Robert Mack is on the show today to teach us what he's learned from great comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Mitch Hedberg.
And I said, Robert, you've got to come on the show.
You've been doing stand-up for more than a decade.
And I want to know, what have you learned about how to be funny, about how to tell a good story?
Let's have a conversation that's fun, that's high energy, that's obviously funny.
And he goes, all right.
The challenge... is that dissecting jokes, breaking them down, is famously not a funny thing to do.
So we said, okay, what are we going to do here?
And we went out, we looked, we scavenged the internet and we said let's go find our favorite jokes and our favorite one-liners and we'll go through them one by one.
And as I do that, I'm going to teach you the rules, the principles of great comedy.
You wouldn't believe it, but How I Write costs a fortune to run, and it's thanks to Mercury that I can even do it.
They're the sponsor of this episode and a banking platform that I've been using for the past four years to run my own business.
When I started How I Write, I expected finances to be an absolute nightmare.
I got team members in four different countries.
I had things to think about like currency exchange and taxes and expenses.
And I was just dreading it.
But honestly, banking has maybe been the easiest part.
I can't remember running into a single problem.
And it's because I've been using Mercury.
I switched over from other more traditional banks because Mercury is so well designed.
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And all that is why I can't imagine banking any other way.
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Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Column A. Members, FDIC.
All right, back to the episode.
I want to start with a joke by a comedian that I'm lucky to have met before he passed away.
He's kind of famous.
He's very famous.
It's Mitch Hedberg.
I used to do drugs.
I still do, but I used to too.
Yes.
And the reason this is funny is because comedy is all about showing things from a different perspective.
That is exactly the number one rule of comedy is you get reality and look at it from a skewed point of view, and that skewed point of view has an element of surprise and that is what's funny about it.
So that joke is funny because his perspective is taking us from a completely different point of view.
He's kind of it's called a misplaced focus, and he's looking at things from a time perspective.
I, i do drugs, i used to, i still do now, and it's basically your brain holding two different thoughts at the same time and as you figure out the conundrum of both of those being true, Your brain figures it out and you laugh.
Well, the thing about that, too, is it takes two sentences to do that.
It takes two sentences, yeah.
It's not like a whole story.
No, you don't need a background.
You don't need a backstory.
It's not one of those, you've got to know my aunt before I tell you the story about my aunt.
No, it's self-contained, which is one of the beautiful things about Mitch Hedberg and Stephen Wright.
Oh man, I just lost a buttonhole.
So this is Stephen Wright.
This is Stephen Wright, who is the first real comedian I saw live performing.
So I was raised on Stephen Wright, Steve Martin, Monty Python.
Monty Python, I couldn't get my head around because it was so absurd and crazy.
And Stephen Wright is also absurd.
And that is another way to get a laugh.
What's his vibe?
What does he look like?
His vibe?
He's this shaggy guy.
Um, he gets introduced.
He's like, ladies and gentlemen, stephen wright, and you're expecting this guy to run out on stage and he slumps along and uh, you know uh, nothing fancy.
He's not wearing a tuxedo, he's not wearing a jacket at all, it's just a guy in a crumpled shirt and he kind of mumbles into the microphone oh man, i lost the buttonhole.
He's just the exact opposite of what a lot of comedy at that time was, which is a guy in Vegas wearing a, wearing a tuxedo.
Right.
And when you hear when you hear the joke, he's saying something that we've heard before.
Kind of.
Oh, man, I lost a button.
But he's his take on it is he's lost a button hole, which is sort of impossible.
And it's one of these incongruities, which is one of the surprise, is the biggest trigger of laughter something that's surprising and incongruity is probably the second most.
Common trigger of laughter.
It's when something doesn't fit and when you loot like I lost a buttonhole that doesn't make sense, and when you realize oh, I get it now.
He's conflating buttons and buttonholes.
That is where the laughter comes from.
They say I'm a big fan of science by the way, I follow it religiously.
And they say that way back in, the first laughter was based on animals fighting.
This play fighting.
And one part of the brain that recognizes fighting would be like, oh no, we're in a fight.
But another part of the brain that recognizes incongruity realized, oh, this is not a fight.
We're just play fighting, practicing.
And that dissonance, having both ideas at once, the body reacted with a laugh.
And they say that laughter comes from having these two incongruous thoughts at the same time and then realizing that everything is okay.
So biologically or evolutionarily, laughter was a signal that, hey, things are okay, no worries.
And to this day it's still a little bit like if you can laugh at something, you have a little bit of control over it.
It's not nearly as daunting.
What do you got?
I got another Stephen Wright one.
Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.
Right, that's a perfect example of what he does.
He's changing the scale.
Again, like some of those first jokes, he's changing the scale, that misplaced focus.
If yeah, if you have the time, you could walk anywhere.
He has a lot of jokes about the planet.
It's a yeah, it's a small planet after all, but i wouldn't want to paint it right right, This is actually my favorite one.
I went to a general store, but they wouldn't let me buy anything specific.
Well, this one has got more wordplay.
He doesn't usually have a lot of wordplay, but general and specific are two different things that he's putting together.
A minute ago, I said I am a big fan of science.
I follow it religiously.
Those are two thoughts that sometimes don't go together and Some people would call it irony when you have Fighting or competing ideas, general and specific.
We should also point out to people watching that when you dissect a joke, Sometimes it loses some of the magic and we can get caught up in the details.
But it's funny and that's the bottom line is it works, and A lot of jokes work because a bunch of different principles are in play.
This has a little bit of that place is too crowded, nobody goes there anymore vibe.
I said it the opposite.
It is nobody goes there anymore, that place is too crowded.
Exactly.
Yogi Berra.
Right.
This has that sort of vibe.
Anything that contradicts itself is funny, because again it's two opposing thoughts at the same time.
And there's kind of some wisdom about it.
Yes.
There's always a little bit of truth and wisdom behind a joke.
It is interesting that there's an element of something is funny because it's true.
And if it's making people laugh, then there's something true about it.
Exactly a lot of comedy legends, and I'm trying to remember the exact quote.
Sid Caesar said that comedy is a kernel of truth that is built on.
And somebody else said comedy is a fancy story with a little bit of truth added at the end.
There's always an element of truth That is the starting point.
And you zoom out or you tweak it, or you look at it from another point of view, or you exaggerate it, or you make it a character, or you make it absurd.
And that truth is still part of it.
And the change, the exploitation of it, the playing with it is what makes it memorable.
Because if you said the grass or my mother-in-law's is large.
There's nothing memorable about it.
But if I say my mother-in-law weighs a thousand pounds, then you're able to picture it and remember it a little bit more.
But there's always an element.
Right.
My mother-in-law looks like Michelin man.
Right.
Bingo.
You get to see it in your head.
You're making it clear.
Something about that one kind of works because it's vivid.
Like vivid seems like it's important in hyperbole.
If you can make a picture in someone's head, they're more likely to remember it.
Yeah, I was reading this book about writing one time, and it was talking about metaphor.
And it was basically trying to make the point that a metaphor gets its potency as much, if not more, from being vivid as from being true.
And you have to make a metaphor vivid.
Otherwise, it just doesn't land.
Right, right.
No, you're exactly right.
There's so many jokes that people don't make it vivid, so it's...
It doesn't stay with them.
But I have a joke about the truth.
Bring it on.
Bring it on.
This is an older one.
Red Button said, never raise your hands to your kids.
It leaves your groin unprotected.
Who is Red Button?
Red Button's- That's a name?
That's not like- That's a real name.
It's a comedian who was very old when I was very young.
And so I don't know.
He's like an old vaudeville guy.
What I love about this is if you hear just the first part of the sentence never raise your hands to a kid.
For me.
I'm thinking all right, this is going to be some statement about child safety or the importance of protecting the youth and nurturing them for the future.
But there's a bit of a left turn, and it's about protecting your groin.
And I teach comedy, and I speak at conferences to companies about using humor in the workplace, and it does all these great things.
And in the process of this, I've learned something called pattern recognition, which I think is the hidden secret of what comedy does and how comedy works.
Because when I say never raise your hands to your kids, your brain, our brains, are thinking of a certain thing.
Oh, the kids, the future.
You got to protect kids because that is the pattern that we're used to hearing.
And patterns have helped us evolve and become the smartest creatures on the planet.
So it leaves your groin unprotected is a left turn.
It's a surprise.
It gets the laugh.
And here's how well our brains handle patterns.
If I say Romeo, you think?
Juliet.
If I say peanut butter?
Charlie.
And so we got our cats and we named them Peanut Butter and Juliet.
Because they don't go together.
But our brains were so conditioned to think in certain ways that a good joke writer is able to manipulate how our brains work.
And they set up a couple, a couple clues to go one way, and then the punchline is Something completely different, because they know that our minds will follow certain patterns.
It's the, it's the secret of comedy is how powerful our brains are.
Well, the other thing there's a There's a sense.
I'm sorry.
I hate this word, but it's overused.
There is just a sense of empathy or connection, where what you're doing is you have to have a keen sense of where the Mind of your audience member is and you have to have a sense of where they're going now, what is the context, so that then you can shift it.
And and so i think part of the reason that comedians have such connections with their audiences, and audiences with comedians in particular, is this sense of wow.
That person really gets me like they understand where my mind is so well that then they can make a joke out of it or something.
You're absolutely right.
Have you taken a comedy class?
Because that is like rule number one is know your audience yeah, and if you know who they are, you'll know what the patterns that they're thinking are and you're able to connect with them.
And the minute you connect with them, you don't have to, that's half the battle.
You don't have to prove yourself.
You don't have to explain the background of this story.
Once you're connected, you can take them You can take them anywhere.
You're reminding me of a funny story.
Bring it on.
If I may.
I was doing a show for a woman who was running for state lieutenant.
Lieutenant governor of the state of Maryland.
Okay.
Who's an Indian American.
And she had a fundraiser with a bunch of Indian businessmen to raise money.
And I asked, I'm like, tell me about these businessmen.
I want to know who they are so I could write some jokes.
And they're all college educated.
They were all from India, but they live in the United States.
They speak many languages, including English, which is important to me because I have a lot of wordplay in my act.
And don't worry, they're smart guys.
They'll get everything.
And I have a joke about being in Bryce Canyon in Southern Utah.
Ah, love that place.
It's beautiful.
And if you don't know, it's these red sandstone arches and towers.
It's where they filmed the Roadrunner cartoons.
Yeah, yeah.
Back when they filmed cartoons on location before all the animal rights protesters came in and shut down the Acme Rocketscape Company once and for all.
Anyway, I mentioned that, which always gets a laugh.
But this audience, nothing.
Because they weren't raised with that TV show.
They didn't have that cartoon growing up.
So a joke that always gets 100%, I got zero on.
It shook my confidence.
And I had to kind of win them back because I didn't know that thing about the audience.
So that pattern that I thought they would recognize, they did not because it wasn't part of their upbringing.
We were sharing some comedy quotes before this.
And one of the ones you sent me is that winning isn't funny.
Charles Schulz.
Winning isn't funny.
Right.
And that's totally Charlie Brown's story.
If somebody won all the time, there's no conflict.
There's no drama.
There's nothing interesting about that.
Carol Burnett's quote is great, too.
Hers is...
Comedy is tragedy plus time.
There's always some loss.
There's always something about the underdog.
Chris Rock had a recent special.
He used to be the guy on stage who would talk about what it's like to be, you know, a normal guy, an average guy, and But his last special he's talking about his kids going to private school and living in this gated community.
And he's not able to connect.
And nobody's going to connect with a multimillionaire who's famous around the world.
But the lovable loser Charlie Brown, the guy who's struggling to win all the time, that is somebody we can connect with.
Yeah, it's funny because you talk about winning isn't funny.
And it's amazing how many... who instantly hit it off with an audience.
I'm not saying they're the funniest ones, but I'm saying they're the ones that create the most connection in like 20 seconds.
They have something about them.
They're maybe a little overweight.
They have a weird voice.
They have a kind of a lame walk or something, and they know this about themselves, and then they sort of exaggerate it as they come up on stage, and then they just mention it right away.
Like, I know I need to lay off the carbs.
I know.
And all of a sudden, everyone starts laughing.
It's boom, like instant connection.
Whereas a lot of times when I'll go to a comedy show, it's just struggling to connect with the person.
It's too perfect, too refined.
I would say to your first point, if you can...
If you can get a laugh, a joke is a setup and then a punchline.
If the setup is something that you don't have to say- So true.
So true.
And you walk out on stage, that guy's seven feet tall.
He has a joke about being seven feet tall.
He doesn't have to say, hey, everybody in the audience who's looking at me, I'm a taller than me.
He can automatically do the punchline because the setup- is visual and is unspoken and the audience knows it before they he's even taken the the, the mic a hundred.
So that is why sometimes people talk about their outfit, they talk about their hair, they talk about their looks.
When i started, it was a common kind of trope if somebody looked like a couple of celebrities.
Oh, i know what you're all thinking.
I look like so and so and so and so had a love child right, um?
Because you don't have to say here's the backstory.
The setup is automatic.
Yeah.
Let's do another one.
This one's a long one.
I read an article that said the Bible was the most bought and sold book last year.
Harry Potter was number two.
That means a book where a boy magician defeats the evil lord of the underworld sold better than Harry Potter.
You're laughing a lot at that one.
Well, it's the same thing.
I'm laughing for two reasons.
One, I think the joke is funny.
The other thing is I'm laughing because I now have x-ray vision into the joke, into why it's funny.
And why is this one funny to you?
Well, it's got this misdirection, right?
It's like, first of all, the Bible pops up.
So instantly people kind of tense up when they hear the Bible.
And tension is a great way to build up a laugh.
Right.
Harry Potter's number two.
Okay, interesting.
So it's like, also I'm kind of engaged.
I'm excited to see where this is going.
We have a curious setup.
We have two different things.
And then that means a book where the boy magician defeats the evil lord of the underworld.
We're obviously talking about Harry Potter.
Of course, of course.
Talking about Harry and Voldemort and all that.
We got a scar on the forehead.
You can see that.
Exactly, sold better than Harry Potter.
Wait, what?
Surprise, the jig makes it funny.
Yes, and we call this particular type.
I call it.
There are a million different people who have a million different terms for kinds of jokes.
I would call this a bait and switch because you're offering two things.
You're talking about one, but actually you end up, you're talking about the other.
Oh, he's talking about the Bible.
No, he's talking about Harry Potter and we switch them.
So when you have two very specific things you're talking about and you imply that you're talking about one, you leave clues.
That makes it seem like you're talking about one, but you're actually talking about the other one, and that switch leads to a surprise, leads to a laugh, leads to this chemical dopamine that gets released in your brain and you laugh, and laughter is contagious and all of these things create comedy.
That one's great.
Steve Hofstetter is a very famous guy, is a great jokesmith.
A jokesmith?
What is a jokesmith relative to other kinds of comedians?
Really, craft's a good joke.
Some comics are physical, some tell stories.
He's able to craft things and focus on the writing rather than the performance or the character or the outfit.
Yeah, how would you?
This is sort of a strange question to ask, but how would you rewrite this in order to like, not make it funny anymore, right?
Like this works.
What are the smallest tweaks that you could make to where the joke just doesn't work now?
Well, I mean, it's obvious that he's talking about in the second part.
He's talking about the Bible and he wants us to think Harry Potter.
So he could say, Harry Potter was a number two book.
The Bible is a book where a boy magician defeats the evil Lord of the underworld.
But then he's revealing, he's playing his card, and then it's not funny.
So the, um, He's worded it in such a way that it can only be this.
And so it'd be very easy to switch it.
If he changed Harry Potter to the Bible at the end, that wouldn't be a surprise because yeah, I know you've been talking about Harry Potter and now you're talking about the Bible.
It's just a perfectly crafted joke.
It's rock solid.
Okay, so we're talking about how do you get your writing done, and if you're thinking about work and how you can be more productive there well, I recommend a tool called Basecamp.
Basecamp is a project management tool and it's different from the other ones, which are loud and noisy and cluttered.
They have feature bloat.
Basecamp says, no, no, no, no, no.
We're going to keep things simple so that you can focus on what actually matters, which is just getting the work done, you know.
Now, for us, Basecamp is a place where we can track what we're doing with how I write, when episodes are being recorded, where we're recording them, the publishing day, all those sorts of things in one place for our entire team to look at.
And I had the founder of Basecamp, Jason Fried.
He came on the show and I noticed that he really cares about writing.
He cares about manifestos, he cares about great copy, he cares about telling a great story.
And him and his co-founder, they've written five books.
And I can tell you that they bring the same care and attention to detail to their books as they do their software.
So if you're thinking about work and you're asking, hey, how can I be more productive?
How can I make my team more cohesive?
Well, then I recommend Basecamp.
All right, back to the episode.
My favorite thing in the bedroom is when she puts on her nurse outfit and leaves for work without waking me up.
It's a kind of a bait and switch.
You're thinking maybe one thing, but it turns out to be the other.
I have to tell you, I told this joke once at a 75 year old's birthday party.
He was retiring from the military.
He was 75.
His family is in the audience.
They're well-dressed.
It's a very formal event, very conservative.
Grandparents, kids And I do a joke that mentions the bedroom and a nurse outfit and the tension rises a little bit.
But it turns out it's not a role-playing joke, it's a joke about my wife is a nurse.
And the tension built.
I do the punchline.
Everybody laughed because That is one of the other triggers of comedy.
A good joke is it releases this built-up tension.
Right.
I think Freud is the one who was one of the first to discuss that.
Well, let me read it.
Let's just go through it.
My favorite thing in the bedroom is when she puts on her nursed outfit and you're like, Okay.
First of all, vivid.
Vivid.
Yes.
We know where it's going.
Robert, you shouldn't be saying that.
There are kids here.
There's kids here.
This is 75th birthday party.
Very conservative room.
What are you doing?
Yes.
Tension.
Tension builds.
And leaves for work without waking me up.
What was so bad?
What were you guys freaking out about?
Yes, it's like the monster at the end of the book.
It was me the whole time.
Exactly.
Now, if you were to talk about changing one word, if I said she puts on her nurse costume, then you would think oh, this is a role-playing thing.
It's Halloween.
Or Halloween.
And going to work doesn't make sense, so it wouldn't work.
If I said she puts on her nurse uniform.
Uniform, too serious.
Too serious, there's none of the role playing.
And so I had to pick a word that implied both dressing up for a bedroom activity and dressing up for work, and outfit was the one word that covered both of those because again, you're leaving tips or clues.
Clues.
That go to one direction and the punchline leads to another.
So I want to show you this from from a wedding speech.
OK, so here we go.
So husband here and then wife to his right.
Last thing I'm going to say is that we're expecting Everyone here to have a great time tonight.
Classic.
That couldn't be done better.
We're expecting dot, dot, dot.
Everyone here to have a great time tonight.
One of the things you cannot teach in comedy is timing.
It's something you just have to learn.
And the timing of that was perfect, because what he says we're expecting, our pattern recognition tells us we're expecting to have a child.
We just got married.
But no, the actual, the truth of the matter.
The truth that we're playing with is we're expecting us to have a good time.
So he gave them enough time to think, expecting to have a baby already.
You know what word just came to mind?
Plausible deniability.
You know what I mean?
It's like we're expecting all of you to have a great time tonight.
Like the transcript is totally kosher.
I love it when my wife puts on her nurse outfit and leaves for work without waking me up.
Like if you just read the sentence it's like it's totally fine, but the way that you've meandered down the path,
Or the way you've paused to change the meaning for the audience.
I knew a guy who was dating in San Francisco was dating a fireman and he said I like how he puts out fires.
And it was just putting out and putting out fires are two completely different things that on the page look the same, but you add a pause and it changes.
It's all about the timing, but also the writing.
And I think good writing leads the audience to what you want them to think.
I was also thinking of, I watched this, it was this speech one time.
And this was 50th anniversary of marriage.
And once again, context, right?
Context.
Context.
So night of celebration.
I love, I love my wife.
And he gets up, 50th anniversary.
He says I just want to thank my wife for 47 tremendous years, and everyone sort of looks around like what do you mean?
He goes three of them weren't so great, but 47 were fantastic and i want to raise a toast to that and something about that is just, it was just hilarious.
Yeah playing, playing there's.
There's so many different ways that that that people will laugh.
And when you, when you're admitting in front of your loved ones that three of these years weren't the best, i mean that's something humbling and self-deprecating, which are also great tools for laughter.
If you can laugh at yourself, you can laugh at others.
Uh, somebody had a similar joke about i've got three great kids and one.
That's so.
So it's just Same idea as you're downplaying something.
Laughing down at others is another laughter trigger.
It's called the laugh of victory.
If you're familiar with the Simpsons.
Yeah.
Nelson laughing down at others, punching down.
It's not in favor these days as much, but making fun of yourself to allow other people to laugh at you is a great way to get an audience to laugh because it's okay.
You're showing that it's okay to laugh at us.
We had three bad years, but 47 great ones.
So come on, folks.
It's funny.
It's kind of mean and it's kind of sweet at the same time.
That's comedy.
Sometimes it is a little mean.
John Cleese has a quote.
He said, there's always an element of meanness because you're making fun of something.
Maybe not a person.
Maybe you're making fun of the truth or making fun of the situation.
And to me, comedy is all about writing.
For some people, it's performing.
For me, it's about writing, because if you write a joke well enough, the audience can get it in their head without you having to tell them what the punchline is.
Like this one, I got a box of animal crackers that said, do not eat if seal is broken.
I opened the box and sure enough, what are the next four words?
The seal was broken.
And if you've ever seen the seals, they're the cute ones.
This guy is a great.
He's also a jokesmith.
Writes these great one-liners used to write for Conan O'Brien.
The point is, if you write well enough, then the audience gets the joke.
And there's something about When the audience figures it out themselves.
They're invested more in the show and they get to pat themselves on the back for oh, I got that joke.
Exactly.
I'm on the inside.
I'm in the cool club.
I'm not one of the people who didn't get the joke, because there's always those on the outside who try to.
I didn't get that.
Explain that one to me.
And when an audience, because of good writing, when an audience person gets to pat themselves on the back, they're more invested in the show because it's more about them. okay animal crackers what i like about animal crackers is that it takes us back to something playful and it seems to me like a lot of what you're doing as a comic is getting people into a state of mind where they can laugh like animal crackers they've they're expired or something whatever there's something about that that's benign whereas like if you were to have milk do not open if it's expired or something, all of a sudden that's kind of gross.
Yes.
And there's like a seriousness about like I could die if I have bad milk.
Bad milk, right.
There's that.
The thing about animal crackers though, is if it was a different type of cracker or if it was milk uh, seal wouldn't have the two meanings, and the joke pivots on having two meanings of the seal of the container and the seal the animal, and that's why he picked animal crackers instead of graham crackers or something else like that.
But yeah, if it was milk, there is something disgusting and vile about that.
Which is also another trigger.
Something that's disgusting or taboo.
That's why sex jokes work and fart jokes work and bathroom jokes work.
Because there's something taboo almost about that or sickening or gross.
Okay, let's talk about Seinfeld.
Sure.
So...
I got a theory that I'm going to sort of preface this with, which is that a lot of what makes Seinfeld and in particular, Larry David, funny because I love Larry David is you take a small inconvenience or something annoying that a lot of people have felt.
And what you're doing is you're exaggerating the thing, but then you're naming the thing.
And so now, the thing that we've thought about but never even thought to put into words now has a name and has become a thing.
And then it gets exaggerated.
And that move, Larry David has done 150 times.
And it's a very effective move.
So this is from Seinfeld, which he obviously worked on.
She wants to say hi.
She's with her new boyfriend.
What's he like?
He's nice.
Bit of a close talker.
A what?
You'll see.
This is Erin.
Hello, Erin.
Hello, Erin.
So how long are you folks in town?
Three more days.
Three more days, and then we're off to Paris.
I love France.
I was just there last year.
In fact, I still have an envelope full of French francs.
I'll get them to you.
You know, I have a friend who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
How'd you like a behind-the-scenes tour?
Really?
You could do that?
Easily.
It wouldn't be any trouble?
Of course not.
When can we go?
How about right now?
I'm ready.
How about you, Jerry?
I'm sorry.
To examine the artwork up close.
Maybe I'll try and catch up with you.
Oh, you must be Kramer.
I've heard about you.
I love how Jerry is the only one who doesn't kind of back away.
He's just standing up to him.
But that is exactly what that show is about.
It's about nothing and making it big.
And you said exaggeration and hyperbole, and that's exactly what it is.
It gets something universal, and that's another thing comedy does.
It gets something universal and makes it big so that everyone can relate to it.
And if you put a name on it, it's easier to... to relate to.
There's also the quiet talker, the low talker.
The low talker.
The low talker.
Everybody goes, oh, I know somebody like that.
Cut to Jerry wearing a pirate shirt because he agreed to wear the pirate shirt.
But...
Again, one of the goals of comedy is to find something specific and make it universal so everyone can experience it.
And that's what his career is based on, is finding those little things that we haven't identified.
He recognizes it. makes it bigger, puts a name on it.
So everybody goes, yeah, I know about the no talk in the hotel bedroom.
And I know about the low talker and the quiet talker.
And he's got thousands of those.
Larry David does.
Exactly.
And I think it was an interview that Seinfeld did with Howard Stern, I think.
But he just talks about how a lot of good comedy just comes from being a bit irritable, kind of constantly irritable, and being sensitive to what kind of drives you insane, and then you're just way more irritable than the average person.
But then you kind of play with that, you work with that, and then let That leads to the joke.
Because it is like universally funny when someone's like, hey, you know this thing?
It's kind of annoying when they do that.
You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's the laugh of recognition.
The laugh of recognition.
When it's something that you've experienced that I'm identifying.
That's one of the laugh triggers is recognizing something.
If I said, who here remembers dial-up modems?
And people in the audience go, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
They laugh.
It's not funny.
But that recognition starts the joke, starts the laugh.
Process and I would say one of the first skills a comedian has is their observers and they take note of stuff and they write notes down.
And if you're sensitive you said sensitive if you're a sensitive observer and Maybe you get annoyed easily and you twist that truth that you've recognized and make it exaggerated.
You somehow tweak it so other people can see the humor in that.
These are all steps along the process of writing a joke.
You notice it, you exaggerate it, you represent it to the audience in a way that makes it entertaining.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a bit of a close talker, huh?
And you're like, wait, I know what that is, but I'm not quite sure what that is.
What's that?
And then you just see it over and over.
Exactly.
You'll see it over and over.
And then it comes to life.
Right.
And then also like a good.
No, it comes to life is exactly it.
You say something and now we demonstrate it.
Here's the theory.
Here's the proof.
Yeah.
And a good bit kind of lives with you, because I I know some close talkers and every time I see them do it I just think of the bit.
I just think of the bit.
How can you not?
Yeah.
He's demonstrated it and identified it with the name.
And so now that will always have that name because he was the first one to put a title to it.
Show me something.
Okay.
What do we got now?
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?
This one is, nobody knows who came up with this.
This is 100 years old.
Actually, I think this came out in the 50s.
And we were talking before about how sometimes comedy is mean and cruel.
And this demonstrates that.
It also demonstrates this.
What the founder of The Onion magazine said Has identified these comedy filters.
He calls them, and one of the filters is a misplaced focus.
So Lincoln gets assassinated, but this person is focused on.
Yeah,
Yeah.
Yeah, but tell me about the play.
So it's again about taking things out of what should be focused on and focusing more on on this other thing, and This also requires some background knowledge.
I was going to say, I didn't get it at first.
Okay.
And then I realized that we were talking about Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth, the assassination.
And then I went through my head of, wow, that is like wildly inappropriate.
Inappropriate, yes.
Like, dude, I'd say that.
But I had to do a lot of work here in order to get it.
And then once I did the work and I filled in the gaps, it was like I was part of the joke.
And I was like, okay, that's pretty funny.
But I didn't get it immediately.
In writing it, you want to make it as concise as possible without having too much backstory.
So Mrs. Lincoln, I'm hoping, there aren't very many Lincolns that we know of.
Right, Miss Smith wouldn't work.
No, no.
Or even Kennedy would work because that has a cashier to it.
Other than that, Miss Kennedy, how was the drive?
Yes, yes.
How was Dallas?
I mean, other, aside from that, I mean, did you get some sun?
Same idea.
And you nailed it.
It requires a little bit of historic knowledge or cultural background, which is another way that you can get a laugh.
If I were to do that joke to people who didn't know American history, that joke wouldn't work.
Unless I said, by the way, we had a president.
He was assassinated during a play.
It cuts all the setup out.
Right.
But if you're in England, maybe you could do that with Princess Diana.
Right.
Right.
Because those people have that background.
Know your audience.
Here, there's a great tunnel in England.
Yes.
Yes.
Do we have any pictures of it?
Any paparazzi photos?
She loved it so much that she decided to stay.
Oh.
It's terrible.
Yes.
But it's the same idea.
It requires a little bit of a background.
And again- this requires you to know your audience and what do they know?
If you, I'm older than a lot of crowds that are other comedians that I work with.
And sometimes the audience is much younger.
And if I were to do a princess die reference, they might not get it.
Right.
If I did an Eartha Kitt reference, they might not get that.
I don't even know what that is.
Eartha Kitt is an, she played the cat woman back in the old, the old Batman TV show.
If I did Ella Fitzgerald reference, that wouldn't work.
But if I did Beyonce, it would.
So you have to know where your audience is.
You know, it's funny.
And I don't know if this is a cultural thing or whatever.
But the Lincoln joke, I think, is funny.
The Kennedy joke, I think, is funny.
But the Princess Diana joke, I'm like, I went too far when I did that.
There's something about that was like mean spirited.
Whereas like the first two, there's an element of cruelty.
But it's benign.
It kind of works.
But then if you I don't know, joke about this thing.
Maybe it's like too much too soon.
Recent.
Yeah.
Recent.
Maybe there's like a con.
I don't know.
It's like maybe it's not my people.
So it feels like now that's not OK.
Because it's a different group and you're being mean.
Whereas before, it's okay, it's one of us.
Right.
I can make Polish jokes because I'm Polish.
Yeah.
And I can't make a Mexican joke because now I'm talking about them.
Yeah.
Maybe that's it.
You've said benign a few times.
And there are some theorists who say they've tried to quantify what makes a joke.
Why do people laugh?
Louis C case said you can't, there's no formula for jokes.
But these guys claim that a joke is something that's funny that crosses a line, But it turns out it's benign, so it nobody gets hurt.
So, for example, somebody slips on a banana peel and they fall and they get up and walk away.
That's funny, because people shouldn't slip on banana peels.
And so it's okay.
If somebody slipped on a banana peel and and fell and didn't get up and a pool of blood started to come out of their hair, that would not be funny, unless you're a very jaded comedian, in which case it's very funny.
But but there is this line of if it's benign, it's okay to laugh because again, laughter means things are okay.
And maybe for you that line is The British can laugh about that, but I'm not part of that community so I can't make fun of it.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Did you get some sun?
I think that's very funny.
Well, enough time has gone by.
Here's another joke that requires us to know a little bit about what's going on in current events.
P. Diddy, Harvey Weinstein, and Bill Cosby walk into a bar.
Do not go to that bar.
And the cool thing about this joke is I can update it all the time.
Unfortunately, there's always somebody else new in the news.
So I can get rid of Bill Cosby and put in Jeffrey Epstein.
That's exactly what I was thinking about.
There's always an update.
And this joke does very well.
And it's because it combines a couple of these different laugh triggers.
There's the rule of three, which we haven't talked about, which I think people get.
Things that are in threes are funny.
Two isn't a pattern.
One is not a pattern.
Two might be a pattern.
Three is definitely a pattern.
But with the other thing, with the rule of three, is that the third one breaks the law, the first two right.
It can.
Yeah.
Sometimes just having three seems natural because we've established a pattern.
And oftentimes the third one is completely off the rails.
This one, it's just three that are all very similar.
And the thing that makes them similar is kind of taboo and creates a lot of tension.
But then the joke is a joke about jokes.
It kind of steps out.
And that's another technique of humor.
It's called meta jokes, jokes about jokes.
So generally three people walk into a bar, the bartender typically says something, but that joke says don't even go to that bar.
We're not even, it's breaking the fourth wall to talk about a joke.
I have an old friend who I started with, who got out of comedy 30 years ago, but he had a joke where he said I broke up with my girlfriend and the audience would go Oh, and he's like no, it's all right.
I needed the material.
So it's a joke about comedy itself.
So sometimes your perspective is so far removed.
You can have fun playing with the idea of jokes.
And that one does that.
And that one is also the rule of three.
And that one creates a lot of tension.
And it's a great way to start a show because, um, People are engaged.
They're like, where is this going?
And I hope it's not going where I think it's going.
And I get a big laugh and able to win them over and then take the show where I want to go.
With the rule of three, I was talking about how the third one often breaks the pattern.
So I found this little infographic.
Running a marathon takes this amount of energy.
Climbing Mount Everest takes this amount of energy.
Getting under your desk to connect some cords in the back of a computer.
Right?
It's like... hyperbole, which we've been talking about.
It breaks the pattern of the first two, which we've been talking about.
And once again, it's a very different kind of benign.
But I think that often just speaking to the most mundane things and sort of showing the ridiculousness of them works really well.
Misplaced focus.
If you were to show that and cover up one of the first two and only had two things...
The second one being the plug, it wouldn't be as funny.
It wouldn't work.
The third builds a little bit of tension.
We're going somewhere.
And yeah, usually the third one does break things, break the mold of the first two.
The first two were physical trips or something.
What was a?
It was uh, running a marathon, running a man well, it's the most the, the the two most extreme things.
Like you run a marathon jeez, and then you climb mount everest, that's like jeez, stuff that needs.
Yeah, you know what could be bigger than that trip to the moon jumping from space?
Yes no, it's the.
I got the usb thing upside down.
Yeah, what works in writing too right, it wouldn't work to say the pursuit of happiness, life and liberty.
It has to be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The third one has to be a little bit different, to stand out, to pop, which is what comedy is.
It's making one of them look at things from a different point of view.
Let's see what we got left.
I only have a few left.
This is a comedian named Dan Gabriel.
He says in Japanese the word problem is the same as opportunity, which I think is great, because I'd much rather say I have a drinking opportunity.
It's got some wordplay in there.
But what I love about it is Dan is my friend and a funny guy.
And the more you know him, the more his jokes change. work.
As a comedian, I find I like comics better when I get to know them, because I get to see the truth in their stories and in their jokes.
And again, comedy is about finding a universal thing drinking, making it specific and interesting and funny so that everybody can get it.
So it's universal, it's individual and specific.
I love wordplay too and this has got some wordplay in it.
Yeah, that one don't need more, and it doesn't.
It ends right there.
You can put it in other bits about drinking, or it can just stand alone by itself.
One more, i have one more.
Should we do it?
Let me show you one.
Okay, let me show you one.
So um, i like this little this this, this little story from louis ck, and i want to hear about stories like short stories, setting the context fast.
Uh, this one's 24 seconds, but i think it goes through the whole, the whole arc.
A good laugh in 24 seconds is good.
Yeah, i remember i was in a taxi, i think in new york, and it was.
The driver was muslim and there was a woman crossing in front of us and he haunted her because she went after the light had turned.
And she gave him the finger and he said to me do you know, in my country, if a woman show you this finger, i could get out, beat her to death, And if I drive by here a week later, she's still just be laying there.
That's horrible.
It's horrible, but it's funny.
Stories are great because sometimes punchlines don't land, but a story has an arc and people are invested in the arc.
And so they tend to work more because they've just the nature of This story has a beginning, middle and end.
And the end is so funny.
And he's able to deliver it because he plays a character.
If he did it as himself, if you're the bad guy, people may not like you.
But if you put it in somebody else, I don't know if you've ever seen a ventriloquist.
Okay.
The puppet guy is nice and the puppet is the horrible one.
So your anger isn't at the performer.
It's at the little puppet or the character that you play.
And when he does the voice, he just has to do it a little bit to show some separation.
This isn't me.
This is the driver.
And he sets up the story perfectly.
I was in New York.
I was in a cab.
The guy was from a different culture.
And that's really all you need.
To set up a story.
You don't need to know what he was wearing, where he was driving to, what day of the week it was.
A story is just the important things that happen.
You know, I have a, put it like this, a dear friend who is a horrible storyteller.
Right.
Not you, but a friend of you.
And they're just nuts.
And the reason why this person is such a bad storyteller shares the wrong details and gets caught up on the wrong details.
And I'm always like, you just don't need all this setup.
You could have 10% and it'd be fine, but you need buy-in when you're telling a story.
Like you can sort of tell when you're telling a story, like once someone kind of like clicks in and you want to get there as fast as possible.
And uh, When a story is laborious, it's almost always that they're just sharing too many details and the wrong details.
Right.
Well, if there's too many details, if you don't need those, then the punchline or the important part of the story is lost because we have to wait through this.
I lived in Hollywood a couple of years and I got to take a screenwriting class at UCLA in their writing program.
I totally lucked out.
One of the things I remember is the professor said, A story isn't everything that happened.
The story is only the important things that happened.
Let's keep the plot going.
I don't need to know what the guy was wearing when he walked into the bar.
I just know that guy walks into a bar.
That's all you need.
Makes the jokes more concise.
I know another guy who is a horrible storyteller and he had a great story.
He drove Bob Dylan around in a limo for a day.
But the way he tells the story is He delivers that part first and then it's all this other unimportant information.
I was temping for a guy at a chauffeur agency and he called in sick that day.
And all of a sudden we're getting down to why the guy was sick.
He ate some bad shellfish at a restaurant.
No, the important thing is you drove Bob Dylan around and he loses it because he got caught up in unnecessary details.
Let me show you this.
So this is from a podcast that i did with mitch album.
Do you know that is?
He wrote a book called tuesdays with maury yeah, yeah and uh we were talking about.
I said how do you tell good stories and stuff like that?
And the the point that he made comes to detail.
So check this out.
My family had holiday celebrations and i was just interested in watching them tell stories and i would notice there was a distinct difference between my aunts and my uncles my.
When was Manny born?
Was he born in 46?
And then the uncles would tell the war story.
So there we were.
See, we were coming over the hill.
We heard the shots.
Then I turned to the guy next to me.
I said, they're shooting at us.
And I'm saying, that's how you tell a story.
That's a story.
Like, I love that point.
It's just the core things.
Well, I would argue a little bit with that.
Oh, tell me.
Good.
I would say if somebody said the year was 1945.
Blah, blah, blah.
The kid was born.
But the ants are... The year was 19... Or was it 1946?
They're interrupting themselves.
Details are important because they paint... A picture.
They paint the picture in the head.
And sometimes a joke starts with this nebulous setup and the punchline is very specific.
And the specifics of it are what is required to to make it work.
A war story he can get away with.
He doesn't need the details because war does a lot of the work for you right, when you're saying on the battlefield and we're catching fire, people can can visualize that.
It doesn't matter what year or what month that was.
Um, show me what you got it's.
It has some specifics.
It requires some cultural knowledge as well.
Um, pop culture stuff.
The Notorious BIG once wrote a song where he predicted his own death.
Do you understand what that means?
Biggie Smalls was also a medium.
Man, that's good.
This is Mark Christopher, another friend of mine.
It is a great joke.
If you know that Notorious BIG also goes by Biggie Smalls and also you have to know a medium is somebody who is a foreteller of the future and uh, some people don't don't get that.
So that joke doesn't always land and there's really no way to to fix it without ruining the joke or maybe earlier in the set you could talk about.
You guys know notorious big is also known as biggie smalls and kind of plant that seed.
So the information is in the audience's head so that later when you get to hear it makes sense.
But it's the details that are funny in that joke.
But again, If the audience doesn't know those details, they're not going to get it, which is one of the downsides of comedy is sometimes a joke will not land.
I have hundreds of jokes posted and somebody has always said, I didn't get this one.
Explain this one.
Why is that funny?
And if you explain it, sometimes when you break it down it's not funny, which we've demonstrated today.
What's it like to bomb?
What's it like to bomb?
Yeah.
There we were.
It was 1945.
Palms were falling.
It's the worst feeling.
It's the worst feeling ever.
It is giving your best material.
And when a joke doesn't work, you start doing all of your stuff.
The hits the things that will work.
And when those don't work, you just feel like that you don't exist.
I was doing a show once at a at a resort.
It was a, it was an MGM resort and we were in a suite.
It was 18 floors up and you can look out the windows as beautiful views.
And the audience were sitting on couches facing me and I'm doing jokes that are bombing and I couldn't even make eye contact.
And so I was just looking out the windows the whole time thinking, do these windows open?
Because I just wanted to, I just wanted to, to nosedive out of there.
Oh, bombing.
Bombing is brutal and sadly.
Um, for me, and i'm sure it's the same for many performers, the last show you have in your head is the one that you remember, and if the last show you do is horrible, you can't you.
The only way to get rid of that stench is to perform another show.
Okay, how often?
Honestly, how often do you think it's the audience's fault versus your fault?
Um, i have a good friend uh, who used to say it's always your fault if you're not doing your job.
Um, if you're not getting laughs, you're not doing your job, and it's up to you to do your job, and i agree with that in part.
But if i'm doing the same jokes that have worked thousands of times before and they're not getting it, it might be, it might be on them, but there are so many things that can interrupt that.
If if, If they don't know there's a comedy show and it's a surprise, like at this birthday party that I did.
If there's a TV on in the background, if somebody else, if there's music playing, if there's some other distraction, if it's not my crowd and the one that I told you about it wasn't my audience and they just didn't buy what I was selling and they were eating all the birthday food.
And I would say it's half on me.
I should, I should connect better.
First thing to do is connect to that audience.
But if I don't know them, how do I connect?
And then walk me through, you kind of have an epiphany for a joke.
Like, I don't know, maybe that could be funny.
An observation, a story that pops into mind.
Walk me through the different steps from that to, boom, I nailed it on stage.
Ah, wow.
Good question.
How much time do we have?
Because there's a lot of different ways.
Sometimes I'm just walking down the street and there's a sign, or I see a guy, or I see a dog who's wearing a prettier sweater than the person who's walking the dog.
And I see there's something odd.
Like an Hermes scarf type situation.
Something odd or interesting.
My brain just goes, there's something in there.
And so I write it down or I dictate it into my phone.
And then I sit down.
I have a writing time every day, most days.
Some days, occasionally I will sit down and and and spend my time writing jokes.
So I look at my notes and I see, oh, there's a dog wearing a sweater.
And I just I free I free write whatever comes to my mind, everything about dogs and sweaters.
And and sometimes things connect and sometimes they don't.
But for the most part, once I start writing, new ideas come and a joke comes, comes out of that.
So you feel like it's kind of like making a collage with words.
It's making a collage.
It's putting a bunch of ideas together and see which ones bounce off each other and which ones rub against each other.
You wouldn't see somebody dressing up a cat cats, don't?
That would actually be funny.
Yes, at the same time, that is a funny premise right right, i have something the other day that i thought was funny.
Like um i, i was my.
My normal pad did not work and so i had to use a different thing to scroll on my home computer like a mouse.
Yeah, the the other thing was out of battery and so i was using the scroller thing on the mouse, which required a thumb.
And i'm like oh, i'm glad i have a thumb, dogs don't have a thumb.
And then i got the idea of what if there was an internet just for dogs?
And that's the premise, and I haven't filled it out.
But what would be?
What would be those websites?
What would be the cookies?
What would be if there was an internet just for dogs?
Would the porn sites just be, you know, other dogs or cats, or?
And so that's a note in a notebook that at some point I'm going to sit down and write out, but it just struck me as odd.
So I scribbled down the idea and I have a notebook of ideas and I, when I have time, I flesh them out.
Last question.
So you teach comedy.
And so as you sit down to sort of structure the curriculum and say hey, these are the things that I want to teach people about comedy,
What are the core principles, the core beats that you try to share?
It changes a lot.
But for the most part, I talk about how laughter evolved.
I talk about the things that trigger laughter.
And if you know those then you can kind of fit and rights to those things.
And then I talk about these filters or techniques that you can add to an idea to make the jokes pop, and we've talked about some of those and Hyperbole.
Misdirection.
Misdirection.
This misplaced focus.
Taboo.
There's a guy I mentioned.
His name is Scott Dickers.
He's the one who founded The Onion.
He says there are 11 of these.
He calls them comedy filters.
So I teach those and then I talk about the process of what comedians do.
They observe something, they process it, they write it down, they rebuild it in a way that has an element of truth, but also an element that makes it interesting or exciting so that somebody else will find it enjoyable.
If you were just to get the truth and rewrite it in another way that didn't change too much.
My mother-in-law, she weighs 1,000 pounds.
She weighs as much as two 500-pound sofas.
That's not funny.
But if I found another way of saying it that was interesting or exciting or pushed some limits, then people could recognize some truth but also realize that there's something interesting or fun or exciting or laughable about that observation.
It's all about getting something universal.
Make it specific so that it paints a picture in someone's mind.
So those are the things I would focus on and try to do that in in an hour or over a course of five weeks, depending on how much time I have for the class.
Hopefully I'm a little bit funnier now.
Well, Practice.
Watch a lot of comedy.
Read a lot of comedy.
And if something strikes you as funny, write it down and explore that.
Yeah.
And hit me up and we can bounce ideas.
Okay.
It's about a different perspective.
So another set of eyeballs is very helpful when you're starting a comedy career because you have blind spots.
I have blind spots.
Another point of view, another set of eyes...
Give you insights of, oh, I didn't think of it that way.
Yeah.
You know, I was listening to, it was a pastor preach, actually.
And he said, you know, if I'm not becoming more loving as I get older, I'm living my life wrong.
If I'm not becoming more generous, more kind, I'm living my life wrong.
And you know what?
If I'm not becoming more funny as I get older, I'm living my life wrong.
I was like, I agree with that.
Amen.
I agree with that.
Robert Mack.
This is great.
Thank you.
Sure.
You're welcome.
Thanks for having me.
Of course.
Of course.
