A Quote by Jim Jefferies
There's a lot of guys up there who like wearing a suit or try doing jokes that they think will play to a certain crowd, or maybe get them corporate work. I've always written jokes that I would want to hear. So, I'm trying to entertain myself more than anything.
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Jokes rot. They're not like songs. I always envy singers - Sting is always going to sing 'Roxanne'. But people want to hear new jokes. I've written jokes as good as 'Roxanne', I believe. But I can't tell them again.
I'd buy joke books and try doing them at school; I always had jokes. That would be my go-to thing at parties: I'd be able to get through them if I just told enough jokes. Otherwise, I wouldn't end up talking to anybody.
I make comedies and I always try... I don't try but I allow to have at least 5% of the jokes or have some jokes that I know will be understood by only about 5% of the audience. It's that guy in the corner who gets it and laughs. But he has to have his jokes too. That's part of my audience. Part of my audience is the people who will only get certain things.
There are jokes I know I want to tell, and there's sort of a rough order, but usually I try to change it up every show, to improvise and talk with the audience. I think when you tell jokes, if you're not careful, you can end up telling the whole list of jokes and then that's it. And that can get a little boring.
I try to play the stiff, as much as I can, and play it dry, which is sometimes hard for me. My problem with comedy is to want to clown it up, but she's the funny one. Those are her jokes, not mine. For me, it's a lot of not doing anything. I just don't want to muck it up.
Since my act is a goofy reflection of what's going on in my life, I started doing pot jokes, and I noticed that audiences invariably love pot jokes. Even people who don't smoke pot think it's a funny subject. So when I started getting laughs, I started doing more material about it. When people come to see my shows, there are a lot of stoners in the audience, but there are also a lot of people who just like me. So I try to give a healthy mix, where people aren't going "There are too many jokes about pot!" or "There's not enough jokes about pot!"
But the worst feeling as a crowd work practitioner is that not only is crowd work, for me, the most fun thing to do on stage - I always say the less written jokes I tell in a set the more fun I was having--but it's also a secret weapon.
I always thought it was important to overdeliver, and when I got one of my first jobs, writing jokes for Garry Shandling when he was hosting the Grammys, I stayed up all night and wrote a hundred jokes, and I thought, "I'm always going to be the person that gives them more than they requested, and that's why they'll want to keep me around."
Every time I get in front of an audience, I do the best I can. I really don't look at it like, you know, 'This is gonna be this crowd, or that crowd.' If anything, I think about the demographics only because of what songs will entertain more than others.
I try not to write jokes that are mean. I try my best to write jokes that are pretty universal and jokes that don't attack anyone. I know I often fall short of that and end up taking unfair swipes at people, but I try not to.
For me personally, I just try to prove myself in my work. I'm just trying to get better at what I do, and hopefully that will impact women in music, and hopefully the girls in the crowd will see my up there as a bandleader and think, 'Wow, maybe I can do that one day.'
You hear a lot of jokes every once in a while about 'Silent Cal Coolidge.' The joke is on the people who make the jokes. Look at his record. He cut the taxes four times. We had probably the greatest growth and prosperity that we've ever known. I have taken heed of that because if he did that by doing nothing, maybe that's the answer.
I think I have got a lot better as an interviewer. I let people talk now which is something you need to do. At the beginning I thought jokes, jokes, jokes, I am a stand up comedian but I think I have mellowed out now.
A lot of people get into stand-up as a back door into acting or something. But I really like writing jokes and telling jokes.
I don't write because I think I have anything particularly interesting to say. I write because I love writing more than any other work I've done. I do think about entertaining the reader to the extent that I try always to write a book that I myself would want to read, but I don't think it's up for me to decide if what I've written is interesting to others. That is entirely up to others.
It wasn't until I became more confident with myself and I put myself forward instead of the jokes; at first it was put the jokes out there and I'm just behind the jokes.
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