Last week we had Comdian Rich Vos call in to our show in response to a segment he did on the ABC’s television show What Would You Do.
The segment was about “what would you do” if a comedian goes too far, would you stand up and voice your opinion? keep quiet? walk out?
Rich did a great job and it was made known that he was doing an act of specifically hateful, insulting material to incite reactions from the crowd and to see who would speak up.
In one segment Rich was hammering away at two heavy set woman when another woman at a different table stood up and told Rich to stop and he was being mean and how could he say those things. Later in the segment the host John Quinones called her an inspiration. SHE IS “NOT” AN INSPIRATION, SHE IS PART OF THE PROBLEM.
ABC and the “What would you do” producers as well as host John Quinones should be ashamed. The show was misleading and has shown a comedy show and standup in a bad light. As a Stand up comic for seventeen years, I can honestly say that the situations depicted in the show would have only taken place after “inspirations” like the one above have disrupted a show to the point of no return and for a time span of at least thirty minutes.
I would ask for an apology from ABC to Rich and the comedy community but that would be hypocritical of me as I feel that there is too much apologizing in the entertainment business today anyway.
Rich Vos is a great guy and one of the funniest comics working today and he was just doing the gig he was hired by ABC for.
Due to the nature of the segment and editing, the segment shows Rich insulting people for no reason as soon as he got on stage. No Comic, except for a two week open micer would ever do anything like that, not even Davin. I have worked with Rich many years and the only time he would slam an audience member like this is when they would be loud an belligerent and disruptive to the show and this would be after a while that he had been on stage.
Let me tell you an instance where we had some “inspirations” to a show.
I was the mc of a show one night where we had a table of soccer moms on a night out, they where loud, disruptive, obnoxious,and were ruining the show for the comics and the other patrons as well.
The middlle act, one of the gentlest and sweetest guys I know, cursed them and walked off stage, right at the beginning of his act like on TV??? No, This was after thirty minutes of his set being interrupted and destroyed by these “inspirations”. I got back up on stage to get ready to bring up the headliner up who is a very funny but a low key act ,but I could not continue because the “Inspirations” where yelling at me that middle act sucked and the show sucked.
(HERE IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TV AND THE REAL WORLD) As the Mc I had to do my job, I had to neutralize the situation and get the audiance set up for the headliner. I launched into the soccer moms in the same fashion as Rich launced into the people on the TV show. They got up and walked out to wild applause from the audience. I got the crowd calmed down, refocused, and the headliner came up and had a great set.
Outside at the bar these “inspirations” wanted me to apologize to them. I would not. I launched back into them and asked them would you walk into a movie and act like that? A restaurant?
The purpose of the the “What would you do” segment is in response to incidents that have been taking place in comedy clubs in the past couple of years. These incidents are sound bites and are not indicitive of what brought the incident to a head which are hecklers or as “what would you do” likes to call them “inspirations”.
The Daniel Tosh rape joke incident was due to to a woman or “inspiration” in the audience disrupting a show and heckling him.
The Michael Richards “N” word incident even though not a great choice of word or handled in the best fashion by Richards, was caused by an “inspiration”/ heckler in the audiance.
I could go on but in just about every case and every future case of a stand up comic shown in an audience controversy it will have been caused by an Inspiration/ heckler in the audiance.
The ABC show should not be called “what would you do”,it should be called what “should you do”
You should go to a Comedy show as it is the best form of live entertainment there is.
You should turn off your phone(you can get by without it for two hours).
You should not talk loudly with your friends or heckle
You should have the best night out that money can buy because comics and the clubs they work in love what they do, work hard at what they do, and want you there and to have a great time.
See ya out there