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The shark Deck Deadline with a big profile of Matt Rife. Hi, I’m Johnny Mack with your Daily Comedy News. The headline how comedian Matt Rife bulldoff stratospheric rise from pandemic era pickup truck stand up to a sold out global tour with live Nation deadline rights two months ago when Matt Rife announced his problematic world tour with a Live Nation, seems like Live Nations getting a lot of plugs In this one deadline, he moved around six hundred thousand tickets over the span of just forty eight hours, experiencing the culmination of twelve long years on the road. Remarkably, this was just the artist pre sale, with Rife ultimately going on to sell seven hundred and twenty thousand plus tickets to three hundred shows, including eight back to back at the Chicago Theater, six at Radio City Music Hall four, and Mohegan’s Son in Connecticut. Not bad.
Deadline points out Rife as recently as the summer prior, had struggled to sell even one hundred tickets a show. After COVID, Rife would double down by self financing and distributing his first pair of specialsch is the one of his TikTok clips that went viral and he began getting his name into the zeitgeist. Titled the Lazy Hero Rices, viral TikTok led him down the path to sixteen point three million followers and more than a billion global views on just that one platform. Matt Tell’s Deadline, it feels completely unreal, like half a dream come true and half of a one off. It feels like we’re going to be back in the back of my apartment complex in like six months trying to sell seventy tickets.
And I think that’s just because of how inconsistent the business is. We all got through jumps in our career that we’re like, oh, this is gonna be the thing. I’m gonna be fine from here on out. Then you have to start all over again. So it’s exciting, and I’m trying to remind myself to enjoy every moment.
This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that most people don’t get, so enjoy it, but work on maintaining it. Deadline said, we knew you were hitting the zeitgeist when you started getting reference on some of the bigger podcasts. Rife said, I don’t listen to or watch any podcasts at all except maybe Rogan. What’s funny is I do get a lot of text or dms from other comics or friends being like, hey, so and Sal’s talking about you on this thing. Did you hear?
And I’m like, nope, I don’t really care if it’s positive or negative. I’m sure it’s a strong mix of both. And I get a lot of really cool random calls, like Amy Schumer called me just to say she thinks I’m amazing and that she’s in my corner if I ever need advice or anything, which is so kind.
And then I’ll hear somebody’s talking crap on their podcast about how I don’t…
It’s nothing I haven’t heard for the past ten years living in La Deadline points out comedians often seem to be tough on those coming up, making you prove yourself before being invited into the club. Matt said, it’s a dream come true. You work so long in the industry for the respect of your peers. You want to be allowed to that elite group of comedian peers. So Chappelle Camp was kind of my first experience of that where he’s my idol.
There’s nobody I look up to and stand up more than Dave Chappelle. So for somebody like that’s offered me to not just perform with them, but enter his home, for him to be so hospitable and take care of my friends and my family and my girlfriend and be genuinely excited when I walk in a room, Like would walk into an afterparty, me and my girlfriend and would get up on a microphone and Dave would get up on a microphone and be like, Matt rives here, what’s up? Matt. He treated me like an equal rather than somebody who was mentoring, rather than somebody who he was put onto by somebody else, and he was just being cordial. He treated me like a real friend and colleague and gave me advice that I can only imagine was intended for me to someday reach his level and help navigate those trenches.
So I’ve just been so grateful and it’s exciting to be respected. Isn’t that cool? Chappelle sounds like an awesome guy. Never met Dave. Michelle Wolf talked to Westworld.
Michelle says, I don’t think there’s a good feminist. I think the best thing you can do is try to be the best version of yourself as a human. I’d be your authentic self.
Also, just embrace being a woman, embraced the women around you, and realized…
She talked about starting out in comedy. I moved to New York because I wanted to get a job that would make money to be perfectly honest, and Wall Street seemed like the place to do that. I got a job on Wall Street, and a few months later, in two thousand and eight, the market crashed and the company imploded, which I swear I had nothing to do with. Around that same time, I had signed up for an improv class, and I really liked the class. That whole world was crazy and angry, but improv was really fun.
I just loved doing it. I was trying to do it every night after working all day. Eventually I got an opportunity to work at this tech firm that would allow me to have a bit more free time at night, and that’s when I started doing stand up. It was slow and painful, because I really hate this pointing people was it very hard for me to do. It was a fantastic company, but I knew if they fired me, they’d give me a severance package.
I took advantage of them, which I don’t feel about corporations take advantage of people all the time. I was able to get severance, and with my savings, I was able to live and pursue comedy in New York for a year. Within that year, I got hired at Late Night with Seth Myers, which she says it’s a cerebral first job because they are the best bosses you’ll ever have. Late Night was wonderful because it’s a show that happens Monday through Thursday, which forced me to write jokes every day, even when I didn’t want to. It was also good because the jokes that wouldn’t work for seth monologue I could sometimes turn into stand up jokes for myself.
Seth was very encouraging me and continue to do stand up as much as I could, and it was the first time I’d really been on camera. Late Night just had a wonderful family atmosphere and really helped me become the comedian and performer I Am Today, Michelle says the Daily Show was interesting because at late night, we were starting from ground zero, but Trevor was trying to fit into a machine that was already working and trying to figure out what his version of the show was Seth was making his own show from the bottom up, so I got to participate in that. Then moving over to the Daily Show was a show that already existed for a long time with a brand new host. I think it was a bit of a struggle, but also fun because you’re trying to see what the voice of the new show is. I’m not sure Trevor actually got to do exactly what he wanted to do.
If they continue and pick a new host for the Daily Show, would be nice to see somebody with a really strong point of view take over and really make the show their own. It’s really hard with social media now because the Daily shows on at eleven thirty night and everybody’s already had to take on the news for the day, So you need someone who’s going to have something surprising to say at the end of the day that you haven’t heard or seen before. I hope that they find someone who is able to do that and breathe fresh life into the Daily Show. I think it’s a valuable piece of entertainment slash news. Both sides tend to be wrong and show news from a very biased perspective.
I’d love to see The Daily Show continue to point that out. Isn’t the Daily Show on at eleven? I’m not being difficult, but it’s on at eleven, right, And then the other thing was on at eleven thirty, wasn’t it? I don’t know. Salon talked to Jim Gaffigan about being the clean guy, and Jim said, the entertainment industry is perception.
In a lot of ways. You don’t have control over that. In a lot of ways, it’s not your business. I remember initially being resistant to being known as the clean comedian, just because the only adjective that really matters would stand up is funny. On special, I had five minutes on cancer and people were like, he’s still clean.
He talks about food. You don’t have control over what people will take away or what people will assign you. It’s a strange thing where I go with the flow. I’ve had numerous acting roles, yet with every acting project, people are always like, what’s it like to be an actor. These are intelligent people that I’ve seen my IMDb page.
But in their perception, I’m a guy who only tells jokes about food. Doesn’t bother me. And it’s not an indication of somebody not doing their research. It’s just the perception. If you enjoin you what I do here, Why don’t you pop on over to buy me acoffee dot com slash Daily Comedy News.
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Ali Sadiq talked about self releasing and owning his own material. He spoke with Salon and said, you know, I always wish that these were very complex things, like it was a bunch of real thought. I knew it with me. I posted a clip of me on Comedy Central on Instagram and I got flagged for copyright infringement. I was like, wait a minute, I can’t promote that I have this special on your network.
I can’t do that. Then with Instagram, you know what, if anybody you can call and say, hey, yo, this is me. With Facebook, it’s not a phone call, which is irritating that you can just say, this is actually my work, this is who I am. It’s like going to the tow truck place where they tell your car and you walk in. You’re like, hey, do you have a Burgundy Lexus in here?
And they say, how do we know it’s you, to which Ali says, Who’s going to be going around to random places asking for a Burgundy Lexus with all my stuff inside of it? At the Fringe, Christopher MacArthur Boyd’s show is called Scary Times. MacArthur Boyd beams knowingly on stage, says Yahoo like he’s about to confide in the world’s dirtiest secret. He not so much tells you a joke as accent out Like all the best comics, he exus the pale intimacy of a devilish, ey witty best mate. You’ll find him at Monkey Barrel Comedy at the Tron.
Mark Watson has poked fun at the debate surrounding comedians posting about their sports crowds at Edinburgh Fringe. The debate began when Georgie Greer shared a photo of herself crying after just one person showed up to her first performance, Watson poked fun at the whole thing. He posted an empty crowd at his own show, writing a bit of a disappointed crowd tonight, but we’ll have fun. Many believed he was being serious, but he was quick to point out the photo was taken twenty minutes before his show, which was actually sold out. Mark Watson played to three hundred strong.
He said, not everybody got the jokes. I should make it clear this was taken before the show. This was a joke that people horrifyingly took seriously. And that’s your comedy news for today. Follow the show for free on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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