in he held an almost feeling of disgust with society, and with two such brilliant comedians, common thought is obviously going to occur. Yes, some of Carlin’s stuff may sound similar to other people’s jokes. But a lot of people’s stuff sounds like Carlin’s as well- ala gay lisp/jokes and airplane material. With such a vast body of work behind him, I think that there is no doubt that you could find a lot of common thought between a lot of other comedians. If you had perhaps an hour documenting this correlation I might be a little swayed, but Carlin had such a body of work, that there is no doubt that others have had similar thoughts at some point in time, especially someone as brilliant as Hicks.
Oh and patrick I for sure want to listen to your set. Chee.
I have to disagree with Brian’s vitriol against non-comics trying stand-up. There’s this idea of paying dues before you can make any money doing standup, which is true for most people. But could Will Ferrell really do open mics for a few years before spending a few years touring, and finally getting some TV spots and high profile gigs? If Will Ferrell advertised that he’d be farting loudly at a public park for two hours, he’d have 10,000 people there. He can’t follow the standard trajectory (same for Vince Vaughan, Ricky Gervais, etc.) because he’s already too popular. I think what he did (as far as I understand it, was MCing a show full of experienced comics) is the most responsible way possible to get into stand up. All he really skipped was the open mic step. I agree that some people may get a bad idea of stand up from him, but as long as the show involved good comics, they probably got a good experience and he did some work to get people to a live comedy show that wouldn’t have gone otherwise.
I also don’t imagine that you’d propose the opposite, that comics should pay their acting dues before getting in sitcoms or comedy films. Should Jerry Seinfeld have gotten an MFA in acting before acting in his own sitcom?
The corollary of your opinion seems to be that famous non-comics should never try stand up, and that’s a shitty provincial attitude that I disagree with.