Sorry all of you comedy lovers out there, it’s time to get a dose of overly critical anger as Mike stops by to review the new HBO series Down + Dirty. Here’s a shocker, he doesn’t really like it.
Other topics include fouthmeal, white guys who ruin cool hair styles, Richard Pryor setting the standard for the next 8 years of hack jokes, being dirty for dirty’s sake, and Fred Sanford like you’ve never heard him before. Can you show me something in a seashell/nut combo?
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com and give us a call on 206-203-4692
great show, i remember thinking the same thing about dice and norton doing the same joke while i was watching the shows but i thought i was just wrong. im truly surprised because although i dont like dice that much i really like Norton. really weird.
also: The AV club conducted two phenominal interviews recently with jim gaffigan and mike birbiglia(two of my all time favorite comics). they were very insightful about comedy and theyre individual styles.
you can find Gaffigan Here:
http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/jim_gaffigan
and here’s Birbiglia:
http://www.avclub.com/content/interview/mike_birbiglia
Wow – such a cool intro with the Richard Pryor Black Pesident sketch, BMo.
I’ve never even heard of this sketch before , and on hearing the first few minutes, I automatically assumed it was perhaps a recent SNL skit, with maybe Chris Rock guest starring as the President.
Then I caught the reference to Jimmy Carter, and realised I was lisetning to a 30 year old sketch that still packs a punch.
Thanks for sharing!
I completely agree with Mike’s take on Down N’ Dirty. If you want to understand why it fails it is all in Norton’s introduction on episode 1. He and the comics he presents take pride in the fact that they talk about subjects that are not safe for TV and look down upon those who do.
Louis CK is the only comic I’ve ever seen get this right. I’m talking about subject matter here and not language. Plenty of comedians are capable of the artful use of “fuck” but nobody can discuss taboo subjects as comfortably and hilariously as Louis.
Somehow I think Brian got the order wrong. He seemed to be saying that Norton stole from Dice, but that’s just the order he heard the shows. Norton might have been doing that set for years before Dice decided to lift it… I admit to having a bias, because I really think Norton is a better and more creative comic then the insane old man with the unlit cigarette.
Just my $.02
— dennis laganiere
I never thought that Norton lifted the joke from Dice (that’ll be the day), it was more that Norton essentially told the same joke one episode after Dice did. It may have been the editing, we don’t really know when they were shot, but I would hope that Norton would hear the Dice bit and scratch it from his act. I agree with Mike that it made him look really bad.
I agree with OG about Louis CK. Whole-heartedly.
I think louis is one of the best at it. I think stanhope is phenomonal at it as well. He isn’t necessarilly as good as ck is, but he can cover some ridiculous subjects with a humorous side to it.
Stanhope IS great though I’d say his style is more “Here’s the truth. Fuck you if you’re offended” while CK’s is “Here’s the truth painted in masterful strokes of irony. Enjoy”.
Really enjoyed this piece in the Times from Frank Skinner. He says that as an experiment, midway through his tour he removed the swearing from his act…..and liked the results
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/comedy/article5161201.ece
In regards to Jim Norton and Dice doing the same joke, I had a similar experience last year when I saw Brian Regan. The dude who opened for him (Can’t remember his name, wasn’t too good) did a joke about Christmas cards and Regan came out and did almost the same exact joke! It didn’t go over very well for the feature (it was kind of a weak joke), and there were almost no laughs when Regan did it. It was weird.
I think it’s the openers responsibility to make sure their material compliments the headliners set, and he should have seen Regan’s act enough times to know that this same joke is in both sets.
Just my $.02
Oh, I agree. I’m just saying that Regan obviously wasn’t even watching the other guy’s set (which I don’t blame him, I find it hard to watch the set before me a lot of times, I’m concentrating on what I’m going to do and getting myself in the right frame of mind) because otherwise, he wouldn’t have done that joke.
Probably the same thing happened with Dice and Norton, where I’m sure Norton wasn’t watching any of the sets of the guys on the show and wouldn’t know that Dice had a similar joke.
Hey, Nick: Thanks for posting the link to that article about Frank Skinner! It was quite interesting!
I have to disagree guys. If you are a headliner, it’s your show. I think it’s your duty to watch the opener, watch the crowd, and make sure you’re prepared to knock it out of the park. You never blame an opener for doing the same kind of joke as a headliner. Even if the opener blatantly steals it, you’re the better comic. Change your act and beat the shit out of the opener in the parking lot after the show.
That’s a tough call. I would say that from a headliner’s perspective, I guess it would be in your best interest to be aware of the jokes the guys before you are doing because if you do a joke they already did, you’re the one who looks bad. Even if you’ve been doing the joke way longer, the crowd’s just going to know that YOU’RE the one who told that joke for the 2nd time in the very same show. They don’t care if it’s not your fault and you were concentrating on your set instead of listening to every word the feature is saying. So it sucks for the headliner in that regard.
Oh, and howdy Greg!
Glad you enjoyed that Greg – pinched it off Chortle which is a good site for skimming the best comedy headlines that people may miss.
So I had my third gig last night and it went really well. In the end anyway. A while back you had a show about having a day job and although me having a day job is good because I like what I actually do, it gives me money and it gives me good material, it has been super busy to the point where I simply haven’t had the time I would have liked to do some writing and rehearsing. Bare in mind that I haven’t told my family this is what I’ve been doing – often leaving me to quickly run through when they’re not in the house. This is why places like this are good, to get it out!
Still I was pretty confident, I know my stuff and it’s just not freezing when I’m up there. I tried to tone down my delivery and not flap about and I think my lines where clearer and sharper. I was also helped by the fact that we had a really good bill a nice mix of newbies like me and pros doing new stuff or just dicking around. The guy at the end of the break for example was really high energy and got things into a good mood. He really got the audience into it.
I went up and I actually froze! Isn’t that just stupid? Anyway I ploughed on and got the best laughs yet. I had a group from my home town in so they loved the stuff about that shithole.
I’ve written some of what I would consider ‘edgy’ material and I’ve refrained from using it and holding back but to be honest after watching last night’s lot talking about paedophiles and rape, my stuff is not even close to the edge. So I did it and it got some great laughs – it’s obvious how and audience knows when you believe in a line yourself. Jokes about threesomes with pregnant women kick ass!
Despite the ‘edgy’ material I also really tried to not swear, as an experiment after reading that Frank Skinner article. I love swearing and taking heed from advice on BTB I don’t overdo it. It certainly helped my delivery be more focused and the one time I did swear, it simply had more power because I was swearing for a ‘proper’ reason (about ‘bullshit hippies’ I believe was the phrase). It’s an obvious calculation.
Anyway afterwards I felt great and had that great high – one of the acts who does promotion and all sorts gave me his card saying ‘You definitely should get around more, you’ve got some great stuff.’ He’s going to get me some numbers for more open mics. The conversation between the comics was that my native north east is getting a really good scene – away from nuttiness of London, that there is a good number of open mics that are well run, as well as a supportive scene for people like me. One guy, who was on last night, is only 19 and runs a successful night in a town over. WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH MY LIFE!??!??
Anyway, I had a drink after and the pro regaled me with stories of some of my favourite comics and texted one of them about my own story. It was all good. You do want to get up again but you have to draw the line like so many things. Then at midnight you just have to go; ‘fuck, I have a real job to get to, I can’t be famous all the time’ and saunter off into the distance. A great experience!
That was i really cool story nick. Good job(I am giving a thumbs up)
So apparantly HBO is making a movie about sam kinison, found here:
http://thecomicscomic.typepad.com/thecomicscomic/2008/11/hbo-planning-sa.html
So with this and the supposed Bill Hicks Biopic, it looks like the outlaws are all going to film. that being said wheres Ron Shocks movie?
Wow, that’s a really inspiring story Nick. I’m going to need that inspiration, since I’ll be hitting the stage tonight AND tomorrow night.
Basically, some of my friends on campus are throwing some open-mics and I promised them I would do a couple minutes of stand-up for each one.
I’ve done some other open-mics before with some mixed responses, but it’s been most of a year. I used to try doing a bunch of jokes a la Demetri Martin and Mitch Hedberg, but that’s hard. Really hard, especially for a beginner. I wouldn’t be opposed to digging up some of those old jokes, but I kinda want to experiment more with a story-telling style for now. Brian (and other comics): how long did you experiment with your style before you kinda found your groove?
I’ll tell you all how my “return” to stand-up goes.
I’m just taking my first baby steps into the world of comedy, and found this show. Very Interesting, helpful stuff
Something has come up recently about my performance. I have a fairly weak voice, that I don’t project very much and I tend to mumble and stumble over words. Are there any tricks or training techniques to get my mouth pushing out those words? What to professional comics do when speaking on stage? Is it the same as everyday speaking, or do they change their speaking patterns drastically?
Another thing that I think about, sort of related, is confidence. If a naive-nervous presence is part of your comic persona, is it still possible to be overflowing with confidence?
Anyways, great podcast. There are probably some other pre-requisite things I’m supposed to say as a newbie… it’s just too hard to think up what I’m going to write…
Another off topic question. Which episode had Brian’s rant about taking his dog to petsmart where animals go to piss and shit on the floor?
I have been searching for the episode for about two weeks now, and I can’t remember where it is.
Anyone remember?
Thanks.
(That bit kills. )
Hey Marty,
Some advice concerning your voice and confidence:
1. When you say you have a weak voice and that you often stumble over words. Is this in real life too? Or just on the stage? If it’s just the latter, I would write it off to nerves and expect that your voice will eventually come around. If it’s the former, then I would suggest speech lessons to learn how to project and pronounce words a bit better (these things actually exist; a buddy of mine took them in college). Also, I would make reference to it in my act because the people in the audience are certainly going to realize it.
2. So far as how the pros talk on stage, I think there’s probably too schools of thought about that right now:
a) Conversational. This is by far the “trendiest” speech pattern. If you throw a rock in NYC, you find some guy in a sweatshirt talking on stage like he was “just havin’ a conversation; just rappin’, you know?” Colin Quinn is the king o’ the conversationalists.
b) Traditional. These are guys who speak a kind of heightened, comedic language. They shout, or do voices, or inflect just a bit more than what you would do in regular life. I’m thinking Seinfeld: “Who ARE these PEOPLE?”
It’s a spectrum, and your act can run the gamut from conversational to traditional and there is no “right” answer. I would say that TV is probably looking more towards conversational because, as mentioned, that’s where the trend is right now. Ultimately, like everything else in our crazy, shitty business, it’s a personal choice and YMMV.
3. To your question about persona and confidence, the answer is an unqualified “YES.” You can’t get laughs unless you’re confident in your material. The nervous persona should appear to the audience as precisely what it is: a _persona_. I would take a look at 60s era comic legends like Woody Allen and Bob Newhart. Both are in complete command of the audience, the stage, and their material, yet both are playing “nervous” characters. Newhart even _stammers_, making the pauses play for laughs.
best,
–jayblack
Thanks Jay Black!
1:The weak voice thing is in real life too. I don’t project, and tend to tapper off when I speak. I also have a lisp, and overall a ‘funny’ or odd voice. As I get more professional I’ll be looking into speech or voice lessons or something. I don’t think it isn’t something I can play to comedic effect though.
In fact my first gag I’ve been using, is that I have trouble even pronouncing my own name last name. I stammer and sputter out of control, but reel it all in when I get to my material. But it definitely was an exaggeration of what I normally tend to do, and practiced and part of my persona.
2: I’m shooting for ‘traditional’. My personal style and way of performing seems closest to Emo Philips or Mitch Hedberg. The more I’ve been working on material funny little quirks seem to be popping out, maybe out of nervousness but not infringing on the material. Maybe at it’s best it can elicit some ptiy and follow through with solid material.
3: My stuff has been getting laughs so far, and I think it’s funny… so I’m building that confidence. I’m actually more confident in myself than I appear on stage, I think. I see the difference now, and I’ve seen a couple of really nervous guys on stage… that nervousness just seems to do a number on your brain. It really ruins your functioning which you need, to deliver the funny.
And much thanks again for your helpful response.