The Wrong Show

This is a post by Callum Scott that I have taken from his blog. During the Edinburgh Comedy Festival Callum performed at the (awfully named) So, You Think You’re Funny? Competition (I added the comma to apply accurate tone to the name of the competition). Callum is a very funny comedian that we all love here at HOWL, and when he received feedback from the judges they decided they would raise issues with his sexuality. I don’t think this is right, and so I thought I would share his story.

Taken from his blog:

Right. Here’s the difficult blog. I’m going to do my best to explain this, and see both sides. Not really! I’m going to be really difficult and unprofessional. Yay!

So, the 6th August saw my eagerly awaited So You Think You’re Funny Semifinal. I really enjoyed the gig. I had a shaky start, but the rest was brilliant, and playing to a room that size was fucking brilliant. All the acts were good, and I didn’t even care that I didn’t get through to the final. The gig itself I couldn’t fault, and I entered the Gilded Balloon bar with a spring in my step and a song in my heart. Although it would later turn out that that song was a morose minor key version of YMCA by the Village People.

Something I found really interesting and beneficial about SYTYF was that we could get feedback from the judges . I like getting feedback, and I felt I’d get a useful perspective on how to improve, and how I was currently getting on. But I was told the same thing independently by three very important people in comedy, and it unsettled me a bit, I guess. I was told that I should open with my gay joke, and make more of the fact that I’m gay. My sexuality was being talked about as a selling point, and I felt pretty shit about it. One of the judges even used the toxic phrase “I had no idea until you mentioned”, which if you didn’t know, is HOW GAY WORKS. Not OK. It really surprised me that the feedback would have a message that I viewed (rightly or wrongly) as quite regressive.

After the feedback debacle, I sat in the bar and considered my future. My options seemed to be to write a big stupid gay set, or to remove all gay jokes from my set to avoid accusations of hypocrisy. This was not how I wanted to feel after the biggest gig of my life. I felt like I’d never get anywhere unless I changed my act to suit the way that people in ‘the industry’ apparently felt. I couldn’t help thinking that the fact that in the set I performed, the gay joke was also the least ‘alternative’ (another argument for another day), was also relevant.  It’s the first time I’ve ever had to consider that I even had any integrity, let alone whether or not to ignore it.

And then, something happened. Who should walk into the Gilded Balloon Bar but Andrew O’Neill, possibly the most ‘alternative’ comedian working in the UK (not getting drawn into it).

He does well. He does well at fucking Jongleurs.  Fuck dumbing down.

I’ve written some gay jokes that I like, and want to perform, about being stereotyped, and about how “I had no idea until you mentioned” is, repeat, NOT OK. I even got told after a gig that it was ‘really important that I’m talking about what I’m talking about’ (it’s not). But seriously, it’s 2012. What a tedious and outdated issue to have to talk about. 

You can read more, over on Callum’s blog. You can even follow him on Twitter: @callumformetal

This post is a guest post from Ashley Butterfield, who discusses his experience of performing stand-up comedy.

Am I a stand-up comic? No, I’m not.

I’ve performed stand-up comedy, but to call myself a comedian would be the equivalent of referring to myself as a footballer after a playing a game of heads and volleys.

My comedy portfolio looks something like this:

* Travelling half way across the country to perform for a bloke and his two friends at his newly established comedy night.

* Worrying myself sick all day only to have Spiky Mike fade up his oh-so-hilariously apt song that signifies the audience’s disappointment after two minutes in my company.

* Some good gigs.

The good ones make it worthwhile; they feed my ego for a bit. It doesn’t last long though, I think my ego might be bulimic; I daren’t ask him about it though because he’s pretty fragile.

The awful ones I try and justify with phrases like “it’s all stage time”. It doesn’t really help because I know that my silver lining is nought but a sparkly grey.

Despite this pessimism I can’t stop doing it; the adrenaline rush is incredible. When I know that I am the next act on the bill my ears start pulsing with blood, the compeer’s voice becomes background noise and I become incredibly aware of the fact that my mouth is either too dry or too wet (I have yet to appear on stage with the correct amount of spit in my mouth). But, when my name is called, and there is literally nothing else to do except wipe my palms dry and perform, a calm sense of ‘fuck-it’ comes over me and I get on with it.

The first gig I ever did was two years ago at my student-union -thingy. I signed myself up, after years of convincing myself that I am possibly the funniest person ever born, and set about writing the comedy set that would light the scene on fire. What transpired was the hackiest, most self-deprecating and needlessly offensive script ever to grace a ‘my documents’ folder. I was ready to go. I posted a swift Facebook status saying where and when I would be performing and made my way to the venue.

Upon my arrival, I got a phone-call from a lad I know who said he was bringing some other lads that I know with him to watch me perform.

I followed two guys who suffered a slow death and, I think down to this reason alone, it didn’t go too badly; the audience were desperate to laugh by this point.

One of the lads filmed me that night and it is the only footage I have ever had of myself performing.

Afterwards I asked him why he stopped filming so abruptly and he said ‘I was hoping that nobody would laugh’.

For this reason I have kept my real life and my stand-up life separate ever since.

I got two gigs offered to me off the back of this performance, at both of which I died an appropriate death.

I stopped performing for a year after that, deciding there were much easier ways of achieving a high. I never stopped thinking about comedy though, obsessing over it – like a first love or an ulcer. I was still jotting down ideas and, eventually, I figured I had enough good ones to have another go at it; I built up the courage and applied for another slot.

I was then gonged off after five minutes.

But it was fun, I didn’t care, I was doing material I was comfortable with and I never had to see any of these people again. (I have seen every comic from that bill on at least one other occasion since, but past-me wasn’t to know this). I came to the realisation that above everything else the reason I was doing this was for the thrill of performing.

Oh, and the desperate craving of fame, money and out-of-my-league-girls.

A couple of weeks ago Patton Oswalt delivered a fantastic speech about comedy, and the sate of the industry at the Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival. Some might argue that this doesn’t mean much to Brits, but I’ve decided to copy the transcript of his speech here, for you to read, and take as you like. I think it’s fantastic.

His speech was in the form of two letters: one to comedians, and the other to the “gatekeepers of the industry”. Read them below:

Dear comedian in 2012:

How are you? I am good. In answer to your last letter, the mozzarella sticks at the Irvine Improv do taste weird. I’m taking your advice and sticking with the nachos.

Hey, ‘know what I was thinking the other day? Everything I know about succeeding as a comedian and ultimately as an artist is worthless now, and I couldn’t be happier about that.

I started doing comedy in the summer of 1988. That was a different time, wasn’t it? Joe Piscopo was president, Mary Lou Retton won the Cold War, and Andy Kindler turned 50

If I hadn’t popped that goddamn ‘P’, the Piscopo joke would’ve annihilated.

When I say everything I know about succeeding a comedian is worthless, I know what I’m talking about because everything I know became worthless twice in my lifetime.

The first time was the evening of May 22, 1992. I’d been doing standup almost four years at that point, and that was Johnny Carson’s last ever Tonight Show.

Up until that night, the way you made it in comedy was very clear, simple, straightforward. You went on Carson, you killed, you got called over to the couch, and the next day you had your sitcom and your mansion, and you’re made. Just ask Drew Carey and Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres. And Bill Clinton. That’s how you did it.

But now, Johnny was gone and he wasn’t coming back.

All the comedians I remember starting out with in D.C., all the older ones, told me over and over again ‘you gotta work clean, you gotta get your five minutes, and you gotta get on Carson.’ And it all comes down to that.

And in one night, all of them were wrong. And not just wrong, they were unmoored. They were drifting. A lot of these bulletproof comics I’d opened for, whose careers seemed pre-destined, a lot of them never recovered from that night. You’ll never hear their names. They had been sharks in a man-made pond and had been drained. They decided their time had passed.

Keep that in mind for later. They had decided their time had passed.

The second time everything I knew about comedy became worthless has been petty much every day for the last three years.

I know that’s not an exact date. Some other younger, not yet famous name in this room – you are going to pinpoint that date 20 years from now. But for now, every day for about the last few years will have to suffice.

I just want to give you a brief timeline of my career up to this point, when I knew it was all changing again. Listen to my words very carefully. Two words will come up again and again and they’re going to come back later along with that phrase “they decided” and people are going to carry me around the room.

I was lucky enough to get hired onto King of Queens in 1998. I had nine years on that show. Money, great cast, even better writers, a lot of fun. I bought a house. Then I was lucky enough to get cast as a lead voice in a Pixar movie in 2007. Acclaim, money, I got to meet a lot of my heroes. Then I was lucky enough to get cast on The United States of Tara on Showtime. I got to watch Toni Collette work. I got to perform Diablo Cody’s writing. After which, I was lucky enough to get cast in Young Adult, which is where I got to make out with Charlize Theron. I will use that as an icebreaker if i ever meet Christina Ricci.

I’ve been lucky enough to be given specials on HBO, Comedy Central, and Showtime. As well as I’ve been lucky enough to release records on major labels, and I was lucky they approached me to do it. And that led to me being lucky enough to get Grammy nominations.

I know that sounds like a huge ego-stroking credit dump. But if you listened very carefully, you would have heard two words over and over again: “lucky” and “given.” Those are two very very dangerous words for a comedian. Those two words can put you to sleep, especially once you get a taste of both being “lucky” and being “given.” The days about luck and being given are about to end. They’re about to go away.

Not totally. There are always comedians who will work hard and get noticed by agents and managers and record labels. There will always be an element of that. And they deserve their success. And there’s always going to be people who benefit from that.

What I mean is: Not being lucky and not being given are no longer going to define your career as a comedian and as an artist.

Remember what I said earlier about those bulletproof headliners who focused on their 5 minutes on the Tonight Show and when it ended they decided their opportunity was gone? They decided. Nobody decided that for them. They decided.

Now, look at my career up to this point. Luck, being given. Other people deciding for me.

In the middle of the TV shows and the albums and the specials, I took a big chunk of my money and invested it in a little tour called The Comedians of Comedy. I put it together with my friends, we did small clubs, stayed in shitty hotel rooms, packed ourselves in a tiny van and drove it around the country. The tour was filmed for a very low-budget documentary that I convinced Netflix to release. That became a low-budget show on Comedy Central that we all still own a part of, me and the comedians. That led to a low budget concert film that we put on DVD.

At the end of it, I was exhausted, I was in debt, and I wound up with a wider fanbase of the kind of people I always dreamed of having as fans. And I built that from the ground up, friends and people I respected and was a fan of.

And I realize now I need to combine both of the lessons I’ve learned.

I need to decide more career stuff for myself and make it happen for myself, and I need to stop waiting to luck out and be given. I need to unlearn those muscles.

I’m seeing this notion take form in a lot of my friends. A lot of you out there. You, for instance, the person I’m writing to. Your podcast is amazing. Your videos on your YouTube channel are getting better and better every single one that you make, just like when we did open mics, better and better every week. Your Twitter feed is hilarious.

Listen, I’m doing the Laugh Trench in Milwaukee next week. Is there any chance for an RT?

Your friend, Patton Oswalt

This is his second letter.

Dear gatekeepers in broadcast and cable executive offices, focus groups, record labels, development departments, agencies and management companies:

Shalom.

Last month I turned in a script for a pilot I co-wrote with Phil Rosenthal who has had a share of luck and success I can only dream of. Thanks for the notes you gave me on the pilot script. I’m not going to be implementing any of them.

And no, I’m not going to call you “the enemy” or “the man.” I have zero right to say that based on the breaks I’ve gotten from you over the years. If I tried to strike a Che Guevara pose, you would be correct in pointing out that the dramatic underlighting on my face was being reflected up from my swimming pool.

I am as much to blame for my uneasiness and realization of late that I’m part of the problem, that I’m half asleep and more than half complacent.

And I’m still not going to implement your notes. And I’m quoting Phil Rosenthal on this, but he said after we read your notes – and I’m quoting him verbatim – “We’re living in a post-Louie world, and these notes are from a pre-According to Jim world.”

I just read a letter to my fellow comedians telling them what I’m about to tell you, but in a different way. Here it is.

You guys need to stop thinking like gatekeepers. You need to do it for the sake of your own survival.

Because all of us comedians after watching Louis CK revolutionize sitcoms and comedy recordings and live tours. And listening to “WTF With Marc Maron” and “Comedy Bang! Bang!” and watching the growth of the UCB Theatre on two coasts and seeing careers being made on Twitter and Youtube.

Our careers don’t hinge on somebody in a plush office deciding to aim a little luck in our direction. There are no gates. They’re gone. The model for success as a comedian in the ’70s and ’80s? That was middle school. Remember, they’d hand you a worksheet, fill in the blanks on the worksheet, hand it in, you’ll get your little points.

And that doesn’t prepare you for college. College is the 21st century. Show up if you want to, there’s an essay, there’s a paper, and there’s a final. And you decide how well you do on them, and that’s it. And then after you’re done with that, you get even more autonomy whether you want it or not because you’re an adult now.

Comedians are getting more and more comfortable with the idea that if we’re not successful, it’s not because we haven’t gotten our foot in the door, or nobody’s given us a hand up. We can do that ourselves now. Every single day we can do more and more without you and depend on you less and less.

If we work with you in the future, it’s going to be because we like your product and your choices and your commitment to pushing boundaries and ability to protect the new and difficult.

Here’s the deal, and I think it’s a really good one.

I want you, all of the gatekeepers, to become fans. I want you to become true enthusiasts like me. I want you to become thrill-seekers. I want you to be as excited as I was when I first saw Maria Bamford’s stand-up, or attended The Paul F. Tompkins show, or listened to Sklarbro Country….

I want you to be as charged with hope as I am that we’re looking at the most top-heavy with talent young wave of comedians that this industry have ever had at any time in its history.

And since this new generation was born into post-modern anything, they are wilder and more fearless than anything you’ve ever dealt with. But remind yourselves: Youth isn’t king. Content is king. Lena Dunham’s 26-year-old voice is just as vital as Louis CK’s 42-year-old voice which is just as vital as Eddie Pepitone’s 50-something voice.

Age doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all about what you have to say and what you’re going to say. Please throw the old fucking model away.

Just the tiny sampling at this amazing festival…. I’m excited to not be the funniest person in the room. It makes me work harder and try to be better at what I do. So be as excited and grateful as I am.

And if in the opportunities you give me, you try to cram all this wildness and risk-taking back in to the crappy mimeographic worksheet form of middle school, we’re just going to walk away. We’re not going to work together. No harm no foul. We can just walk away.

You know why we can do that now? Because of these. (Oswalt holds up an iPhone)

In my hand right now I’m holding more filmmaking technology than Orsen Welles had when he filmed Citizen Kane.

I’m holding almost the same amount of cinematography, post-editing, sound editing, and broadcast capabilities as you have at your tv network.

In a couple of years it’s going to be fucking equal. I see what’s fucking coming. This isn’t a threat, this is an offer. We like to create. We’re the ones who love to make shit all the time. You’re the ones who like to discover it and patronize it support it and nurture it and broadcast it. Just get out of our way when we do it.

If you get out of our way and we fuckin’ get out and fall on our face, we won’t blame you like we did in the past. Because we won’t have taken any of your notes, so it’ll truly be on us.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the stuff uploaded to Youtube. There are sitcoms now on the internet, some of them are brilliant, some of them are “meh,” some of them fuckin suck. At about the same ratio that things are brilliant and “meh” and suck on your network.

If you think that we’re somehow going to turn on you later if what we do falls on its face, and blame you because we can’t take criticism? Let me tell you one thing: We have gone through years of open mics to get where we need to get. Criticism is nothing to us, and comment threads are fucking electrons.

Signed,

Patton Oswalt

By Thom Milson

I watched I am Comic last night, which was a pretty good comedy documentary: not the greatest, but pretty informative. Among the bits I really enjoyed was a section involving Todd Glass, and his views on a comedy club, and how they should go about laying out the room. I didn’t think this would be a problem across the board - I mean, yeah I’ve experienced it - and didn’t expect it to be something that illicit an almost rage like response from comics.

He starts by prefacing his argument with a statement that will also preface mine: I have seen this done. If I hadn’t then yeah, you could call me a moan, but I have. Some comedy clubs get it right*. Others don’t.

It’s pretty simple as well. What I’m going to do here is write a list of how a comedy night should be set-up. There are not “if you can” things, these are “you should be doing these” things. If you do them, your comedy night will be instantly a million time better. Okay, here we go:

1) Make the room dark.

Too many times, do comedy clubs light up their audience. This is really bad. Laughter happens more in the dark. Why? It’s called “madness” and is a cinema/theatre theory. Being in the dark minimises the distractions around you, allowing you to become more immersed into something. Look at cinemas for example: before the film starts the lights are turned down. This is the key to the cinema experience because it allows you to get into the film, and believe that the things that are happening on screen might be real, with real people. The cinema “experience” has nothing to do with the large screen like people believe (it does help, but it’s not that important) - it’s the darkness which is vital. Why do you think we turn the lights off and close the curtains when watching a film at home?

2) Don’t light the comedian that brightly 

The comedian only needs to be seen, not illuminated. You need facial expressions and all that jazz, but you don’t need the comedian to look like they’re staring right into the sun. If you’re using spotlights on full light, it’s too bright. Comedy Clubs aren’t supposed to look like Live at the Apollo, they’re supposed to be much more intimate, so think romantic restaurant lighting: dim, but not dark, and candles. Candles are great for comedy nights because they make the audience feel comfortable.

3) Don’t operate anything that doesn’t need to be operated

I get it some bars want to have the bar open during a show, which you can’t help because they have to make money. If you can have the bar closed during performances then do. Also, try telling the bar that people will still buy the drinks they want, they’ll just have to wait until the act is finished. 

The important thing is to keep doors that can be shut, shut, and anything like arcade games and all that stuff, off. If you think it might be a distraction, it is a distraction. Sort that stuff out.

And there you have it. That’s all it takes. So why can’t it be done properly?

*I’m paraphrasing here.

By Michael Sterrett

I am in love with a man and his name is Tom Scharpling. Apart from watching Seinfeld when I was a kid no-one else has given me more big proper belly laughs than him. Scharpling is the host of The Best Show, a weekly three hour programme on the New Jersey based radio station WFMU. I came to the world of The Best Show by way of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast upon which Scharpling was a guest, presenting himself as a refreshingly grounded writer, radio host and all round comedy gentleman. The chemistry between Scharpling and Maron was such that I decided to check out his show. I popped an episode on my MP3 player and hit the street.

Within five minutes I was deeply confused. What the hell was this thing? The show began with a hard rock theme tune and slowly segued into an utterly bizarre phone-in talk show with Scharpling as host repeatedly hanging up on the callers, engaging in furious free form rants, taunting his call screener, threatening to quit and extolling the virtues of a host of underground American bands. And silence. Long silences that are so alien to the ears of anyone raised on commercial radio or contemporary podcasts. I gave the show fifteen more minutes of bewilderment before my confusion gave way to actual physical anger. I turned it off in disgust. Who the hell did this guy think he was? What the bejesus was it supposed to be about? I was certainly not entertained. “I don’t know what this Scharpling character is trying to achieve but I’ll stick with WTF from now on”, I thought.

But here’s the thing, I couldn’t get The Best Show out of my head. The theme song (#It’s Tuesday night, nine o’clock yeah. Shut your mouth ‘cuz it’s Tom’s turn to talk yeah#). Those long grinding silences, the oddball callers and the way he intoned the phrase “WFMU you’re on the air” with such insouciance. What was I missing? I felt angry at this Scharpling fella but browsing through the list of amazing comedians who appeared regularly on the programme (Todd Barry, Jen Kirkman, Zach Galifianakis) I knew there had to be something there. Maybe I had taken on too much at once. The full three hour show to my uninitiated ears had left me scarred so I headed for Best Show Gems; bite sized morsels that would perhaps be more palatable or at least help me understand what it was all about. The majority of names mentioned were alien to me. Philly Boy Roy? Maurice Kern? Zachary Brimstead? Never heard of them, so I plumped for an instalment featuring Patton Oswalt and Aimee Mann. Once again I put it on my MP3 player and headed out.

What unfolded was one of the funniest things I have ever heard. A pizza delivery man somehow gets into the WFMU studio and begins a staggeringly ludicrous conversation with Scharpling, Oswalt and Mann. I won’t deconstruct the scene but before long I was desperately trying to suppress gales of laughter as I walked the streets of Leeds, the passers-by looking at me like I was nuts. It was my first exposure to the finest and most original comedy double act out there – Scharpling & Wurster. A quick Google brought me up to speed. During Scharpling’s days as a fanzine writer he became friends with John Wurster, the drummer from American alt.rock pioneers Superchunk. In their extended on air dialogues, often featuring characters from the fictional New Jersey town of Newbridge, Wurster usually takes the role of antagonist with creations like Philly Boy Roy – the Jersey hating Philadelphian mayor of Newbridge, Maurice Kern – an evil pharmaceutical magnate or Zachary Brimstead Esq – an obese barber shop singer. Scharpling is not so much the straight man as the pilot and navigator for these conversations, reacting with indignation, scepticism and anger at Wurster’s increasingly strange and elaborate pronouncements.

I devoured Best Show Gems, in the process uncovering recurring themes like an obsession with the Martin Short film Clifford, the life of GG Allen and the suggestion that Scharpling is both bald and uses a voice modulating apparatus to alter his natural speaking voice. Sounds mad doesn’t it? And it is, but the deeper I went into Best Show Gems the more fervently obsessed I became, quickly graduating to the full three hour programme in which aside from regular conversations with Wurster Scharpling fields calls from regular contributors and random lunatics from across the globe. Here-in lies one of the Best Show’s great strengths. Unlike so much talk radio Scharpling rarely deals in politics, sport or innuendo filled celebrity gossip. Instead callers are asked to contribute interesting anecdotes or discuss one of the topics Tom has put on the table. Furthermore as The Best Show is broadcast on public radio there can be no swearing or ‘toilet mouth’ as Scharpling has dubbed it. This restriction actively serves to improve the content, forcing callers to utilise more creative language and allowing Scharpling to assume an austere, paternal authority – a position he wields with thrilling contrariness.

To be dumped mid phone call, an act known as being given the Heave-Ho, is a pleasure afforded to regular contributors, first time callers and celebrity guests alike. This unpredictability lends an anarchic air to each instalments proceedings and is in fact the very essence of both Scharpling’s assumed character and the show itself. I am endlessly surprised and delighted by Tom’s take on things, his defence of Christian Bale’s on set rant being a perfect case in point (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0dYf0X0CdE ). His frequent assertions that he is a show-biz outsider, a ‘ham and egger’ toiling in obscurity for free on a publically funded radio station serves only to render his claims as to his and The Best Show’s greatness all the more hilarious and true.

Whether skewering the likes of Ricky Gervais and Russell Brand, or simply ‘steam-rollering chumps’ who ring in to pointlessly antagonise him, Scharpling brooks no dissent. Some memorable occasions include offering to beat up the Zodiac Killer and knock one arrogant caller’s teeth down their throat. The Best Show is about as far away from the increasingly lazy and misogynist content pedalled by the like of Opie & Anthony on satellite radio as it is possible to get. That’s before even mentioning the series of puppets (yes, puppets on the radio) who frequently appear on the programme, or the particularly sparkling repartee between Tom and his eccentric call screener AP Mike.

The Best Show is truly a cult phenomenon in the best sense of the word. It remains for now relatively underground, inspiring intense devotion from its listeners and raking in obscene amounts of cash during its yearly fund raising drives. And like all great cult artefacts it is almost impossible to explain. This piece barely scratches the surface of what makes it such a brilliant programme so I’ll leave you with a final thought.

About five months ago I was up late enough to listen to The Best Show live for the first time. When the theme tune kicked in and I knew that the show was happening RIGHT THEN, that AP Mike was working the phones, John Wurster was getting ready to call in and Scharpling himself was readying his chump steamroller I got goose bumps and there was literally nothing else I would rather have been doing than sitting down for three hours to wallow in the singular brilliance that is The Best Show on WFMU with Tom Scharpling.       

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5iynt89imI&feature=related