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Caloroga Shark Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny back with your Daily Comedy News and daily briefing on stand up comedy comedians in the comedy industry. You know today you’re getting somewhere between two and four thousand inches of snow. Hope everybody’s doing okay out there. I’ve got some industry stuff I want to do in the second half.
But let me catch up a little more with Jerry Seinfeld’s conversation with Nate Bergetzy and Pollstar. Jerry was curious, and I’ll use Jerry’s phrasing here, what are you playing with lately? It’s new and fun? Nate said, I have this ai chunk that I’m playing with. I got one thing I want to try.
My wife always puts the blow dryer in the sink. It’s like if I grabbed a toaster and said in an empty bathtub. It’s just waiting to happen. It was only that idea and I never had a place to put it. And I have this marriage counseling chunk.
Now. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m excited about it because I think I can put that in the show. And that’s an idea had maybe twelve years ago. When comics say, like, when do you stop trying a joke? I’m of the belief I never give up on a joke.
I’ll give up on it if it doesn’t work. But if I know something’s there, I always think I’m not a good enough comic to figure it out now, But it sits in your head and you can have something in like twelve years Jerry said, someone was asking me about this, and I said, I have this joke about Frankenstein’s sports jacket. Where did he think he was going that he would wear a sports jacket? It’s from thirty years ago, from nineteen ninety five. Somebody said, how do you remember it?
I go, we’re hoarders. We don’t throw things away. Why would I throw out anything that might have some value? Who knows? When Nate said, with younger comics, I wish they knew not to just put anything out on social media and weren’t like, oh yeah, that could be a funny tweet, and you’re like, you know, what would be better is just let it sit for twenty or thirty years and then find a place for it later that elevates it into some big memorable thing.
Can’t you do both, Like if we had Twitter thirty years ago, you think people would be like, I don’t know. Jerry Seinfeld did that Frankenstein thing is a tweet a two forty two Wood Thursday, October thirteenth, I don’t know. Not a comedian, Nate said, your act is everything. My act is the only reason I can do anything I want to do, and I try to protect it. Good follow up by Jerry.
What do you think about comedians feeling like they’re ready to do a special? This is the thing I’ve been talking to somebody about Netflix about. It seems to be a little bit of an issue of undercook specials that could have used a little more time. Wow. Imagine being the guy at Netflix who’s probably Robbie Prau and Jerry Seinfeld is pointing out your specials are undercooked.
That’s really interesting, Jerry says, But of course the platform was the content. The comedian wants to check. What’s your thinking? Nate said, they’re going too early. That’s where social media can work.
Well. We had coming up with Comedy Central, which is very important. You went through Premium Blend Live at Gotham, where you did eight minute sets a couple years later you got a Comedy Central half hour and then an hour. Hopefully by then you could start touring. The Netflix came and all this stuff before I tape this special of done one hundred and fifty shows.
That’s not even including the clubs I went to before heading out, So one hundred and fifty to two hundred hours before I tape it, I get to poll every audience in America. I might be opening with something at the beginning I end up putting towards the end that fits better. You need to take your time to have it flow. I don’t want to feel like I’m cramming something in. It’s really good stuff for Nate, then I’ll move on.
Nate said, comedy clubs are like, well, how many followers do you have? And they’re like, I got to get follows if I want to get on stage at a comedy club. It’s not a bad route. You’re trying to create so much content, But I don’t think people will realize how hard it is to create an hour’s worth of material. Every time you’re done, you think I’ll never do that again.
You feel like you just got done with a special and you’re like, I don’t know what to do nothing’s funny. I’m terrible, and you’re making comics build online audience or they do crowd work. If you want to be a Matt Rife kin of phenom, you’re not. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t mean the likelihood of you getting to be Eddie Murphy doing two specials out of the gate. That’s one and a million.
It’s already one in a million to make it as a stand up comedian. Good stuff. You’ll find this in Pollstar HBO’s documentary mel Brooks The ninety nine year Old Man Is Out. Dave Chappelle recalls spending time with mel Brooks, who directed Chappelle and Robin Hood men in tights. Chapelle tells a story sometimes take me to lunch and his old friend Carl Reiner was directing a movie on the next sound stage, and then at some point the two of them started doing the two thousand year old Man, the greatest comedy routine but two of the greatest comics, and me is the audience.
I’ll never forget it. Then I met his wife. She comes and says, o’mel says so many wonderful things about you, Dave says, She goes on and on and gush. It’s about how much he likes me. Chappelle’s says, I go, oh, you’re not trying to seduce me, are you, Missus Robinson silence.
Chapelle says he hadn’t thought that. She’s heard that joke a million times. Nothing. Silence. Chapelle says, all you could hear was Dom Deluize’s labored breath.
It was really terrible and hilarious. That’s great. Dusty Slay talk to the Chronicle about his look. Dusty talked about the trifecta of an old school trucker hat sitting on top of straightened long hair and the glasses. Dusty Slay told the Chronicle that’s exactly what I want.
I found the glasses at a thrift shop in Toronto and had real enses put in them. So yeah, after I found those glasses, I thought, these are ridiculous enough but also cool enough that I’m gonna rock these. As for the hats, in Nashville, there are a lot of guys that wear trucker hats with long hair, but it’s not the right kind. People give me hats all the time and appreciate it, but I’m like this hat’s too cool for what I’m going for. You gotta find legitimately old hats for the eighties or nineties and try to step away from the foam.
It’s the high ride trucker hat. That’s what I’m into. That’s where it’s just a ridiculous look. Jerry Seinfeld once described to Kathleen Madigan as small, practical, and fun. She makes a lot of sense, but not too much sense, just enough to be hilarious.
Psychology Today caught up with Kathleen. She told her origin story before stand up. She worked in restaurants through college, and her friend Mike and her got off. They went to the nearby comedy club. It was open mic night.
Kathleen said, we said something funnier yesterday. Let’s try it. We were goofing off. Then a well known local TV and radio guy came over and said, you could be really good at this, and I thought I could do it for extra money. I still hadn’t found a real job after graduating.
I was writing freelance stories for seventy five bucks apiece in Saint Louis. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t enjoy the amount of work it took to get that seventy five bucks. I could do stand up for extra money. Psychology Today was curious if Kathleen’s parents mind her stories about them. She said, Amazon was concerned about my parents for a recent show.
Apparently, if I didn’t get along with them, my parents could sue Amazon. Amazon said, we get them to DocuSign release forms. And I said, I’m going to give you their phone number. You can call them. You let me know if they pick up.
Usually they don’t. And if you want to call their cell phones, they’re usually in the glove compartment of the car, not charged. Do you get a hold of them and then send them the DOCU sign. Then you get a call back about how their printer doesn’t work.
And then I won’t have anything to do with what you’re talking about, but they…
Finally, Amazon dropped it. My dad said, oh, I never thought we could sue you. That’s a good idea, And Kathleen says, I guess you could. I could pay you. Then maybe we could figure out a text loophole.
Tomorrow’s a Monday normal episode of three oh five am Eastern, and then if Vidiot Johnny Mack loads everything properly. This week on like last Monday, at noon Eastern, you’ll get the results of week three of Comedy Survivor and we’ll head onto week four. So normal at three am and Survivor at noon Eastern on Monday. A couple industry things I wanted to talk about from the Hollywood Reporter. They caught up with UTA London’s global comedy touring guru, Bjorn Wentland.
So this is one of those industry pieces that the Hollywood Reporter likes to do, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Wentland said. When I joined UTA, the business was pronominantly focusing on servicing North American clients in the international circuit, but that element and the international talent touring element have now flipped. He remembers talking to you an artist like Chris Rock who said I could never tour the UK because they don’t owe me as the stand up The only thing of me as an actor. When Wentland moved from the US to the UK was in part to start exporting British comics around the world.
He explains the economics were tough. The local offices of the big promoters and agencies loved the idea, but neither could produce the offer, so I really started noticing there was an opportunity neither the agency side or the buyer side had figured out, especially when he left the UK and hit Australia. Everything between was a bit of the wild West. One of the first clients he signed at UTA was Russell Peters, who’s internationally huge, not so big on the States. Said Russell Peters is the OG of international touring.
He was touring internationally and trying to figure it out long before anybody else in the industry really did, and became the story of we could do this right and up and comer of sorts they’re talking about is Victorio Angeloni. I’ve talked about him on this podcast, seen him with mine own eyes. He’s very funny. Wentland says, Victoria is one of the most exciting voices. He’s an Italian Irish comedian who grew up in Belfast.
Traditional agent set up here and said it’s not what I need, so he went for this bespoke model of representation where he came to us for live. They also talked about Max Amini. Now remember late in twenty five Max’s name came up and I was like, who is that, and none of you called me on it, So I don’t think you’re all behind my back watching Maximini. But apparently Max is like quietly super huge. Max was the first Iranian American artist to headline Madison Square Garden and sell out the Kia Forum in La Wentland.
Said we did three shows in Sydney last time. Do we do five next time? Or do we go to an arena. That’s those kind of questions, and he now not only does a show in English, but in some markets will go in and also do a show in forsee. Any other industry piece I want to talk about was behind the scenes at the Golden Globes Awards.
This from Deadline the topic the comedy category deadline Rights. Two years in to that category, optimism among comics has curdled into something closer to resignation. Deadline Rights and conversations with comedy insight, including managers, agents, executives and stand ups themselves, a consistent critique emerges. The Globes Comedy category simply has a little to do with the best of the art form. That’s how I felt about the podcasting category.
That’s not a shot at Amy Poehler. Amy’s wonderful who her podcast is wonderful, but that award did not represent podcasting in all its forms. One manager told Deadline, people who really know and love comedy think the category is a joke. I know. It has little or nothing to do with who’s actually making great comedy right now.
Comedy is in this weird place right now where everybody thinks it’s important what comedians have to say really impact society, and yet there seems to be very little emphasis on quality or artistic merit, and a lot of just heat and attention and buzz and controversy and gossip. Deadline says sources largely agree that the eighteen comedians nominated so far represent a narrow view of stand up shape more by celebrity and familiarity than by the breath of the form. Voters seem to have opted to nominate those familiar to them from film and television. Same note on the Podcasting award, everyone from Trevor Noah and Sarah sulliverman Alley Wong, and Brea Goldstein. One comedian compared it to the nineteen eighty nine Grammy’s when Jethro Tull beat out Metallica for the Best Hard Rock Metal Performance Award.
One insider said, I think comedy people are looking at it like, well, they’re picking the names of the people they want at the ceremony, and that’s what it is, so they can have cocktails with them at the party and take selfies. Same note on the Podcasting award. Sources argue the globes are failing stand up on two fronts. First, they’re disconnected from what audiences actually watch. These examples as arena filling comics like Naperghetzi and Gave Iglesias.
Second, the awards exclude YouTube specials entirely. One source point to two Maximini, who comes up for the second time today. His special Randomly Selected has sixteen million views on YouTube. One manager said, YouTube is world the best specials of the year ending up just not the ones with the most for your consideration money behind them. Yeah, that’s the thing too.
And then is your comedy news for today? All right? I hope the weather’s okay wherever you are, a lot of football on today. What time do the Niners play? Oh, they don’t play at all?
There, he said, I don’t like this Final four. Usually I love the AC and NFC championship games. I am not excited about either one of these games, Like, none of these teams interest me as an Ininers fan. I mean, you’re making me a pick between the Rams and Seahawks. Can I root for the game to be just infinitely postponed and the AFC team just wins the championship And then on that side, I don’t know, Broncos backup quarterback versus the Patriots, I guess you’re root for the underdog story.
Go Broncos, I guess I don’t know. See you tomorrow.