![]() I peeled them, put one on my head, one in each pocket, and squeezed one in each hand. I noticed that the waitresses were laughing.Īt the end of my closing-night show at the Troubadour, I stood onstage and took out five bananas. ![]() He said that early in his career when the audience wasn't laughing, he could hear the waitresses laughing, and they saw the show night after night. There was a sign of encouragment from these early jobs, and years later I heard it phrased perfectly by Bill Cosby. The audience couldn't hear the show, and they would shut the heckler up on their own. I would lower my voice and continue with my act, talking almost inaudibly. I developed a few defensive lines to use against the unruly: "Oh, I remember when I had my first beer," and if that didn't cool them off, I would use a psychological trick. I began closing my show by announcing, "I'm not going home tonight I'm going to Bananaland, a place where only two things are true, only two things: One, all chairs are green and two, no chairs are green." Not at Lewis Carroll's level, but the line worked for my contemporaries, and I loved implying that the one thing I believed in was a contradiction. Lewis Carroll's clever fancies from the 19th century expanded my definition of what comedy could be. I didn't wat it to appear that others were nuts I wanted it to appear that I was nuts. "I laugh in life," I thought, "so why not observe what it is that makes me laugh?" And if I did spot something that was funny, I decided not to just describe it as happening to someone else, but to translate it into the first person, so it was happening to me. I came up with several schemes for developing material. He developed material by translating what made him laugh in life: Them, you might want to see again sometime." But wait - maybe the best opening line I heard was Richard Pryor's, after he started two hours late in front of a potentially miffed crowd at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. But there's a difference between me and them. The best opening line I ever heard was from Sam Kinison.He said, "You're going to see a lot of comedians tonight some will be good, some will be okay. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. My most persistent memory of stand-up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the boy delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four were spent in wild success. I did stand-up comedy for eighteen years. It's a quick read and really interesting if you're a fan. It's all about his years doing standup and how he got started. Got my mitts on an advance copy (available in November) of "Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" by Steve Martin.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |