Advice for Aspiring Comedians

Tachyix asked, in a comment, if I had any advice for aspiring comics. I thought I'd move the answer up here to its own post. The most obvious answer is "don't do what I did", since I obviously didn't make it as a comic, but that answer would conceal an important truth. I didn't make it as a comic because I just didn't want it badly enough to keep working at it. So my first bit of advice is this - you either have to commit to it all the way, and have a real passion for it, or don't bother trying. And that's good advice primarily because the life of a comic, until you become a big name star, is nothing like you probably imagine.

Bottom line: being on the road sucks. I was 21 when I started doing comedy, and I had a lot of fun, especially in the early days. But after a while, and it's not a long while, you lose the romantic notion of life on the road with no responsibilities and it simply becomes an endless series of clubs, towns, bad motels (or worse, comedy condos), and fast food. And for the first couple years, there's no way you can survive without having a day job. There are 3 positions in a show - emcee, feature act and headliner. As an emcee, you'll make maybe $250 a week, with features making $400-$500 and headliners around $1000. And remember, you're an independent contractor and self-employed, so you have to pay double the payroll taxes. So prepare to be a starving artist for a while.

Everyone starts out as an emcee and it typically takes a couple years to move up to a feature act (often referred to as "middling") and many more years to make headliner. And most guys who start out in the business never make it that far, they're stuck at the emcee level and they eventually just get out. And being an emcee sucks. Basically, you're everyone's bitch if you're the emcee. If you don't have a strong set, the other comics will often blame it on you - you didn't get the audience in a good mood right away. And you're limited on what you can say, or how you can say it, because you can't step on the bits that the other comics plan to do later, and because the club owners think that if one guy is too "blue", the later guys then have to be even more or they won't do well (which is a bunch of nonsense, but most club owners are idiots who wouldn't know funny if it crawled up their pantleg, perched on their ass and yodeled the Ave Maria). And as an emcee, you only get 15 minutes. And in that 15 minutes, you're supposed to make all the announcements that the club wants made ("Next week, don't miss our very special show with Dustin Diamond, the guy who played Screech on Saved by the Bell" - ugh) and banter with the audience the way the club wants you to ("Is there anyone here celebrating anything tonight?" - double ugh). So you basically end up with about 5 minutes to actually do material, which is hardly conducive to developing your skills or your act.

Okay, enough of the doom and gloom. There is also a lot of fun to be had, especially if you're at a point in your life where you don't have a lot of responsibilities and you can just kind of wing it for a while. And there are a lot of great people to meet. So let's assume that you have the desire and you really wanna try comedy. Here's the advice I have for how to make it.

1. Stage time is everything. Just get on stage, any stage, at any time. If the local coffee house has an open mic night, do it, and do it every week. Wherever and whenever you have an opportunity to get on stage and perform, take it. There's simply no way to learn how to do comedy from a book, you just have to do it and learn as you go.

2. Videotape yourself constantly. Record every set you do for a long, long time when you're starting out, and review your performance after every show. Pay attention to every detail - body language, inflection, pacing, your position on stage, facial expressions, how you hold the microphone. Compare the tapes to each other because you will learn from that. You may have a joke where one night you just emphasized a different word, or threw in a hand gesture unconsciously, or used a certain facial expression, or worded it a little bit differently, and that night, the joke killed. So you learn from it, and you do it that way every night from then on.

Comedy is a craft and you have to work at it. Think of each bit, each joke, as a work of art that you have to tweak until it's perfect. There's a comic named Jeff Stilson, a very funny guy who has been on every TV show and had Comedy Central specials and an HBO special. He's been very successful in comedy for a long time. A friend of mine worked with him a few years ago and said that even after all of that success, the guy carries a notebook with him at all times, and after every show he sits down and makes notes about every joke. He crafts jokes in a painstaking way, and it pays off. If you see him live, every word, every inflection, every facial expression, is perfect. That kind of work will pay off.

3. Learn from other comics. When you're starting out, soak up everything you can. You'll work with headliners who have been in the business for 10 or 15 years. They've seen it all and their experiences can help you. Build friendships with them. Not only will this improve your comedy, it will also get you more work. When you want to get into a club that hasn't seen you before, the booking agent for that club is going to ask the other comics he trusts if you're any good.

4. Write with other comics. This is not only the most valuable piece of advice I can give you, it's also the most fun. Most good comedy starts out as an idea that isn't fleshed out yet. Just a vague idea, a funny concept, and getting it to the point where it's ready for the stage can be difficult. The other comics you're with are in the same boat you are when they're on the road. The show lasts 2 hours a night, maybe 4 if there are 2 shows, and the rest of your time is spent in a hotel room watching TV. So take that time to get together with the other comics and talk about these ideas. It doesn't have to be in a formal way, but sometimes it can be. Just ask them if they wanna get together for a writing session for an hour, or just go to lunch and talk and things just naturally come up.

There's a very funny comic from Chicago that I've mentioned before by the name of Bill Gorgo. He has this hysterical routine, based on a true story, about a guy in Wisconsin who got his penis cut off by a lawnmower. The whole bit lasts probably 10 minutes because over the years, so many other comics have given him funny lines to throw into it and it just kept growing. And it all started with, "Hey, did you hear about the guy who got his dick cut off by a lawnmower?"

5. Avoid the groupies. Like any business where you're on stage, such temptations are available on a regular basis. It's incredibly pathetic that there are women out there with so little self-esteem that they have to supplement it by throwing themselves at a guy playing the Comedy Pouch in Possum Ridge, Arkansas, but that's the reality. I strongly urge you to just say no. If they wanna sleep with you this week, they also wanted to sleep with the guy last week. And trust me, I know that guy - he's a scumbag. Almost all comics are scumbags. I carried my own sheets and blankets with me on the road because I didn't even wanna sleep on the same bed those guys slept on (and believe me, I'm not exactly one of those OCD people who is afraid of germs), I sure as hell wasn't gonna dive into that genetic cesspool with them. I can name at least 2 dozen comics off the top of my head who have herpes (one guy even has a little black book of phone numbers of women with herpes in every town he plays - pathetic doesn't even begin to describe this winner).

6. Be nice to the club staff. As I said, most comics are scumbags. Because most comics are scumbags, being a waitress in a comedy club must sometimes feel like being Princess Leia chained to Jabba the Hut. Being a waitress sucks enough on the best day, but being hit on constantly by assholes (a large portion of them married) doesn't exactly add to the charm. I worked with a comic once who would wait until a waitress had to go right down front by the stage to get a drink order, and he'd just stop talking and stare at her. That of course got the whole audience staring at her. And he'd make this leering face and lick his lips and say, "That reminds me. I'm hungry." The waitresses hated him, and I don't blame them. He treated them like shit. And even if you don't want to be nice to them because it's the right thing to do, be nice out of self-interest. The club owners listen to the wait staff and the bartenders. If all they hear about a guy is bitching, they're not gonna bring him back. And believe me, there are a thousand comics out there they could book in your place. Comics who are a pain in the ass - showing up late for gigs, mistreating the staff, not doing a full set (or constantly going over their time), causing problems at the hotel, etc - aren't gonna keep getting work. Besides that, it's a lot more pleasant when everyone is getting along.

7. Miscellaneous advice.

Never steal material from another comic. You will get caught and it will cause a fight.

If you're staying in the condo in Lansing, don't go downstairs.

Never, ever, ever eat anything other than condiments in a condo refrigerator that you didn't put in there yourself.

Never follow John Fox into the bathroom.