You know what stifles the creative process? Food Network.
Topics on the day include Jesus the zombie, quantity over quality, the definition of hack, forcing comedy on unsuspecting crowds, bouncing jokes off of other comics, and maybe the MC really does own the whole show. You gonna eat that?
Email: brianmcomedy@gmail.com
I’m with you on writing sessions. A handful of comedian friends who have seen me a hundred times will occasionally offer up a tag or something after a set – and I’ll do the same for them – but the couple times we’ve tried to sit down and make a formal thing out of it, it just wasn’t productive.
Emcees: The thing I dislike about most one-nighters is that there is often no emcee at all, just one of the venue employees who announces next week’s Guns N Roses tribute band before reading the intro, badly, off a napkin.
Thanks for playing my attempt at comedy. Even during this re-listen I’ve figured out at least a half dozen improvements/refinements that I could make.
I know for sure that I wouldn’t get into the vegan/cannibal material in the same way. I was thinking of making an observation that there is no meat eating animal that we eat on a regular basis and that this may be the unconscious reason I’m making friends with vegans.
BTW the site is sweet-dick.com/blog. Entering sweetdick.com may take you somewhere you might not like.
I’ve had good luck having writing sessions with other comics under very strict conditions… here’s what I’ve found works:
1) ONLY PICK GOOD JOKE PITCHERS. This is the first and most important rule. Nobody with OCD, nobody too freaky, nobody too self-centered. You need a table full of people who are all good workhorse joke writers who can come up with things on the fly. Good joke writers are creative enough that stuff just pours out; and having a number of these people together can be incredibly productive. A table full of leaches just crushes your spirit.
2) The sweet spot is three to four people. Two isn’t enough to get a good conversation going, five means you’re just going to be talking all over each other.
3) Pick a good place to meet. It’s really embarrassing when you’re making fantastic progress on your ass-ramming bit when you look over and see a three year old with huge eyes staring at you over his starbucks hot chocolate.
4) Use your digital recorder. When things start going hot and heavy you won’t catch the gold being tossed around.
5) Set a timer for 30 minutes, read your short script (say 5 minutes), and spend the rest of the time with everybody focusing on tightening the jokes, getting rid of exposition, adding tags, and pitching the hell out of your script. Once the timer goes off, you stop, and move focus to the next person.
And finally, here’s the most important part – deciding who owns what:
Agree in advance to the following rules about ownership:
1) Anything pitched to you during your turn belongs to you.
2) Anything you pitch during the other person’s time belongs to them.
3) If you throw something out there that’s perfect for your own act you have until the end of the session to tell the other person “hey, you know that ass-ramming bit… I want to take that back”.
I learned to do this at a Greg Dean workshop, and it really works. I know it sounds draconian, but if everybody follows the rules it’s the fastest way I’ve ever seen to create new material.
If anybody in LA wants to try it and give you a report back, have them contact me and I’ll be glad to setup a session. Consider it an experiment and a challenge.
By the way, I’ve found if you don’t use the Greg Dean rules what you end up with is a table full of drunk comics bitching about club owners, how they never get laid, and how long they’ve got until they run out of money and have to go back to where ever they came.
Of course that’s just my $.02
I emcee my Green Room show every week, and I’m always getting people walk up to talk about something that’s going on… What’s really “fun” is when someone stops you to ask about offering a gig to one of the comics that performed… As you can imagine, that’s a mixed emotional bag… on the one hand you’re excited for your friend, on the other hand you’re like “what the f*ck!?!… did you see me pouring out my heart and baring my soul?”… OK, it’s 95% the second thing… ?
Re: how awful is it when another comic offers unsolicited assistance to you? How about when it is a civilian or even an incoherently drunk civilian?
Jimmy Carr’s podcast is probably a good insight into what people dream that sitting around with a few comic mates will produce.
http://podcast.jimmycarr.com/feed.xml
God – I can’t listen to that Jimmy Carr podcast. I’ve tried a few times because the concept is fascinating, but every time Carr laughs that goofy annoying laugh (like, every 30 seconds), I want to slap the twerp
I have the same problem with eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop. Gargh.
I’ve had good luck having writing sessions with other comics under very strict conditions… here’s what I’ve found works:
1) ONLY PICK GOOD JOKE PITCHERS. This is the first and most important rule. Nobody with OCD, nobody too freaky, nobody too self-centered. You need a table full of people who are all good workhorse joke writers who can come up with things on the fly. Good joke writers are creative enough that stuff just pours out; and having a number of these people together can be incredibly productive. A table full of leaches just crushes your spirit.
2) The sweet spot is three to four people. Two isn’t enough to get a good conversation going, five means you’re just going to be talking all over each other.
3) Pick a good place to meet. It’s really embarrassing when you’re making fantastic progress on your ass-ramming bit when you look over and see a three year old with huge eyes staring at you over his starbucks hot chocolate.
4) Use your digital recorder. When things start going hot and heavy you won’t catch the gold being tossed around.
5) Set a timer for 30 minutes, read your short script (say 5 minutes), and spend the rest of the time with everybody focusing on tightening the jokes, getting rid of exposition, adding tags, and pitching the hell out of your script. Once the timer goes off, you stop, and move focus to the next person.
And finally, here’s the most important part – deciding who owns what:
Agree in advance to the following rules about ownership:
1) Anything pitched to you during your turn belongs to you.
2) Anything you pitch during the other person’s time belongs to them.
3) If you throw something out there that’s perfect for your own act you have until the end of the session to tell the other person “hey, you know that ass-ramming bit… I want to take that back”.
I learned to do this at a Greg Dean workshop, and it really works. I know it sounds draconian, but if everybody follows the rules it’s the fastest way I’ve ever seen to create new material.
If anybody in LA wants to try it and give you a report back, have them contact me and I’ll be glad to setup a session. Consider it an experiment and a challenge.
Hey everybody. Good to be back listening to the podcast. I’ve got some catching up to do but am enjoying the catching up. Gwardo, nice material– I love the grass-fed vegan joke. Excellent.
Anybody else near Charlotte, NC? There is a weekly open mic on Tuesdays (SK Net Cafe) and another one every other Wednesday at a different spot (Jackalope Jack’s)
Chris