I used to cringe when I heard the term of a comic being called an artist. An artist is someone who creates beauty and imagination where a comic creates dick jokes.
But both are forms of art. You are born to be an artist you cannot learn to be one. You can learn to be a better artist but it has to be in your DNA.
The same goes for a comic, you can learn to be a better comic but the whole being of comedic talent has to be in your DNA it cannot be learned.
A perfect example of this is when a celebrity or the latest pop culture icon decides there going to do stand up like you got fired from your job and you’re going to work at McDonalds.
The latest one to try to pull this is off is Stormy Daniels; she is doing a comedy tour. Does she realize to be a comic you have to spend years on stage taking it in the ass and not in films?
It angers me to no end when celebrities or pop culture celebrities try standup they think it’s easy and the lowest rung in show business. A grand majority go up and do it, get their ass handed to them on stage and then comment “ Wow this isn’t easy”.
No it’s not easy, it’s the toughest art in show business where you’re working on your craft live as you work to perfect it. No other art in show business is done like this.
Take music for instance, when my band is presenting a new song live on stage it is a result of practice at home, rehearsal with the band going over everything, arranging the song, making sure we are all playing the chords correctly, making sure the vocals are tight and so on. When the band plays that tune on stage for the first time it’s all hashed out.
A comic has to do that as they go and what gets us through it? The DNA we have in us that makes this work.
A comic does not think like or look at things like a regular person. For example I’m at the bank last week making a deposit, there is a line and there are two customers are in front of the tellers that are available for what seemed for hours. People are just standing there in line looking at their phone or staring into space. Here is where the comic DNA kicks in. I am saying to myself can’t anyone just make a simple deposit? What are these people doing?? I imagine the one guy is a pirate “Arr I want to cash in these doubloons. Whether you think the joke was funny is not the point, the point is I can guarantee I was the only person on that line that thought in that frame of mind.
I was at the doctor one day and there was another patient there that was talking to the women at reception desk and asking the most stupid questions. The other people in the waiting area were sitting quietly as I was, but the difference is in my mind I was answering these guy’s questions in the nastiest and most entertaining way possible. It’s the DNA.
Also if you think you are funny you are not a comic. To be a comic you have to go up and do a set and have some success and then you are a comic. I don’t mean money and fame success, what I mean is a room full of strangers, performing for them, and have them laugh success.
I have a friend who I love dearly who tells me she can do stand up. I think she is hysterical and cutting and I think she can. I do tell her that I don’t want to hear any more until she gets up there and does her first five minute set and has been baptized.
If you want to try standup I say do it. The art of taking an idea and performing it live is thrilling and nerve wracking at the same time whether you are an open micer or an Icon like Kevin James.
Kevin has been coming by the club Sundays to work on his new material along with the rest of us. He sits in the green room with us and together we all sit there hoping the same thing “Will this work tonight”.
And why are we all in this room together, the DNA.