A Quote by W. Kamau Bell
If I could email my jokes to the crowd and get the same immediate response [as during stand-up], I'd do that.
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I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.
All my life, my immediate response to emotional pain has been to make jokes. Lots of jokes.
Stand-up life is really hard. At one point, I got so paralyzed I could write five screenplays before I could write three jokes for stand-up. Later, I've finally allowed myself to relax quite a bit, to think I can do it because I've done it in the past. The pressure to come up with the material is the same but the anxiety about whether I can do it is gone.
TV and film for me are not as exciting as the live stand-up show and getting the immediate reaction of the crowd. TV is a lot of hurry up and wait for your shot and less immediate reaction from people.
One thing I can't stand is when people - not our team, but other people - don't respond. Everybody can email, everybody can text... using an email auto-response is not the world we live in.
That's the nice thing about doing stand-up. There's no development, you just go out there and get an immediate response as to whether something is good or bad. Getting a laugh is the best measure of how well you're doing.
I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.
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 knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.
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.
I don't think stand-up is being appreciated as much as it could be and I don't think it has for a long time. There's some great stand-up comics who come to a town and if they're not a name, they don't attract a crowd but in reality there are brilliant people out there.
In France, I'm not going to say the audience will laugh for nothing, but you could compare the response I get to the response Louis CK or Chris Rock would get if they go up in a club in Denver tonight.
I am no technophobe. I like being able to calibrate communication, depending on the situation - texting for the simple and immediate; email for business or when I want to put some lag time into the exchange; Twitter to promote something; Facebook to draw a crowd.
In stand-up you can go either way. It's live. Somebody might say something in the crowd, you might respond to it. But in a movie you could be spontaneous too. But you pretty much have to stick to that story or that scene or that script, but in stand-up you can go wherever you want to. It's more freedom.
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.
Know when to email vs. when to meet. Logistics are best handled over a non-immediate communication channel like email or Asana tasks. Detailed status meetings will suck the life out of your day.
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