Latest / Stuff You Should Know / Stand-Up Comedy Pt I

Transcript

Stand-Up Comedy Pt I · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Waka waka and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And I just made
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: sure to kick this two-part episode on stand-up comedy off
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: in the worst way possible.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You know what? This one has some COAs, unfortunately.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah. I mean, we're talking about genuine stand-up comedy and,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: you know, they're edgy. They push the envelope.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, we're going to, there are people throughout this,
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: peppered throughout this episode that, you know, some of them,
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: they're like bad people.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Some of them have done bad things.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: But you can't talk about the history of stand-up comedy
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: without talking about some bad.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: People, as it turns out.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Are you talking about Frank Fay?
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a bunch of people throughout here.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Well, I'm not familiar with a lot of
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: the badness here, so. Let's just avoid it.
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: That and, you know, this is the thing on stand
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: up comedy. So we're seeing our own a because like
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: you can't do justice even in a two parter. Like
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: after we got all this together, I was like, oh, well,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: we're not even talking about truly weird stand up like
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Andy Kaufman and Zach Galifianakis.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: And we're not talking about this and this.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: And you just have to stop at a certain point
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: and realize you can't cover something that's completely that's so
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: deep and vast like this, you know?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: For sure. Every once in a while we record an
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: episode and then like the next day I'm like, oh,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I should have said this. I think that's going to
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: happen 15 or 20 times.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: But we got to let ourselves up because I know
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: we're going to get emails. How could you not talk
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: about blank?
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: It's just the deal. You know, it's too much to cover.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: No, but shoot us those emails, especially ones we didn't
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: bring up because we might not have heard of them.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And not only... Name check them. Send us your favorite
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: joke of theirs, too.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: And I pledge to do a full episode on Andy Kaufman.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I pledge to do a full episode on
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Zach Galifianakis.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Hey, I'd do one on Zach in a second.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: And one other COA, too, just to throw in. Some
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: of these jokes are maybe slightly edgier than stuff we
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: would normally say, but that's, you know, we're covering stand-up comedy,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: which is inherently edgier than what we normally do. All right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You ready?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: I'm ready.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: We're talking about stand-up comedy, as we've said. And Livia
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: helped us with this, and she points out that basically,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: if you're talking about being funny in front of an audience,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: stand-up comedy is pretty much as old as humans are.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: As old as human speech is, I would guess.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Well, you could have made gestures that were funny. But
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to really just kind of shore it up, you want
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: to just zero in on vaudeville.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, a lot of this stuff we've covered
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: in other episodes. It's funny. This is another one of
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: those we've danced around.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: Like we've done shows on specific comedians, The Science of Funny, and.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Like two or three other ones. And then, of course, vaudeville.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: But here we are with stand up.
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: But you have to start at vaudeville because, you know,
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: vaudeville had a lot of skits and stuff like that.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: But it wasn't too long before there were people. all
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: of a sudden, whether they were hosting the night or something,
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: did something that resembled stand-up. And Charlie Case is one
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: of those people that people say like, hey, maybe he
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: was the first person doing this.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was the son of a freeborn black man
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and an Irish mother. And he was educated and became
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: a lawyer and a salesman, but he also was known
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: as a great storyteller. And so starting in, I think,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: actually 1880, He joined vaudeville and being a vaudeville performer
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: of any race. He whenever he talked about black culture,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: it was in a mocking way. He had to wear blackface,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. And eventually he was like, I'm not
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: really down with this. This is trite. So he moved
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: on around 1900 to doing essentially what's a stand up act.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he, you know, a tried and true thing. He
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: talked about his family a lot. And I found this
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: part hysterical at one point. His performance was on the
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: billing was billed as the man who talks about his father,
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: which could, you know, it's about talking about parents is
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: probably 90 percent of stand up since then. But, yeah,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: it was, you know, the 20th century had rolled around.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: And like I mentioned, being an emcee kind of led,
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: you know, at vaudeville kind of led to, you know,
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: hosting the night and telling jokes in between other acts.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: And that kind of morphed into what we would know
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: as stand up.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a guy, I already mentioned him because you
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: mentioned terrible people. His name is Frank Fay. He was
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: the first one to really kind of take stand-up comedy
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: out of the realm of like a pie in your
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: face or wearing baggy pants and suspenders or making yourself
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: the butt of the jokes at all. He was an
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: acerbic wit and he was very refined. And he gave
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: us those kind of like the type of– the type
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: of comedian like that David Letterman was in the vein of.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But I really hesitate to even associate Letterman with Faye
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: because he was a Nazi and a virulent racist too.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: He really was a terrible person, but his form really
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: created a certain type of stand-up comedian. And he was
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: also one of the first stand-up comedians of any kind.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And that's early 1900s.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, by the time you get to
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: the 30s, You had something called the Borscht Belt, which
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: were these Jewish resort communities up in the mountains in
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: the northeast, the Catskills and the Adirondacks. And, you know,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I'm sure people who know anything about the history of
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: stand up know about the Borscht Belt. You know, comics
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: would basically go and like summer there. They would do
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: shows in New York City and stuff, but they would
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: summer in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, just going sometimes residencies,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: but going from resort to resort. You know, it was
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: kind of a Jewish medium at the time. A lot
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: of jokes about Jewish life and Jewish culture and Jewish food.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Lots of self-deprecation.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: And this is where stand-up kind of took its form
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: that we know today.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Yes. And one of the kings of the borscht belt
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: who really broke out as a legendary stand-up comedian was
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Henny Youngman. He was known as king of the one-liners.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: And he's best known for the line, take my wife, please.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It's actually funnier than that. The full line is women
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: today are crazy. I mean, take my wife, please.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he was a social director at a resort, something
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: called a Tumbler. And this is where a lot of
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: the standups would get their start is like social chairs
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: and social directors of these resorts.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: And he was a big one.
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: Like this was a time where standup was like very
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: much joke, joke writing and It didn't you know, we'll
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: talk about the changes of stand up over the years
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: where it morphed into like storytelling and then alt comedy
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: and all that stuff. But early stand up and you
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: don't see a lot of that stuff anymore. Brian Kiley,
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: a pal of mine and a friend of the show
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: that was the with along with a couple other guys,
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: a monologue writer for Conan O'Brien for the entire run
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: and has written for.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: The Academy Awards and.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Just like a great throwback, like joke writing comedian that
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: you don't see much anymore.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So I love Brian's stuff.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Shout out, Brian. There's a guy, there's a comedian
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: named Jimmy Carr, who's British, who basically carries on the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Henny Youngman mantle. But it's way darker than anything Henny
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: Youngman said. I turned up one that he was saying
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: that he saw an ad for charity. And it said,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: little Zuki has to walk 13 miles a day just
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to fetch water. And I couldn't help thinking, she should move.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's dark.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It is pretty dark. But it's a one-liner and that's
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: all he does. Just like Henny Youngman did. Henny Youngman
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: was known for doing like 50 jokes in eight minutes,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: which is less than 10 seconds a joke. You just
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: can keep people in stitches if you do that, right? Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: And, you know, the Borscht Belt lasted way longer than
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: I thought.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Like it was a thing kind of through the 1970s
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: and a lot of big comics got their start here.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: People like Mel Brooks and Jackie Mason and Sid Caesar.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: But Jerry Seinfeld even got his start in the Borscht
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Belt in the 70s at a venue, kind of one
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: of the last Borscht Belt venues called Kutcher's Country Club
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: right there in the Catskills.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: And so the start of the of. stand-up comedy, especially
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: as it came out of the Borscht Belt. It was
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: very clubby, very Jewish, very male. But women were kind of,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: they kind of emerged a little later, I guess mid-Borscht Belt,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: if it went into the 70s. Joan Rivers is a
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: good example. And so is Jean Carroll. Both of them
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: just basically, they broke a glass ceiling that was very
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: much in place. And I think that, isn't Joan Rivers,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: her biography is what The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is based on?
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think comedy-wise, and I know sort of the
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: look was based a little bit on Gene Carroll, so
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: it was a bit of a mashup. But I think
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: I watched the first couple of seasons of that show
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: and quite enjoyed it.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Kevin Pollack's on it, friend of the show,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Kevin Pollack.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: That's right. Pollack's great on it.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: He started out as a stand-up, too, didn't he? Oh, yeah.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: I just think of him as an actor almost through
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: and through. But, yeah, he was a funny stand-up.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he famously got called to the couch with Carson.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: That was one of the big signs of respect if
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: you performed on The Tonight Show and Johnny Carson called
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: you over to the couch afterward for a briefing.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Interview, that means like he liked you. So you get
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: that stamp of approval.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: I found a quick, funny Jean Carroll joke. She said
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: that she had a cold and the woman said, why
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: don't you take something for it? And I said, make
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: an offer. So we talked about the Borscht Belt in vaudeville.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: We also talked about the Chitlin Circuit, which was essentially
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the Borscht Belt for black comedians, a series of venues
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: that black comedians played vaudeville-ish around the country, around the
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: United States. And this is just like with the Borscht Belt.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: This is where black stand-up comedy started to emerge as well. Yeah.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, you can't get any better than Redd Foxx
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: and Flip Wilson.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Those guys definitely played the chitlin circuit, as well as
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: a very funny woman who went by Moms Mabley on stage.
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: And she had sort of a shtick, like she would
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: dress up and had kind of an onstage persona. And
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: as we'll see as we go, like there's lots of
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: ways to skin a cat when it comes to stand up.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: But one way is to be up there or something
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: other than yourself. And that's what Moms Mabley did.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: One of the people who is usually pointed to is
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the guy who carried stand up out of the resorts
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and into mainstream is Bob Hope, who is British. I
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: did not know that. Did you?
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: I think I knew he was born in Britain, but
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know that he considered himself British.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So he was a he was his one of his
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: acts was about how rich he was and all that.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: It's very mid-century. But he he also kind of broke
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: tradition by. having a team of writers working for him.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And he would talk about current events, things that were
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: going on like that day, you know, stuff that like
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: if you were looking through like Us Weekly today or
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: something like that, you could get a bunch of jokes from.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: That was his act. And he was also really well
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: known for touring military bases around the world and performing.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: So he was the one who was like, hey, there's
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: this thing called stand-up comedy and you guys should all
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: start going to see it.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: And I think Bob Hope is one of those guys
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: where he he was one of the first real big
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: influencers of the craft, because anyone that kind of followed
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: after those years, if you ask them, they'll say like
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: like Bob Hope was kind of the guiding light.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They actually based the soap opera guiding light on
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: his life story.
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: You should do stand up. That's that's gold.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Hey, we'll get to that about how being funny on
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a podcast doesn't necessarily make you a good stand-up.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Well, I think you just spoiled that, didn't you?
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah. We'll edit in spoiler alert.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: Sick Comedians was sort of the next wave.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: In the 50s and 60s, there was a new style
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: that kind of came around where it wasn't just like, hey,
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: can you write a good joke?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: It was more like, hey, I've got.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: A unique point of view or I have a unique
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: voice that's going to add to my act. And San
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Francisco was one of the cities where a lot of
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: this is taking place, especially at a club called the
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Hungry Eye. And, you know, we'll go through a few
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: of these guys, but Mort Sahl was one of them.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: He started in 1953 and.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: He wasn't doing one liners.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: He was like he would sit down on stage with
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: the newspaper sometimes and talk about like current events and
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: politics and stuff like that.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Yes. And he kind of kicked off that preachy, hip, insightful,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: kind of biting social commentary type of stand-up comedy. A
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: lot of people associate that with Lenny Bruce. Mort Sahl
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: came first. One thing I saw about Mort Sahl, though,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: is he was, I guess, canceled in an early way.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: He called it getting blacklisted. He said that the right
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: never came after him. But that it was the liberals
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: who supported Kennedy who kind of got him pushed to
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: the side because they didn't like him attacking Kennedy. And
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: his whole jam was going after whoever was in charge.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: That's who you attack. That's who you criticize because just
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: by default, they were in charge. So they were probably
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: doing something horrible, too. But after it became cool to
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: attack the establishment again after JFK was dead and America
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: was mired in Vietnam or it's all came back into fashion.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: But I thought that was interesting.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: Shelly Berman is noteworthy because he had a kind of
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: the first big comedy album that hit. It was in
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: 1959 and the record was Inside Shelly Berman. And it
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: was the first comedy record to go gold. And then
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the first Grammy award winning, like non-music Grammy award winner
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: was Shelly Berman.
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: It's cute. It was cute stuff. Nothing like Mort Sahl's stuff,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: but it was based on his personality, right? Not his
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: ability to remember tired jokes. Dick Craig, who's another one
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: of this era too, he was really well known as
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: being like a huge civil rights activist. He's come up
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: several times in other non-comedy related episodes we've done. But
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: he was also super funny too. And he started out
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: as a standup. Apparently he started out because Hugh Hefner
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: discovered him In 1961 and gave him time at his
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Playboy Club in Chicago. Yeah.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: Did you know Atlanta used to have a Playboy Club?
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I didn't. I know pretty much every decent-sized city did.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, did they?
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: I think so. I could be wrong. If Atlanta had
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: one back in the 60s, surely. You know? There was
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: like a Kansas City one, too, or something.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, probably.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: So Jonathan Winters is another that we should mention from
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: early on. He did a lot of kind of character
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: work that I don't think a lot of people were
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: doing at the time. And he was one of the
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: early people to kind of talk about the tragedies of
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: his life in a funny way on stage because he
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: he would later on to be known as bipolar disorder.
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: But he spent time in mental hospitals and he would
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: take that stuff to the stage. And not many people
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: were doing that kind of thing at the time.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: No, and he was just totally making wacky fun of it.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: He called those places funny farms. Like, it was not any,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: you know, tear-jerking or gripping comedy from it, but just
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: even making fun of it for himself going through it
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: was something. Another big name of this era who was
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: really different-ish, he definitely had one foot solidly planted in
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: the borscht belt still, is Don Rickles.
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: I think the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did was
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: an inadvertent, unintentional facial expression where he got up to
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: get the shotgun in Casino. I'm pretty sure it was Casino.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: When De Niro thinks that they're coming for him, Don
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Rickles gets up and goes and gets the shotgun. And
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: just the look on his face is hilarious.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: You think that's the funniest thing Don Rickles ever did? Mm-hmm.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: I loved Rickles. I was a huge fan.
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: Really?
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, man. He was, he was great.
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: Like I remember growing up watching him on the tonight
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: show and he would just send, uh, Carson into like stitches.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That, that made it fun to watch Carson just
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: lose it too.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: That was good stuff. Uh, and then you mentioned Lenny Bruce.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: You can't talk about this early generation without talking about
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Lenny Bruce. Uh, he was, he was a guy that, uh,
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: kind of became, I mean, his comedy was great, but
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: he kind of became famous for, um, getting arrested. He
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: would talk very frankly on stage, um, in the, you know,
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: like late 50s and 60s about sex and about religion
• 17:45
  Speaker 3: and racism and stuff that was pretty controversial to talk
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: about on stage, such that he was arrested many times
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: on obscenity charges and was a huge, huge influence on
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: the people that followed him.
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Huge. He's also controversial in that, like, calling him a
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: comedian is odd because he wasn't that funny. It was
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: just he was a really important person in comedy and
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: also in free speech in the United States, too.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: I think he was very funny. There were.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had some funny stuff. But yeah, I just
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I'm speaking for everybody from my opinion.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks for bringing me back down to earth, man.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, comedy is one of those things. It's
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: it's so subjective on what people find funny. Like I've
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: had people say, you've got to watch this comedian special.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: that I just literally did not laugh once during. And
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: there are other people that I know I love that
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: other people can't stand. It's just, it's, I think even,
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: I think it's one of the most subjective sort of
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: art forms, you know, even more so than some others.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Wrapping this up, and then I say
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: we take a break. This is the 50s. This was
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a huge shift in comedy, and Time Magazine noted it
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: in 1959. They labeled these kind of comedians that were
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: personality-based comedians sick comedians or sickness in a very kind
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: of loving way, but also in like a what the
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: heck is going on here way. It was pretty interesting.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: But I say we take a break and we're going
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: to jump in. We're going to basically pass the 60s
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and really go into the 70s.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Things are heating up, everybody. Oh, yeah.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. Thank you.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: All right. So we're out of the 50s. We're into
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: the 60s.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: In the wake of Lenny Bruce, we get a bunch
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: of people highly influenced by him, willing to take a
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: little more chances and a little more risks, I think,
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: with their comedy.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: They talk about sometimes the holy trinity of the counterculture
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: comedians of the 70s and late 60s.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: And that would be George Carlin and Richard Pryor and
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: the great Robert Klein.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: What? I don't even consider him counterculture. That was the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: only thing. He is funny, for sure. But he's much
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: more observational and much less political.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Carlin... I went and watched, he apparently started out like
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: telling jokes and suits and like they were pretty clean.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: And I went and watched one of his early performances
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and he's almost unrecognizable. And then he starts doing, you know,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: conversations with two people by himself. And I was like,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, there's Carlin. But he switched over to the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: counterculture in the early seventies. And one of the, one
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of the things he became quickly famous for was the
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: seven words routine, which are seven words you can't say
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: on television. which also were words that I think Lenny
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Bruce got arrested for saying like each one. Yeah.
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: And then of course, Richard Pryor was the third. And
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: he's another guy who started out a little more straight laced.
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, I feel like all these guys,
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: what the switch was, was I'm going to start being
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: myself a little bit more on stage and having the
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: courage to kind of like, you know, speak in my
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: own language and whether it's like dirty words or in
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Richard Pryor's case, sort of really accepting like that he's a,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: you know, one of the great black comedians and he
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: can just sort of let loose.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, he he was, I guess, often pointed to as
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: like the first black comedian who truly removed like the
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: palatable jokes for white audiences. Like he just he he
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: basically was a black comedian in front of white audiences
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: that didn't Code Switch. That's what it's called. He was
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: probably the first black comedian to not code switch. And
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: then it's also even hard. It's not that hard, but
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: I think of Richard Pryor more as just like a
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: mega movie star because he was in so many great
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: movies of my youth, like Stir Crazy, Silver Streak, Hear
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: No Evil, See No Evil. Those were all what, those
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: were with Gene Wilder.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Bustin' Loose, Moving, Brewster's Millions.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: What else?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Harlem Nights.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Okay. What else?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: There's plenty others, but those are the ones that I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: watched a lot when I was younger.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, as you'll see, a lot of these
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: comedians went on to have great careers as actors.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: Which is not always a given because a lot of
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: stand-up comedians are really, really bad actors.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It's true. And it's really surprising how many of them
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: become great actors. Like Tom Hanks started out as a stand-up. Oh, yeah.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Tom Hanks is great.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: But Peter Scolari? No.
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: No. And then Robert Klein was the third of that trio.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: He grew up going to some of these Jewish kind
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: of summer camps and resorts in the Borscht Belt and
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: worked at some of them. And so he kind of
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: got that education there. And he did a lot of
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: political stuff, a lot of social commentary, as well as
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: just his Robert Klein-ness. And he was another guy that
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: was really influential.
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: And just beloved for his personality, like who he was.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: You know? Like he told lots of stories that he
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: didn't have like one liners or punchlines necessarily.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: So one of the other big things that happened to
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the 70s was comedy clubs started opening up. And the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: two that really kind of quickly jumped to the forefront
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: was the improv and the comedy store. One of the
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: other things that those kind of went hand in hand
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: with these comedy clubs opening up across the country was
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: a switch from. social commentary, uh, more to like observational
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: stuff too. Yeah.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: And those, those comedy clubs, all of a sudden you
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: had these places where you could, you know, go up
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: a few times a week and really workshop your material. And, uh,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: you know, very small audiences generally at these places. Um,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: I think the improv, uh, eventually expanded into a chain.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: It started in, in New York city, um, but expanded
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: to 15 clubs eventually, um, And then the Comedy Store,
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: I know we talked about the Comedy Store before in
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: other episodes, but it really changed the game in Los
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Angeles in 1972 when Mitzi Shore, Polly Shore's mom, took
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: it over when she won it in a divorce settlement and.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: Ran the show there for decades, basically.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she also went on to found the company that
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: became Comedy Central, from what I understand. So, yeah, she
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: was a huge influence in comedy. And then I also
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: mentioned one of the things that was happening hand in
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: hand with the 70s comedy clubs was that switch from
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: political and social commentary necessarily more to like personal stuff,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: observational stuff. And I found a great example of that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: in Elaine Boosler, who definitely helped kind of usher that
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: in from the late 70s into the 80s when she
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: was really big. But she had this joke that she said, like,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: she has six locks on her door now. And when
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: she goes out, she only locks every other one. Because
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: she figures that if somebody wants to come pick her lock,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: no matter how long they stand there, they're always going
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: to be locking three of them.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: The great Elaine Boosler.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: That's great. Like it has it makes a social commentary
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: and crime exists, but that's about as far as it goes,
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. She's she's awesome.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Late night talk shows is where stand up took a
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: huge jump to. And Ed Sullivan started all of that
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: out in the 1940s. And then, obviously, when The Tonight
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Show came about in the 1950s, like I talked about eventually,
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: Johnny Carson, you know, anointing you was a very big
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: deal as a stand-up comic.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: And then, like, records.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: I know we mentioned Mort Sahl and some of these
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: other guys with their early records.
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: But once LPs came around.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: And all of a sudden you could get your comedy
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: on a record and win a Grammy for it and, like,
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: make money selling comedy records.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: That was sort of the.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: Early version of like the standup special that we have
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: now was the comedy record.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Yes. I say that we take a break and come
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: back and talk about some of the comics from this era. Okay.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck, so we're back. And thanks to comedy albums,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: thanks to TV, there were suddenly way more places for
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: comics to perform rather than just clubs and also get discovered.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Joan Rivers is a good example of that. She started
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: doing stand-up all over the place in New York. She
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: had some hilarious bits. And then she got her big
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: break on The Tonight Show. And a lot of people
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: from Stephen Wright, one of the most amazing comics of
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: all time, to Mitch Hedberg, another amazing comic too, all
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: got their break on late night shows. And she was
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: one of the early ones. And so she became a
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: regular because she killed so hard. on the late night
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: shows that she almost took over for Carson. We've talked
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: about this before, but she upset him by, um, trying
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: to get her own show without talking to him first,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: getting his blessing first, but that's how good she was
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: at late night. And she started out as just a, um,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: a standup comedian in the little clubs in New York
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: before the improv even.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: And, you know, if you were a comedian back then,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: it wasn't like today where it's a, It was just
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: starting to become a thing where like, hey, you can
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: have a full career just doing this because a lot
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: of these people did other stuff like they acted. I
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: know Joan Rivers acted in plays and movies when she
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: wasn't getting booked.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Red Fox did the same.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: He was he was on the Chitlin circuit, but he
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: was too raunchy for white audiences at the time.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: So like he would put out an album and they
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: may not even sell it in mainstream stores. But then
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: he becomes a huge star. When he is an actor
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: on Sanford and Son, one of my favorite shows as
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: a kid.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't allowed to watch it because my mom
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: thought Red Fox was a dirty old man. He was.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: I found a hilarious Red Fox joke. He said that
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: I carry a knife now. I read in a white
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: magazine that all black people carry knives. So I ran
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: out and bought me one.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: He was great.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, he wasn't filthy on Sanford and Son. So
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: I feel bad that you didn't get to.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Watch the show.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, I've watched it for sure. Oh, okay.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: You snuck it.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: I watched it a little later. Yeah, I had plenty
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: of other stuff to watch like Flintstones and things like that.
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: So I just saved it for later. I don't think
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: I would have enjoyed it as much because I was
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: five years younger than you. So I had to wait
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: until I got older. little older to really think it
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: was funny. But it is a great show.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: Great show.
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: Steve Martin was another one. He was a comedy writer.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: He plays the banjo, I think, as most people know.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: So he would work that into his early nightclub shows.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: and worked as a comedy writer for the Smothers Brothers
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Comedy Hour and other variety shows. And then after SNL,
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: and if you've seen the great documentary on Steve Martin,
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: it's a two part documentary. It's just fantastic. But he
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: was he was the first like superstar of comedy. There
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: had not been people that sold out, you know, basketball
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: arenas before Steve Martin. And it was It's an incredible
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: thing to watch in this documentary. Like just what a
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: he was like one of the most famous people in
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: the world in the 1970s and then just stopped, just
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: walked away from it all and never did stand up again.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: So he could do movies.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: I know, which is sad because some of the stuff
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: he was doing was so creative. Like I watched his
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: comedy Act for Dogs, which he did on Carson. where
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: he had like four or five dogs just lined up
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: right in front of him. And he told the viewers
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: to bring, bring your dogs because this is going to
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: kill them. They're going to love this. And then he
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: did a act geared toward making dogs laugh. So they
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: were all dog centric jokes, not, not like about like
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: to owners, but to the dogs. And then at one
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: part he plays a little, like a bit on a
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: dog whistle that you can't, you can't hear anything. It's just,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. And this is like the kind of stuff
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: he was doing, not just standing there telling jokes, but
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: like hilarious bits. So, yeah, just he should have been
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: a superstar. He was so good. And I wish he
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: was I wish he would still do stand up once
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: in a while. You know, I can't imagine how many
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: tickets he would sell if he came back and did
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: stand up once.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he kind of does it.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: You know, he and Martin Short have a roadshow that
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: they do together, which is essentially a two hander stand up. But,
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: you know, in the documentary, he talks about just he
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: got so big that he was doing routines where the
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: you know how the audience will sing along at like
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: a concert.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Where the audience was saying punch lines, you know, 20,000
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: people saying the punch line out loud with them. And
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: it just I think it got to be too much.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: And he was just like, that's not what this was
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: meant to be. And I mean, he had to it
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: takes a lot of bravery and guts to just be like,
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm done with that part of my life.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: They totally walked away.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like Dave Chappelle would later on 30 years later. Yeah.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy in between.
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: Uh, although there's rumors that Eddie's working on a standup set,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: which would just, that would, oh man, that would be incredible.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Uh, yeah. So, uh, that's Steve Martin superstar. Uh, another
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: superstar that came out of the seventies was Robin Williams, who, um,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: rose to fame, like just completely fueled by cocaine and
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: just totally out of his mind. And I assume that
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: that's why he was always like, you know, going nuts
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: and bouncing all over the place. Apparently the exact opposite
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: happened with him. Cocaine called him down. So he was
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: naturally like that. And when he was mellow, it's because
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: he was on coke, which I found quite interesting.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: Well, he was obviously Mork from Ork, which debuted as
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: a character on Happy Days in 1978. And then he
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: got his own show, Mork and Mindy, that same year.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: Another favorite show of mine as a kid. And he's
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: another one of those that like he always loved stand
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: up and like kept doing stand up alongside of movies,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: like once he became even a dramatic actor at times.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: But he was he was still love going on stage
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: and doing stand up in the Heard lots of stories
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: about him, like, showing up at the comedy store and stuff. Like,
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: even in his later years and, like, showing up to
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: do a set and it would just, like, floor people.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I'm sure. He also, remember, he appeared in our Coco
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: live episode because he got to go hang out with
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Coco for a while and they just communicated.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they were buddies.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, so... You've got like 20,000 seat stadiums with Steve Martin.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: You've got raunchy comedy albums with Redd Foxx. You got
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Joan Rivers hosting late night stuff as a guest. Cable
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: was another thing that came along that really changed things
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: for comedians for a couple of reasons. One of the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: big reasons was they could say stuff on cable specials
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: that they could not say anywhere else except in person.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: And now you were saying this instead of to 50
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: people in a small club, you're saying this to millions
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: of people who got to watch your stuff. And then
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: you went from 50 seat small clubs to, you know,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: pretty large venues after that. And then also, instead of
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: like five minutes on a late night show, you would
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: have like an hour long special. So you did your
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: entire set. And that really changed things, as I said.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Like HBO, it just can't be overstated what an important
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: thing HBO was to the rise of comedy in the
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: United States, because that's where those first comedy specials started appearing.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: I think Robert Klein was actually the very first HBO
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: comedy special in 75. And then Steve Martin, I think,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: kind of right after that, almost called him Stephen Martin.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: But then, and I know we talked about this in
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: the Rodney Dangerfield episode, when Rodney started the HBO Young
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Comedian specials, that run of, 19 years from 76 to 95.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: I remember watching this when I was a kid and
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: seeing all these, like Sam Kinison and Roseanne Barr and
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: Rita Rudner, Jerry Seinfeld, that's where he got his start.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: I was just a kid sitting around watching every bit
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: of stand-up I could get my hands on, and HBO
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: was definitely the place. Yeah.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, it definitely was, especially before Comedy Central, too. Yeah. Basically,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: everything I ever put on HBO was amazing. because they
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: didn't just give a special to just anybody. The cool
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: thing was, is you didn't have to be an already
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: established standup. Like you said, Jerry Seinfeld got his start
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: on that. You just had to be really good at
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: what you did. One of the other ways that HBO
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: helped too, they helped a lot of up and coming
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: black comedians on Deaf Comedy Jam, which ran for years
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and years and years. And essentially any huge black comedian
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: that you know of today, got their big break on
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: Deaf Comedy Jam. It was like that important.
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. Huge hats off to producer Russell Simmons
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: for that. It was hosted by Martin Lawrence. And yeah,
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, you name it.
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: If you.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: Ended up being a famous Black comedian in the 1990s,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: there's a pretty good chance you started on Deaf Comedy Jam.
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: And that would lead, I know this is jumping ahead
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: a bit in time, but to the Kings of Comedy Tour.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Man, that was so good.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: And then the original Kings of Comedy film of that
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: tour from Spike Lee in 2000, of course, that was
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: Steve Harvey, D.L.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer, and R.I.P. the great Bernie Mac.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. He was great. His show was pretty great, too.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: I loved the Bernie Mac show.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, still holds up.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: So we mentioned Comedy Central, and that started in 1991,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: even though Mitzi Shore had established something before it a
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: few years before. Not sure why that's important, but I
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: felt like I needed to mention it again. And the
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: whole thing, I don't know if you remember this. I'm
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: sure you do. It was just basically shows that were
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: clips of comedians doing standup. That's how it started. And
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: it was so pure. That's all you needed. They would
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: just figure out different ways to package it. Short attention
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: span theater, stand up, stand up or whatever.
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: But that's all it was. It was just stand ups
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: doing stand up clip after clip. And it was wonderful.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was great. You're right.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: There was a purity to those early days of Comedy Central.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: They did have shows that would come along, but they
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: were shows from comedians like The Great Chappelle Show. And
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: I know a show that you and I both love, Dr.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Cat's Professional Therapist.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: I'll always remember Dom Herrera saying, like, you can't get
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: to a cat. Like, you just can't get under their skin. Like,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: you could throw them across the room and the cat
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: would be like, thanks, my man. I was going this
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: way anyway.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Dom Herrera is so great. Yeah.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, Comedy Central was an enormous driver, too, as
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: you can imagine. And then Saturday Night Live, as we mentioned, like,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: It's pretty difficult to overstate the importance that Saturday Night
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: Live has had on launching like stand-up comedians into stardom.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, you know, we already mentioned Eddie Murphy, but
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: that's where he got his start at age 19.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: Again, I highly recommend his documentary. It's really, really good.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: And then he had his protégés to follow after he
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: put out his two kind of groundbreaking comedy movies, Delirious
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: and Raw.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: Both of which I think a lot of Gen Xers
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: can kind of quote by heart.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's see. What else, Chuck?
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Well, Chris Rock, he was one of those protégés.
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: So he came out of that Eddie Murphy school, was
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: on the SNL cast, and had a nice run of
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: HBO specials, too.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, so one of the other things, this is just,
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I love this part because it's so nostalgic for me,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: but one of the things that people figured out pretty
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: early on is you could take a stand-up comedian and
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: even if they couldn't act, they could at least pretty
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: much act like themselves. So shows that were based on
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: that comedian's life where they played themselves, like Seinfeld is
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: an excellent example. Those have come out over the years
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: and some of them have been just amazing. Like Seinfeld, obviously,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: was on for almost 10 years. No, more than 10 years,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: 11 years. And the Drew Carey show was on for
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: almost 10 years. Jamie Foxx show was on for five.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Bernie Mac was on for five. And it just keeps
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: going on. And then others didn't have quite as much
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: staying power, but they weren't necessarily terrible. They just didn't
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: draw the audience that the execs expected, like the Norm
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: show or Whitney or Mulaney all had very short runs,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: but they were all based around stand-up comedians. Yeah.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Louis C.K. had a couple of runs on TV.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: He had a sitcom, like an on-stage multicam sitcom called
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: Lucky Louis, which not a lot of people saw, I
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: feel like. He got a lot more attention with his
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: show just called Louis. But, you know, Seinfeld was very famously,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: when he won an Emmy, got up on stage, I
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: don't know if you remember this, and grabbed the Emmy and.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Said, I am a bad actor.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: So he was always very upfront about the fact that like,
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: you know, I'm not necessarily an actor, but I guess
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: I'm myself enough on TV.
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: And then also want to shout out the Sarah Silverman program.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: Not only was that a great show, but a lot
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: of like alt comedians got their start either acting or
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: writing for that show.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that also kind of grew out of Mr.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: Show.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Which was a big deal for alt comedy, as we'll see.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: And Sarah Silverman was on. She was one of the
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: actors on that show, too.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So those were all sitcoms, basically, where, you know,
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: they weren't all playing themselves like as comedians in real life.
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: Like Mad About You, it wasn't about a, you know,
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Paul Reiser, the comedian. there were other shows sort of
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: like Mad About You where there were comedians playing either
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: thinly veiled versions of themselves or kind of like in
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: Roseanne's case, she kind of took her act and formed
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: that into the show Roseanne. Obviously, The Cosby Show, Ellen,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Steve Harvey, Everybody Loves Raymond, George Lopez. I haven't seen
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: a lot of these shows. Home Improvement and the great
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Bob Newhart show. And we got a shout out to
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: Gnataro and her great show, One Mississippi.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She didn't play herself in that.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: She did not play herself. I don't think I'm trying
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: to remember now. I really like the show. I had
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: a couple of seasons, but I don't think she played
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: a comedian. I'm trying to remember now because I don't
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: want to get called out.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: So I gotcha. So there's also at the same time,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: while people are standing there with a microphone and there's
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: a bar stool with like a vodka tonic on it
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: or something like that during the 80s and 90s, there
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: are also people doing their own thing. Still, you got
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: to shout out Gallagher, who definitely did his own thing.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: You have to shout out another prop comic, Carrot Top.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: You could. Shout out Jeff Dunham, who we talked about
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: in our ventriloquist episode.
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Andrew Dice Clay was another one. He had his own shtick.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: And not only did he have a comedy album called
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: The Day the Laughter Died, which I grew up on.
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: He starred in his own movie, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Did you ever see that?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: I never saw that. And I don't know why, because
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: I really was into Dice for a while when.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: I was in high school.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Did you dress like him?
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, no, no, no. Nothing like that. I just
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: thought he was very funny.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: He had some very recitable jokes.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: One other comedy album that was really influential on me
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: at the time was Dennis Leary's No Cure for Cancer.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: That was really great, too.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was never into Dennis Leary. But but I
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: got it. I thought his MTV stuff was pretty fun.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: And you know what? I'm just now remembering. I think
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: Tig Notaro played.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I think it was one of those slightly different versions
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: because I think she played like a radio host or something.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: OK. Yeah. That's like Steve Harvey. I think he played
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: a radio DJ or something like that.
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: So she sold Steve Harvey's bit.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: So I say we sign off for episode one. We'll
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: come back with episode two. But there's one thing I
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: wanted to say that I didn't get to, but I
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: found out from researching this. You know that famous saying
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: that Ginger did everything Fred did, only backwards and in heels? Yeah.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: That's Joan Rivers.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Oh, that was her original joke?
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Well, that's it. Are we going to do anything aside
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: from tell people our e-mail?
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I don't think so.
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: You know, we'll come back with part two, I guess,
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: probably on we'll probably do a Tuesday, Thursday, and we'll
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: pick up with alt comedy in the 90s there.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: OK, so we'll we'll see you guys Thursday. And in
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the meantime, if you want to send us your favorite
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: comedian and their favorite joke, send it off to Stuff
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeartRadio.com.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.