Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy 9781503602977

Citation preview

BEHIND THE LAUGHS

CULTURE AND ECONOMIC LIFE EDITORS Frederick Wherry Jennifer C. Lena Greta Hsu EDITORIAL BOARD Gabriel Abend Michel Anteby Nina Bandelj Shyon Baumann Katherine Chen Nigel Dodd Amir Goldberg David Grazian Wendy Griswold Brayden King Charles Kirschbaum Omar Lizardo Bill Maurer Elizabeth Pontikes Gabriel Rossman Lyn Spillman Klaus Weber Christine Williams Viviana Zelizer

BEHIND THE LAUGHS Community and Inequality in Comedy

MICHAEL P. JEFFRIES

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Jeff ries, Michael P., author. Title: Behind the laughs : community and inequality in comedy / Michael P. Jeff ries. Other titles: Culture and economic life. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Series: Culture and economic life | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017008538 (print) | LCCN 2017010957 (ebook) | ISBN 9780804798082 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602908 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602977 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Comedians—United States—Social conditions. | Comedy—Social aspects—United States. | Group identity—United States. | Racism—United States. | Sexism—United States. Classification: LCC PN2272 .J44 2017 (print) | LCC PN2272 (ebook) | DDC 792.7/60973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008538 Cover photo: Ghost light on an empty stage. Jon Ellwood, via Wikimedia Commons. Cover designer: Rob Ehle Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 10/14 Minion Pro

For Keira and Alex

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Lights

1

1 Chemistry of a Comedian

23

2 From Funny to Family

57

3 Succeeding at Not Failing

83

4 Celebrity in the Making

111

5 Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

137

Curtains

179

Appendix

189

Notes

195

Index

209

This page intentionally left blank

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the people in comedy who took the time to think with me and talk with me about your lives and your work. Special thanks to those of you who trusted me and helped me find my way deeper into the worlds you inhabit. To those of you who let me sleep on couches and stay an extra night during research trips. To a small group of readers who read unfinished work and gave me notes and encouragement: Jennifer Lena, Ben Reiter, and Charles Finch. Thank you, Yoon Sun Lee, for supporting me in every facet of my job at Wellesley College. Thank you to Andrew Shennan and the provost’s office at Wellesley for funding much of this work. Thank you, Kate Wahl and Jenny Gavacs, for your support and dedication from the time this book was a proposal to the time it was printed. I can write only because I am loved. Thank you, Sarah, Keira, Alex, Mom, Dad, David, Julia, and all the rest of my friends and family. I love you.

ix

This page intentionally left blank

BEHIND THE LAUGHS

This page intentionally left blank

Lights We pay our performers, just not with money. —Matt Besser1

THE “GREEN ROOM” at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago is hardly a room at all. There are a few wooden couches arranged around a coffee table on the landing of the second floor, where Zanies management has their offices. The old-but-clean carpet, minifridge, and small, wall-mounted television provide an informal, relaxed atmosphere for performers as they wait their turn on the stage downstairs. Tonight, Zanies is hosting an amateur showcase, and the mood in the green room intensifies when manager and booker Bert Haas emerges from his office. Wearing glasses and a black Zanies polo shirt neatly tucked into his khakis, Haas is not here to have his time wasted. It is his job to prep the half-dozen aspiring comics for the stage and what lies beyond. Bert wants the best for his club and for the comedy business, and he readies them with a frank, tightly woven lecture on professional comedy. Bert’s pep talk is a rarity in the comedy business, as he gives aspiring comedians an education that bookers and club managers are under no obligation to provide. He tells the comics that comedy is a legitimate career and that Chicago is one of its capital cities, but he also tells them that they’re not going to get rich in the local comedy scene. If you want to become a national star, it is better to think of Chicago as a training ground where you can get repetitions onstage and prepare yourself for the scru-

1

2

Lights

tiny you will receive from industry executives in New York and Los Angeles. Bert describes respect for the club, its representatives, and the comedians as mutually reinforcing phenomena, and he prides himself on creating a professional atmosphere. He models this respect by thanking performers for traveling and for the effort they have already put in, and he assures them that their hard work and professionalism will pay off. He tells the comics exactly how to follow up with him about their performance and advises them on how to handle success and failure. “In the beginning,” he says, “you probably won’t be paid much and you don’t care because you love what you’re doing. But once you develop a skill set, and once there’s money to be made from your skill set, you have every right to be paid for it. And not only should you ask for money, you should demand money.” The idea is simple: hone your skills and expect fair compensation. But Baratunde Thurston, a former editor at The Onion, author of the uproarious How to Be Black (2012), and former head of digital content at The Daily Show, explains that this is impossible. Stand-up as an industry is based on mistreating talent. It wouldn’t work any other way. You don’t get paid. That’s how it works. You generate economic activity for club owners. They have two-drink minimums and ticket prices, and if you have any economic understanding or you worked in the service industry, you know liquor is the biggest scam. Buy a bottle for fifteen dollars, you sell a drink for ten. You’re diluting it with water and ice and soda. What is that, like a 500 percent markup? It’s ridiculous. So exploitation is baked in for anyone in stand-up who pursues it.

Comedy is a brutal business. Performers are scarcely paid and often treated poorly. A run of good luck and financial rewards is no guarantee that the good times will last. Comedy workers stumble down dimly lit career paths without any assurances that they’re moving in the right direction. Along the way, they may be chided by their friends and parents, heckled by audience members, and occasionally stabbed in the back by colleagues looking to get ahead. It’s astonishing that so many keep going in these conditions. The people I spoke with gave a few explanations for their perseverance, including the obvious—that it feels good to make peo-

Lights

3

ple laugh—and that the call of the stage is irresistible for those born to entertain. This book focuses on an additional reason for comedians’ persistence: the feeling of belonging to a community. In Michele Lamont’s The Dignity of Working Men (2002), she asks how working-class men understand their labor and their lives in a context in which meritocracy and economic justice are myths. She finds that “morality is generally at the center of these workers’ worlds. They find their self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible yet caring lives to ensure order for themselves and others. These moral standards function as an alternative to economic definitions of success and offer them a way to maintain dignity and to make sense of their lives in a land where the American dream is ever more out of reach.”2 In other words, the significance of labor for these workers lies not in its economic value but in its use as the raw material for building honorable masculinity with clear ideas about right and wrong and about safety and danger. Although the moral value placed on truth in comedy is an important piece of comedy workers’ collective identity, it does not fully explain the meaning of comedic labor for those who choose it. Comedy workers do not think their work is valuable because it makes them “good people.” They cherish their work because the labor of comedy produces community, and commitment to this community is socially rewarding. Comedy workers care for each other and are forced to build tight social bonds to navigate the labor market. In addition, the fun of hanging out with people who make you laugh makes work feel like play and becomes a psychological wage. Unlike dramatic acting (perhaps comedy’s closest relative), comedy performance is fundamentally driven by pleasure. To perform, follow, and consume comedy is to seek out laughter—to actively pursue an emotional and chemical reaction that makes us feel good. There is an instinctive force that can prevent comedy workers from fully grasping whatever suffering and discomfort might result from their peculiar labor context, because they are too busy having fun. Despite the conditions of their employment and the uncertainty of their careers, many comedy workers insist they have the best job in the world, and it is not hard to understand

4

Lights

why. This pleasurable community-building does not protect comedy workers from exploitation, but it is a form of resistance that enables comedy workers’ survival and professional development. There is, however, a dark side to the emphasis on community: it enables survival while solidifying the barriers that prevent more just distribution of rewards. Most comedy workers are exploited, and my interviews suggest that they all rely on comedy communities for support. But relationships with coworkers and experiences in the business differ dramatically along lines of race, gender, and class. In order to learn comedy and stay afloat financially during lulls in one’s career, it certainly helps to attend college, have extra money for training, and come from a family that has resources to fall back on. The necessity of having these advantages restricts entry into the comedy race before it begins. As competitors and coworkers move forward, sexism and racism shape performance expectations, experiences, and friendship groups. People from nondominant groups must figure out how to present themselves and work in a labor market dominated by white men, who set standards and dole out rewards. These problems challenge some of the conventional wisdom about comedy, which is, in many respects, a populist form of social critique in which performers are celebrated for being outsiders. Given that women and people of color are viewed as outsiders and “others” in American public life and the culture industries, it is no surprise that so many historically marginalized groups draw such power and pride from comedy. This attraction and claim to comedy, however, does not prevent exploitation, stereotyping, and discrimination. Even as marginalized people claim their own spaces and speak in their own voices, they are subject to the institutional and cultural constraints of a straight-white-male-dominated industry. The testimony in Behind the Laughs is important because it forces us to think about how the current system could be improved for both comedy creators and consumers. When the social and economic impediments to entry and survival for nondominant groups are so high, talented people leave comedy or never even try to make a career out of it. When the entertainment industry sticks with tired old models of production and marketing and unimaginative decision-making by executives without incentives to take risks, audiences suffer. New communications technologies and

Lights

5

challenges to old rules about genre and format offer a promising alternative future for comedy. But to get where we are going, we must know where we stand.

The Comedy Business Sociologist Richard Peterson dedicated his career to explaining how “the symbolic elements of culture [the arts, for example] are shaped by the systems in which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught, and preserved.”3 To understand comedy and the people who make it, you have to examine the systems that teach, produce, and sell it. A close look at the comedy business reveals deep fault lines and contradictions. As in so many other cultural industries, working conditions for the average comedy creator, whether she is a stand-up, improv and sketch performer, or screenwriter, are grim. All stand-ups would be wise to study the history of the business to get a sense of how quickly things can change, and Betsy Borns’s 1987 book, Comic Lives, remains one of the best resources on the subject. The great stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s was a revelation. In 1963, the New York Improv was the only showcase comedy club in the United States, and in 1980, there were roughly ten paying comedy clubs in the country. Less than a decade later, though, that number had swelled to somewhere near three hundred. In accounting for the explosion in both performers and revenue, Borns explains the cycle that led to the boom: “Even if the money at showcase clubs cannot be held completely responsible for the tremendous growth in the stand-up industry, it can be held responsible for some increase in the number of comics—which created a greater supply of ‘product’ and led to the appearance of the road circuit—without which that growth would have been impossible.”4 The birth of the road circuit was one major factor, and television was another. Before the advent of cable television in the 1970s, few televised comedy sets lasted longer than five minutes. But cable spurred a need for low-cost, no-hassle entertainment, and channels like Home Box Office (HBO) began televising stand-ups’ hour-long concert specials to meet their programming needs. This dramatically increased the popularity of

6

Lights

stand-up as a genre as well as exposure for the performers themselves, who suddenly had national followings they could capitalize on through touring. According to Borns, the increasing consumer demand and profitability led to more mediocre comics, less risk taking, and less artistic engagement from club owners and managers, who did not always care about the product as long as the venues were full and the alcohol kept flowing.5 After the comedy boom of the 1980s ran its course and many of the fly-by-night comedy clubs closed up shop, a set of conventions emerged within the club scene. The Comedy Bible (2001), by Judy Carter, sets unambiguous financial expectations for those who are new to the game. Standup clubs make money primarily from food and drink sales. Ticket prices may vary slightly depending on a given headliner’s status, but each club usually has ballpark figures corresponding to the status of the performers. In the early 2000s, an opening act could expect no more than $350 per week, a middler (between the opener and the headliner) might make up to $750 in a week, and the headliner could make anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 for a week’s worth of work (much more if she is a national celebrity). Performers at college shows and weeklong cruise-ship entertainers are paid on a scale similar to that of headliners, and corporate gigs can fall anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000.6 But the business of stand-up changes quickly, varies depending on the city a performer is based in, and is rarely the sole determinant of a performer’s financial status. Live comedy is once again in the midst of an incredible boom, generating $300 million annually,7 but counting on comedy as one’s livelihood means you have to hustle. A 2012 New York Times article profi led six working comics in New York. The most traditional standup of the bunch, Kurt Metzger, reported an annual salary of $60,000. He described his typical sources of income as follows: $75—Weekend spot at the Greenwich Village club the Comedy Cellar, one of the premier clubs in the country right now; $80—Weekend spot at the Broadway Comedy Club in Times Square; $300—Weekday headliner at the Times Square club Carolines on Broadway; and $3,740—Voice work for Ugly Americans, an animated television series on Comedy Central.8

Lights

7

Metzger also notes that his weekly schedule varies greatly; he might perform every day during a busy week, while a slow week might yield only one or two gigs. Metzger’s work in fi lm and television is irreplaceable. It provides a steady paycheck and makes him more legitimate in the eyes of audiences and club bookers. The clubs on Metzger’s list are among the most reputable in the city, and the pay rates appear to be in sync with Carter’s estimates from the early 2000s. But because there are so many accomplished comics in New York, Metzger is more likely to be booked for individual spots than for weekly or monthly engagements. This means he is unlikely to approach the weekly estimates Carter provides in her book. For instance, headlining at Carolines is a major accomplishment for any working comic, and Metzger reports that a weekday headlining spot pays $300, an amount proportionate to Carter’s estimate of between $1,000 and $5,000 per week for a noncelebrity headliner. But comics like Metzger are unlikely to headline for five or seven straight days, and he would be lucky to clear $1,000 in a week from Carolines, let alone $5,000. To complicate matters, performers will work for free or next to nothing if the venue is prestigious enough. In 2012, Metzger was at the heart of a major controversy in comedy circles. During a stand-up set at Manhattan’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB), one of three or four preeminent improv theaters in the country, Metzger publicly criticized UCB for not paying performers. Of course, Metzger knew he would not be paid for his set, because UCB has never paid stand-ups, but he got prickly when he found out how much money the theater was taking in at the door. His criticism ignited a firestorm, in part because he aired his grievances so publicly, first at UCB and later during a set he performed at The Stand, also in Manhattan. Metzger’s frustration was shared by many of his peers and is largely reflective of the different outlooks and expectations held by standups and improv and sketch performers. Stand-ups are used to getting paid, although the pay is usually quite poor, and they can perform in all kinds of spaces, from plush theaters to dive bars. Stand-up comedy is relatively cheap and easy to produce, as there are generally no costumes, props, or special audio-visual effects. But UCB defines itself as an experimental-comedy theater that produces high-quality shows with all the equipment and staff comedy creators

8

Lights

might need; most of their shows are improv and sketch comedy. Improv and sketch players require actual theater space, even if it is just a black-box theater, and a production staff, so there are fewer venues that can accommodate their needs. UCB provides these resources, and it is not unique in this regard, as famous theaters like The Second City (Chicago) and Groundlings (Los Angeles) have a similar belief system and sense of purpose. Groundlings managing director Heather de Michele made this explicit during our interview. “Comedy clubs are one thing,” she said, “but when it comes to what we do, we do theater. We produce shows.” Getting a spot at a reputable, professional theater is a major coup, and improv and sketch players are more likely to view payment as a bonus rather than as a requirement. Both stand-ups and improv players jump at the chance to perform at UCB because it has established itself as a comedy hub and an impressive credential. As UCB cofounder Matt Besser explained to the New York Times, “We pay our performers, just not with money.”9 Besser replied directly to Metzger’s critique in a Huffington Post piece, explaining that UCB not only functions differently as a performance space but also adheres to a business model different from those at traditional comedy clubs. Besser downplays the role of profit in UCB’s mission. UCB’s founders, including Amy Poehler, have all made plenty of money and have multiple revenue streams, so it is difficult to discern exactly how much of their net worth is fueled by UCB. The theater was founded in 1999, and, according to Besser, the revenue generated from ticket and drink sales at UCB’s first theater in Chelsea was reinvested in the venue and staff. The real money didn’t start flowing in until they started turning a larger profit (thanks to their burgeoning improv training school).10 The founders undoubtedly enjoyed the profits, but they also continued to strengthen the franchise, opening new venues in Manhattan’s East Village and in Los Angeles. Customers have certainly benefited from UCB’s refusal to pay performers as well, as UCB has kept its ticket prices relatively low in comparison with the other landmark comedy venues in New York. Due to all these factors, comedy creators continue to perform at UCB because of the theater’s reputation, even though they can earn more elsewhere. Metzger and Besser eventually discussed the incident, and neither party holds a personal grudge. Ultimately, UCB stuck to its guns, and perform-

Lights

9

ers remain unpaid. But the theater added other forms of compensation, including giving out drink tickets and listing stand-ups as official UCB performers, which increases the comedians’ exposure and access to shows.11 Metzger has said that his chief concern is that other venues will follow the UCB model, which would intensify the already painful exploitation standups live with.12 This controversy highlights two key facets of the comedy business. First, it illustrates that class privilege is a major advantage for those who aspire to be professional comedy workers. If a comic plans to stay in the business for a long time, she will have to survive financial dry spells. Comics who have access to extra cash even when they’re not working have a head start over those who do not. The business model of prestigious improv theaters such as UCB exacerbates inequality. UCB classes usually meet for three hours once a week for eight weeks. Fees are $400–$475 per class plus the cost of the UCB training manual, which students are required to purchase. Demand is high—twenty new classes are offered each week and the website reports that sessions frequently sell out only minutes after they are made available.13 Given that performers are expected to pay for several classes and essentially work for free during the early stages of their careers, it is no surprise that many who travel this route come from privileged backgrounds. The same holds true for aspiring comedy writers, who wait through long droughts in the hopes of selling a screenplay or latching on to a new show during pilot season. Second, Metzger’s critique and his general attitude toward the improv scene hint at the cultural and institutional divide between stand-ups and improv and sketch players. Jennifer Lena explains that genre boundaries are not dictated by “natural” differences between styles. Instead, genres emerge as a result of the expectations and conventions that bind industry, performers, and fans together.14 As New York performer Ashley Brooke Roberts told me, “In stand-up you get a whole range of high-school dropouts to Harvard graduates, whereas improv, it’s much more of a liberal, college-educated, upper-middle-class world. No one in stand-up ever asks me where I went to college.” A simplified version of the rift from the stereotypical stand-up perspective goes something like this: stand-up is racially diverse, working- and middle-class comedy, performed by people

10

Lights

(mostly men) who are courageous, cynical, sometimes self-destructive, and committed to hard work and “real” comedy. Their old-school idols are George Carlin and Richard Pryor, and their training comes in the form of mistreatment by club managers, bookers, and tough crowds full of drunks and hecklers. Improv, sketch, and alt(alternative)-scene comedy is “nerd” comedy for white people (again, mostly men), a frivolous, postcollege distraction for rich kids from the suburbs who will eventually get bored with comedy and move on to law school. Its schools are training centers like UCB, teeming with self-aware and self-satisfied wimps who grew up watching YouTube clips of Mr. Show and The State.15 This dichotomous perception of the comedy world certainly exists, and it is grounded in powerful socioeconomic forces that reproduce patriarchy, white privilege, and class privilege. The people I spoke with are well aware of these stereotypes, but despite the philosophical and labor divide between stand-ups and improv and sketch performers, the UCB controversy illustrates how these two comedy career tracks overlap, especially among those who are more financially stable. That is, if you do not have a college degree, you are unlikely to enroll in expensive sketch, improv, and screenwriting classes and more likely to try stand-up first. But if you do have a college degree or have savings to fall back on, you are likely to try out all the genres. Importantly, this choice to cross genres is enabled and reinforced by industry shifts that no longer pigeonhole stand-up stars into ready-made sitcom roles and by the rise of new venues that feature many different forms of comedy. Comedy workers with different styles share the same performance spaces and value many of the same credentials. Although Metzger performs only stand-up, many who sympathize with him practice all three forms (stand-up, sketch, and improv) in some capacity. UCB explicitly defines itself as a comedy theater rather than as a standup club, but the monthly calendars at UCB in New York and Los Angeles are chock-full of accomplished stand-up comedians. For these reasons and more, stand-ups are navigating a comedy terrain that is totally different than the one they navigated thirty years ago, and it is a mistake to segregate comedy workers along genre lines. Through learning this history and keeping up with comedy-business controversies such as the flap at UCB, we come to understand why many

Lights

11

performers believe that club and theater bookers and managers don’t have their best interests at heart. To be clear, it is not as though every booker and manager in the stand-up business is up to his ears in profits; there is not as much money in live performance as there is in television and fi lm. But even when bookers and managers make relatively modest salaries, the entire comedy-club and theater system depends on the exploitation of early-career performers.

Stage Time Despite this exploitation, thousands of new performers find their way to the stage every year, hoping to make a career out of comedy. Standup comics start out doing open mics—shows at which any amateur can sign up for stage time—at comedy clubs and other venues. After developing enough material for a five-to-ten-minute set and hanging around clubs long enough, the comic might be lucky enough to catch the eye of a club owner or booker who invites her to perform at an amateur showcase. Another way to get stage time at an amateur showcase is to send the booker a video of your performance; thanks to the Internet, it is easier than ever for an aspiring comic to gain exposure and build a following. If a comic performs well at an amateur showcase, she has the chance to become a regular at the club, performing fifteen- to twenty-minute sets, or maybe even become a host who introduces comics and keeps the audience loose as master of ceremonies during events such as amateur night. As comics develop their skills and build their resumes, they can use their social networks to promote themselves and book gigs on the road, including those at prestigious comedy festivals crawling with club owners, bookers, and entertainment-industry executives. In live comedy performance, a performer who has built a following will be able to book gigs at more reputable clubs and theaters, secure the services of an agent or manager, and eventually demand higher appearance fees and percentages of ticket sales. Comedy-club owners set approximate pay rates based on a performer’s fame and the seating capacity of their venue, and they entrust their bookers and managers with scheduling and running the daily operations. You can generally estimate a head-

12

Lights

line stand-up’s cut of the proceeds from a show at a major theater by taking half of the ticket price and multiplying it by the number of tickets sold.16 In addition to these conventions, information about performers’ earnings occasionally becomes public knowledge. Stand-up stars such as Gabriel Iglesias can earn between $5 million and $10 million in a single year by touring the country and selling out theaters, whereas megastars such as Dane Cook might reach $20 million per year in their prime.17 All of this sounds simple enough, but comedy bookers operate with significant constraints. For one thing, they cannot possibly evaluate every comic who wants stage time. Chesley Calloway was the host and main producer for Comedy as a Second Language (CSL) in New York from its founding in 2007 until his departure in 2014. CSL is award-winning independent comedy produced by comedians, and it does not pay its comics in any currency other than a couple of drink tickets. In theory, the absence of a profit motive should free up the booker to run the program and build each lineup any way he chooses. But Chesley still faced enormous pressure and difficulties while he produced and hosted CSL. Cofounder and occasional host Sean Patton established himself as a national headliner just as CSL was solidifying its reputation as one of the premier “alt” rooms in New York, and the popularity of the showcase exploded. CSL became so revered that every aspiring professional stand-up in New York wanted stage time, and special celebrity guests might e-mail Chesley on any given night to let him know they would like to stop by. At one point, Calloway adopted fake names and e-mail addresses to manage all the requests for stage time he received from fellow comics, many of whom he admired. But with so many acts to sift through and Patton on the road, Chesley needed real help, not merely an alias, to manage the requests and whittle down the weekly lineup. Help arrived in the form of Rebecca Trent, founder and owner of another beacon of independent comedy in New York, The Creek and The Cave. Trent began working with Calloway in 2013, vetting the aspiring comics who wanted to be on CSL, sometimes by inviting them to her own venue. With Trent as his partner and extra set of eyes and ears, Calloway grew increasingly comfortable with the decision-making process. Instead of relying solely on his opinion of potential performers, he began telling

Lights

13

hopefuls that “Rebecca has to see you kill a live audience,” which placed the onus on the comics to become part of the New York alt scene and get noticed before inquiring about a spot at CSL. On the West Coast, Jamie Flam serves as booker for the Hollywood Improv, the premier location of one of the most storied comedy-club franchises in the country. Jamie’s corporate bosses do not interfere with his day-to-day operations, but he knows he must generate a certain amount of income from ticket, food, and drink sales to keep his job. Sometimes Jamie’s decisions are driven by the same process as Chesley’s. He cannot get out and scout every venue in Los Angeles, so he follows his intuition and relies on information from people he trusts when crafting the lineups at the Improv. But the Improv is also a major hub for talent scouts and studio executives and a prime site for agents and managers aiming to gain exposure for their clients. So when an agency calls to let Jamie know that one of its megastars is in town and would like to visit, they might also suggest that Jamie find time for one of their lesser-known acts that same weekend. If Jamie does not grant this favor, he loses the business the megastar generates that weekend and, more importantly, risks damaging his club’s reputation relative to others in town if that comedian plays elsewhere. Jamie may also damage his relationship with the agency, which manages dozens of comedy stars. So even bookers like Jamie, who are universally respected and have as much freedom as anyone at a major club could hope for, operate within a set of limits and conventions they cannot break. It takes years of training and development before comics are considered serious candidates for spots at the Hollywood Improv. There are flagship establishments of the club in every major American city, and they all have long track records of treating performers with the utmost professionalism. But there are also less-reputable clubs at which comics are treated poorly and viewed simply as the bait to lure people through the doors. Lesser-known performers often have to pay their travel costs to the club, and they must make these arrangements without guarantees, contractual or otherwise, that the owner will honor the booking and stick to the agreed-upon schedule. Thankfully, the scene has diversified and spread out in comedy’s capital cities and the system is changing, even if the financial rewards are not.

14

Lights

As mentioned above, improv and sketch comedy have turned into booming businesses with competitive training programs that teem with aspiring performers at first-class comedy theaters such as The Groundlings, The Second City, iO (formerly Improv Olympic), and UCB. At UCB, decisions about who is allowed to continue training and performing at the theater are made by instructors there who have paid dues and gained the experience to evaluate new acts; there is no single, all-powerful club booker. In addition, there is heightened emphasis on screenwriting and directing at conservatories such as The Second City, so comedy creators who aspire to roles in film and television may place themselves on a track that emphasizes writing, performing, directing, or all three. There are some guidelines that standardize comedic labor and rewards at the highest level. For example, comedy writers in television and fi lm are eligible to join the Writers Guild,18 one of the few sources of collective bargaining power in comedy work. The Guild provides health and pension benefits and sets minimum rates its members must be paid if they enter into contract with a production company or agent. According to the Writers Guild, from May 2013 until May 2014 the average range of prices paid for original screenplays, including treatment, began at $67,804 at the low end and capped out at $127,295.19 These are reasonable reference points for novice screenwriters to work from, whether they write comedy or drama. Similar conventions govern the pay rates of actors who belong to the Screen Actors Guild as well as the fees charged by agents and managers who work in both television and fi lm. Comedy theaters may negotiate contracts with labor unions such as the Actors’ Equity Association (AEA), which represents the talent at The Second City in Chicago, among those at other venues. AEA negotiates wages, working conditions, and benefits for The Second City labor force, and they release the terms of their agreement with the theater to the public.20 The most celebrated sketch team at The Second City is the Mainstage. Each of the six to twelve players selected for this yearly honor is paid roughly $30,000 to write and perform The Second City’s premier show, and being a Mainstage player is considered one of the highest-paying and most-prestigious jobs in sketch and improv comedy. The show accounts

Lights

15

for nearly half of the theater’s $32 million annual revenue, and production costs less than the advertising budget of many Broadway shows.21 So rewards do correspond with specific forms of labor, especially at the top of the comedy pyramid. Instead of relying on traditional clubs and theaters to provide platforms for up-and-coming performers, however, comedy creators are increasingly taking it upon themselves to procure space and produce their own shows. Independent, or alt, rooms, such as Comedy as a Second Language and The Creek and The Cave, are now central to the New York City scene. These venues began popping up in the early 2000s on the heels of the success of UCB and the People’s Improv Theater in Chelsea, both of which focus on improv and sketch. Alt rooms don’t pay any better than clubs do; in most cases, producers are just trying to make back the money it costs to rent the space. But as Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari explained during his days as an alt-scene mainstay, alt rooms encourage risk taking and innovation. They “give you an opportunity to explore something other than straight stand-up. You can do characters. I can bring a girl onstage that I got rejected by and interview her, or do a PowerPoint presentation or show a short fi lm. The nature of the venues allows you to experiment.”22 Along with traditional stand-up, sketch, and improv, alt rooms feature rant-heavy one-man or one-woman shows, comedy news panels such as those on television, music-comedy hybrid shows, and anything else that will crack up a room. The alt scene is important because it provides spaces in which old lines of distinction are crossed and erased. Just as lines between genres are increasingly unclear, status distinctions in comedy can be foggy, especially when so few “successful” people are actually earning a living solely through comedy. When a comedian “makes it” as a national headliner or gets a prestigious job in the entertainment industry, he does not drop out of the club or alt scene altogether. Seasoned professionals such as Todd Glass will sometimes stop by for an unpaid Thursday night show in front of forty people at Comedy as a Second Language. The Daily Show writers perform unpaid stand-up sets at UCB. Although this book primarily features comedians who are not household names, there is no dichotomy between the “real” world of “underground” comedians and the “fake” world of success-

16

Lights

ful comedy celebrities. The interviewees, even those hustling with little recognition at the core of the alt scene, do not see themselves in those terms.

Comedy and Identity The time, space, and money guidelines that set the boundaries of the comedy business are complicated and often reinforced by social guidelines and assumptions. Racial politics loom especially large in this world: nonwhite performers cannot expect to achieve superstardom or power in the industry without appealing to white audiences, bookers, producers, and executives. For instance, for black performers who aspire to national recognition or a career in fi lm and television, building a reputation and a following on the South Side of Chicago is often a stepping-stone to breaking into North Side clubs such as Zanies. Chicago is renowned for its improv and sketch training centers, but there are no sketch and improv theaters that serve primarily black audiences, so it’s no surprise that Key and Peele stars Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele trained and met for the first time on the North Side at The Second City. For performers of color, playing in front of white audiences often requires drastically different material and new ways of relating to coworkers. White performers never have to make a decision to cross over, and they don’t have to play all black, Asian, or Hispanic clubs (“urban” or “ethnic” rooms) to prove that they’re versatile and skilled enough to earn a living as a professional.23 There are signs that the student populations at theaters like UCB and The Second City are growing increasingly diverse as far as race and gender are concerned. Women and men take classes in equal numbers at The Second City Training Center, and the theater has its own diversity and outreach office with a $200,000-per-year operating budget.24 Programming includes workshops at urban schools as well as a scholarship program so that promising performers of color, many of whom don’t have experience with sketch comedy, can enroll free of charge via the Bob Curry Fellowship and can move through an accelerated training program.25 The Second City is not alone in this effort, as UCB in New York has run a similar program since 2009; Groundlings and iO West followed suit in 2015. But as the interviewees in this book make clear, we are leagues away from equity

Lights

17

in comedy, and Hollywood, where the most money is made and trends are set, is indisputably dominated by white men. Researchers at the University of Southern California studied the five hundred top-grossing movies between 2007 and 2012 and found that 76.3 percent of all speaking characters were white, although whites purchase only 56 percent of movie tickets. In contrast, Hispanics buy around 25 percent of movie tickets but are featured in only 4 percent of speaking roles. There are shockingly few black directors, and it makes a huge difference, because under black directors roughly 53 percent of speaking characters are black. In fi lms with nonblack directors, that number drops to 10 percent.26 There are similar barriers for women in the entertainment industry. Women purchase half of all movie tickets in the United States, but in the five hundred top-grossing fi lms between 2007 and 2012, only 30.8 percent of speaking characters were women, and only 10.7 percent featured a balanced cast in which half the performers were women.27 The data on broadcast and cable shows are equally damning, as women accounted for just 30 percent and nonwhites for only 15 percent of the over 1,700 writers employed during the 2012 season.28 Comedy-specific statistics are even more disheartening, as all twelve of the top-earning comedians in 2013 were men;29 perhaps most damning, of the two hundred top-grossing comedy fi lms between 2003 and 2012, only nine were directed by women.30 Chris Rock riffs on the absurdity and injustice of white men’s domination of the key decision-making roles in film and television. The odds are that there’s probably a Mexican who’s that smart who’s never going to be given a shot. . . . The shot is that a Mexican guy or a black guy is qualified to go and give his opinion about how loud the “boings” are in Dodgeball or whether it’s the right shit sound you hear when Jeff Daniels is on the toilet in Dumb and Dumber. It’s like, “We only let white people do that.” This is a system where only white people can chime in on that. . . . They [those jobs] don’t even require education. When you’re on the lower levels, they’re just about taste, nothing else. And you don’t have to go to Harvard to have taste.31

Rock isn’t even talking about the chance to become a movie executive. He’s referring to the inherent unfairness in who gets entry-level jobs in

18

Lights

this business and who is taken seriously as a tastemaker. He is incensed by the presumption that only highly educated white men are qualified to give their opinions about the silliest matters of taste. Of course, Pierre Bourdieu and the gaggle of sociologists who built off Bourdieu’s work would tell Rock that this presumption is the essence of taste. The power to define what is beautiful, smart, and funny is afforded to and protected by people with high levels of cultural and financial capital.32 For studio executives, screenwriters, and performers, privilege and power are literally inscribed on the body and woven into the voice via race, gender, and class differences. Comedic performers do not craft their personae in a vacuum. They are affected by industry conventions, audience demand, and perception of consumers’ tastes, all of which ultimately dictate their professional fate. For these reasons, comedic labor needs to be studied with explicit reference to social power. Uncertainty, exploitative labor conditions, and a work life subject to taste and trends situate comedians alongside other types of artists and cultural workers. But in other respects, comedy is a very different sort of endeavor from those in industries like fashion and visual arts because it is so intensely social. Performance is a fluid exchange between performer and audience, not a one-way consumption of an inanimate object, such as a painting or a piece of clothing. Anthropologist John L. Jackson is helpful here, as he explains the difference between authenticity and sincerity.33 Authenticity is based on a relationship between subjects (consumers or audience) who authenticate and objects that are either “real” and fit for consumption or not. There is no middle ground for objects: an inauthentic painting is not worth purchasing or owning. But performances are not objects, and they swing between failure and success because they are fluid exchanges between subjects (performers) and other subjects (audiences). Comedy workers sometimes discuss “good” and “bad” jokes in binary terms, or they talk about jokes they know will hit far before the set that night. But if the performer cannot consistently connect with the audience at a club, or a writer cannot put movie executives at ease when she is pitching her script in a meeting, she will never be deemed worthy of the sustained investment she needs for a long career. Sociologist Ashley Mears points out that, no matter how much market

Lights

19

research is conducted, nobody knows how consumers will react and trends will progress. If executives could forecast these things accurately, movies and TV shows would never flop. In the face of this uncertainty, those who control production, pricing, and payment turn to themselves, the way Chesley Calloway turned to Rebecca Trent, setting prices and assigning value based on social rather than economic processes. “Gossip, reputation, shared histories, and conventions”34 are used to establish what something or someone is worth. In other words, value in cultural industries is fundamentally driven by narrative and meaning. That is why it is so important to go out and talk to the people who work in entertainment to find out how they understand themselves and their social worlds. Questions about identity and social life are questions about business. One final point shows why comedy is a unique cultural market. Some comedy workers sell their acting or writing skills to employers, who then ask them to use those skills to bring characters to life. But in many forms of comedy, especially in stand-up, the skills and the characters onstage cannot be separated from the performer himself. The product Louis CK sells is Louis CK. The comedy creator sells an identity, a sensibility, and a worldview, not just a collection of jokes. So, comedy demands that we study individual and group identities, because success hinges not simply on what is produced but on who the creator is believed to be. That’s where this book starts. I spent more than a year traveling to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, attending shows and interviewing more than sixty performers, writers, producers, and comedy-club owners and managers. Only a handful of these people are wealthy as a result of their comedy careers, but they are all successful comedy workers with accomplishments and credits respected by their peers. In chapter 1, I debunk major stereotypes about comedy performers, allowing my interviewees to each describe a couple of key traits that define and bind these performers together. The chapter concludes with comedy workers’ origin stories, and it also maps several different paths to the stage, with attention to what constitutes a legitimate opportunity to enter this world. Chapter 2 is about the fusion of comedy workers’ professional and social lives. The chapter begins with a brief overview of social-capital the-

20

Lights

ory, as networking and social connections impact all industries. In comedy, however, it can be impossible to tell where the “social” ends and the “professional” begins, and comedy workers take us through the benefits and drawbacks of this blended work and social scene. The caregiving, emotional support, and collective identity that comedy workers share are shields from the violence of a fickle and exploitative industry machine. Comedy workers’ disavowal of meritocracy begins to show itself more clearly in this chapter, and it becomes even more prominent as the book proceeds. Chapters 3 and 4 delve into success, failure, and fame. Comedy is a boundaryless career with many paths but few guarantees. The interviewees fight back against discouragement and despair by writing their own success stories that are not beholden to the standards of the entertainment industry, their peers, or comedy outsiders. There is power but also danger in this self-definition, as the drive to keep going is reinforced by a fear of giving up and starting over offstage and away from comedy. One of the complicating factors is that digital technology has changed the rules and possibilities of public exposure, allowing cultural workers and the rest of us far more airtime and web time than was conceivable a quarter century ago. The people I spoke with don’t care much for fame; they crave respect. But the relationship between amusement, success, and publicity is cloudier than ever, and their career goals are inseparable from those of the fame industry. The final chapter takes a critical approach to the strands of community and connectedness that run through the book by foregrounding difference and power in comedy. Race, class, and gender organize our lives, generate privilege, and limit choices. Despite comedy workers’ shared opinions and values about who they are and what they do, several circumstances and topics reveal massive rifts between straight white men from privileged backgrounds and everyone else in comedy.

Questions and Answers There are plenty of tactics for collecting quotations and molding them into convincing stories. But if you are interested in your subjects’ beliefs, values, and practices, there are a few key principles to abide by. First, you have

Lights

21

to let each interviewee drive the conversation. Open-ended questions are key. The question “What do you think about racial controversies in comedy?” is far too pointed. It forces the interviewee to live in a world I have made, in which racial controversies unquestionably exist. Instead, I ask, “If I just say the words ‘comedy’ and ‘race,’ what comes to mind?” The topic is the same, but now I have to live in the world built by the interviewee. She makes the choices about conflicts and connections between race and comedy, not me. Second, I have a list of questions to ask each person. But if I am committed to figuring out how each interviewee sees the world, I cannot simply ask the questions in the order in which I wrote them down. No two conversations proceed in the exact same way. For example, the aforementioned question about race and comedy appears halfway down my list. But several respondents addressed this topic well before the middle of the interview without being prompted. When they chose to explore it, I followed along. Third, you cannot make clumsy leaps from the specific to the universal. Sixty-seven interviews produced over a thousand pages of transcripts and field notes. But by data-crunching standards, a few hundred pages are nowhere near enough for universal law. So instead of thinking of the patterns and themes in this book as unbreakable rules and universal truths about comedy, think of them as lines that form a map of comedy workers and their world. Some of these lines are darker and straighter than others. Some of the beliefs and values comedy workers have are flexible, or tough to pin down, or downright contradictory. But even a messy collection of ideas about a given topic can give us a rich image, and much of what I found is straightforward. To begin with, comedy workers are not who we think they are.

This page intentionally left blank

Chemistry of a Comedian

1

It could’ve been when I was doing comedy two years a comedian that was doing comedy for five years said something nice. And that was monumental at that point. That guy, he knows everything in your world. He knows a lot more than you. —Todd Glass

A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY published in 2014 found that comedians in the United

States, Australia, and the United Kingdom have higher levels of psychotic characteristics than do workers in other fields. What the research really shows is that comedians are more likely than the rest of us to act spontaneously, experience manic emotional swings, and avoid intimacy and pleasure. Psychologist Victoria Ando explains that these tendencies toward unpredictability and outside-the-box thinking can fuel creativity in healthy people, whereas patients with psychosis are crippled by these traits. The traits themselves, of course, are neither healthy nor unhealthy.1 Psychotic is a loaded term, evoking a loss of contact with reality, deranged behavior, and violent and dangerous tendencies far beyond social awkwardness. There is no reason to doubt the study, but danger lies in oversimplification. Although there is little empirical evidence that clinical depression is especially prevalent among comedians,2 the findings on “psychotic tendencies” fit right into the hackneyed narrative about those drawn to comedy: that they are damaged goods. Comedians are thought to be scarred by something in their past, ill-suited for the present, and deeply insecure and in need of constant validation in the form of laughter and applause. The evidence for these theories, aside from comedic performance itself, lies in tragic tales about comedy celebrities who drowned their sorrows in drink and drugs, lived fast, and died too young. 23

24

Chapter 1

Some comics believe the characterization is at least partially true. More than half the people I spoke with talked about performers’ dire need for attention. Both comedy creators and people on the business side agree that performers are outspoken and need to be heard. Staying in a business with so many pitfalls and so few promises often requires a damn-near pathological belief in oneself. Performers are united by the attraction of the stage and the enjoyment of pleasing a crowd, which sometimes breeds arrogance and narcissism. Longtime Chicago stand-up Dobie Maxwell described the feeling of getting laughs as a class clown in third grade as “a drug,” and he has been hooked ever since. Dobie believes this need for attention comes from some sort of deficiency, and he describes his peers in the comedy game as “dented cans,” reinforcing the stereotype. Maxwell is an accomplished baseball player who spent time as a professional in the minor leagues and was one step away from making it to the majors in his twenties. Dobie felt an enormous amount of pressure from his abusive father, who did not take his transition from baseball to comedy well at all. Those experiences shaped Maxwell’s outlook, and when asked to characterize his peers, he explains, “We need an extra amount of love that we didn’t get as children, or we perceived we didn’t get. . . . We see the bullshit in the world; it hurts us, [and] we try to make it better by making people laugh.” Baratunde Thurston disagrees. Thurston lost his father at a young age, and he grew up miles away from the mythic, suburban paradise supposedly required for a safe, happy childhood. Still, he is very wary of the portrayal of comedians as unhappy, eternally depressed, alcoholic, low self-esteem. . . . It makes sense, like, “Oh, this person is unhappy, so they need this.” I’m not that. I’m a happy dude. I didn’t have a full, nuclear family growing up; I had all kinds of weird ups and downs in my childhood, but I had a loving mother, I had an older sister who looked out for me, I had a neighborhood that helped take care of me. . . . And I’m not pissed at the world all the time, and I don’t turn to drink every moment or have to get high on blow to escape the pain of my father’s death. And I don’t think I’m that much of an exception.

Chemistry of a Comedian

25

Baratunde doesn’t see himself as a “dented can” the way Dobie does, and he is one of many comedians who went out of their way to refute the dented-can theory. One could argue that everyone who denies the theory is subconsciously trying to fi ll some sort of void and is blind to the forces that drive them toward comedy. It’s possible that everything we do has its roots in some sort of childhood experience or longing, but I’m not interested in psychoanalysis. I’m interested in how these people see themselves, because that is how we get to what comedy means to those who are committed to it. This chapter offers an introduction to comedy workers in their own words. Performers describe the qualities and personality traits they share, which makes it impossible to reduce them to the most commonly held stereotypes of comedians. I also describe the process through which the interviewees enter the comedy world, and I recount the earliest and most important lessons they learned about comedy. In discussing both topics— their personal qualities and their early comedy careers—performers reveal themselves to be highly social animals. They move through comedy with great awareness of their surroundings and strong connections to the people around them. Baratunde and Dobie’s stark divergence on the dented-can theory might suggest that they think about their comic identities in totally different ways. They come from different generations, neighborhoods, and educational backgrounds, so it wouldn’t be surprising if they didn’t share much common ground. But, to the contrary, there are points in each interview that highlight some of the clearest shared boundaries around comedy workers’ collective identity. When I asked which traits comedians share, the first words out of Dobie’s mouth were: “above-average intelligence, aboveaverage sensitivity.” And Baratunde echoes these ideas almost exactly. He said, “I think you’ll find an above-average distribution among comedians’ intelligence. People who are good at it are smart. And there’s an emotional intelligence among comedians, not just like, an SAT intelligence.” Intelligence and sensitivity (or perceptiveness). These words or variations of them came up over and over again during the interviews; they are hardly the hallmarks of a raving, dangerous psychopath or an arrogant, narcissistic class clown. Let’s find out exactly what they mean.

26

Chapter 1

Intelligence and Sensitivity Notions of intelligence are highly dependent on class status. Almost half the people I spoke with grew up in households in which at least one parent or guardian held a professional degree (beyond a bachelor’s degree). These highly educated, high-income households provided settings in which children were shielded from any serious concern about finances and had plenty of tools to maintain their class status as they grew into adulthood. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the comedy workers in this book stayed on this track and graduated from four-year colleges or universities themselves (see the appendix). So, when these comedy workers talk about “smart” humor, they’re frequently talking about jokes and references that only highly educated, economically privileged peers and audience members find funny. Studies suggest that this style of “smart” comedy reflects class privilege. Disinterested, low-energy performances reflect the embodied cultural capital of elites who present themselves as unworried and already in the know as a means to protect the boundaries of their class group.3 When elites consume art, they do so with an air of “enlightened eclecticism.”4 Even if a kind of performance or text has traditionally been considered “low” or “popular” culture, such as rap music or comedy, it can be incorporated into an elitist taste sensibility shared by consumers who take pride in enjoying the very best of all art. Fans of “smart” comedy delight in being in on such sophisticated jokes, and they reinforce elitism as they consume smart comedy, keeping class boundaries intact via purchasing power. True as this analysis of class-driven taste and consumption may be, it is not the whole story. In fact, it’s not even the lead story when it comes to intelligence and comedy as discussed by the interviewees. The first way comedians describe their intelligence is that they believe they are especially sensitive to the things going on around them. Performers take great pride in their observational skills, in part because observing everyday life provides amusement and gives comedy creators ideas for jokes. But for the moment, I want to focus on how this notion of sensitivity impacts not only their interpretation of the outside world but also their personal comic identities. When describing the early phases of their careers, performers often

Chemistry of a Comedian

27

talk about the difficulty of finding their voice. As stand-up headliner and podcaster extraordinaire Todd Glass explains, “When you first start out, you don’t know what you’re doing. In the beginning you’re maybe doing an impersonation of what you think a comedian does, and then maybe one day you grow into your own thing. But it takes a while.” Los Angeles stand-up and award-winning fi lmmaker Henry Phillips agrees, and his explanation illustrates how being sensitive to the feedback of others helps performers get over this initial hump. After a while you start realizing what people think about you that’s funny. . . . In the beginning I was more trying to sort of imitate other people that did a similar thing. And it just didn’t really come off right. . . . But you know, if you hang out with your friends long enough and you hear them imitate you or hear them tell stories about you, you start going, “Okay. So it seems like what people think about me is this. And if my friends think it’s funny, why wouldn’t everybody think it’s funny?”

This is the very definition of social identity—it is something we arrive at and settle on not because of biology or free will but because the self we build helps us fit into and navigate the world. Henry is able to figure out who he is and build on that concept of self only by being sensitive to what others say. In this case, Henry’s friends play a primary role. He accumulates self-knowledge over time by being sensitive to people he knows quite well. But social sensitivity is equally important for performers when they find themselves among strangers and in professional settings. Chicago improv and sketch performer Kate James explains that we [comedians] as a species are highly aware and perceptive people. I think we’re more, probably, emotionally intelligent. And by that I mean, if I’m in a room and I sense that somebody is upset with somebody else, I will be like, “What is going on over there?” Whereas some people I just think are like, “I’m in my own world, and this doesn’t matter to me.”

This sensitivity to others is often heightened when performers get onstage. Comedians have to know whether a show is going well, and they have to be able to play off the audience and fellow performers if they’re doing improv or sketch. New York stand-up Mark Normand insists,

28

Chapter 1

The good comics have this, not the bad ones: hypervigilance. Like, you’re just aware. You’re constantly aware of everything around you. . . . Aware of yourself. “How am I standing? Am I standing? Is this normal? Do I look weird?”

And fellow New Yorker Andrew Short adds, There’s just a gut feeling onstage where you can only kid yourself so much when you’re telling a joke and you’re like, “This part always falls flat.” You should be listening to your jokes as you’re telling them. You have to be a million places at once when you’re on.

Only by being “a million places at once,” being simultaneously in front of the audience and witness to your own performance, can you get the most out of your stage time. Todd Glass and Henry Phillips emphasize that building this skill set takes time. Chicago stand-up Brandall Cole agrees, and his thoughts on sensitivity fuse some of the points just raised: selfawareness, audience awareness, and the idea that learning comedy skills comes in part from learning how to manage yourself with friends and family. As we discussed this topic, Brandall moved smoothly from his professional identity and experience to his life beyond the stage. “Some club owners have to set the rules to you and tell you,” Brandall says, But as they tell me I’m like, “You don’t have to tell me that. This is something I already know.” I look at the audience, I see the atmosphere. . . . I look at the audience and read them. [I think,] “This is what I need to talk about with this audience. I’m not going to bring my West Side ghetto performance with this crowd.” But some comedians, they can’t change it up, and it’s a disaster.

When I asked Brandall where this skill comes from, he drew on his experience as a performer but also cited his personal life: I grew up with eight kids; it was eight of us, sisters and brothers. So then it’s more like outside of my home, I learned how to read people, look at their faces. Just by my being able to read people, I can look at [an] audience and read them. . . . I think it’s just a human instinct that I have.

Todd, Henry, Kate, Mark, Andrew, and Brandall span a few generations and come from different geographic, socioeconomic, gender, and

Chemistry of a Comedian

29

ethnic groups. They have also experienced different levels of success, in terms of both exposure and financial reward, in the comedy business. But they all value social sensitivity, or emotional intelligence, as a key to their comic identity, and their stories taken together explain exactly how this intelligence impacts their work.

Outcasts and Truth Tellers If the negative side of the coin suggests that comedy performers are narcissistic psychopaths, the flip side offers a more positive stereotype of comedians. They may be self-involved attention seekers but with good reason: they are outsiders and rebels who speak truth to power and ultimately save us from boredom and the abuses of uptight traditionalism. Comedy is the business the performers work in, but the social role they serve is tied to humor, a social quality that scholars understand through three dominant theories: incongruity, relief, and superiority.5 Incongruity is often described as a mixture of incongruity and ambiguity, in which things taken for granted are suddenly displaced or things that seem alike are rendered surprisingly different by the joke teller. To play on incongruity, the skilled comic sketches something recognizable to her audience and then shows them it is actually something else. Theories of humor based on relief suggest that “laughter fits into an internal economy, a functional system that retains the equilibrium of the subject by disposing of waste in a socially acceptable way, and so maintaining mental health.”6 The actual reasons for laughter may vary, but its purpose nonetheless is to relieve ourselves of the things we keep bottled up inside. We can see how neatly this theory accounts for comedy that violates social taboos (“waste”), allowing for their recognition and “disposal” rather than keeping them suppressed. Finally, Aristotle and Hobbes were among the first to theorize that telling and listening to jokes were ways for both performers and their audiences to achieve feelings of superiority. Humor that produces these feelings usually does so by targeting an “other” and rhetorically forcing that subject into a degraded position. Ethnic jokes, for example, “‘export’ a particular unwanted trait to some other group and we laugh at their folly, perhaps glad or relieved that it is not our own.”7

30

Chapter 1

Not everyone is cut out for this job, and humor scholars have long described comic performers as figures with “liminal” status, meaning that they work and play at the margins of our society.8 Lawrence Mintz explains that “the comedian is defective in some way, but his natural weaknesses generate pity, and more important, exemption from the expectation of normal behavior.”9 We can hear echoes of Dobie’s dented-can theory in Mintz’s description. Comedians speak and act as though they have nothing to lose, because they do not fear being exiled from the herd. And although the rest of society may not care to integrate comedians into the mainstream, we don’t cast them out entirely. We save space for them and appreciate them because we need them to do something for us. Novelist and poet Luigi Pirandello suggests, The humorist readily perceives the various simulations used in the struggle for life; he amuses himself by unmasking them. . . . We, as individuals, experience something inherent and essential to social living, the vanity of seeming different from what we really are, and we avoid any analysis which, unveiling our vanity, would prompt our remorse and humiliate us before ourselves. But it is the humorist who does this analysis for us and who can also take up the task of unmasking all vanities and of depicting society . . . as a Vanity Fair.10

Daniel Kellison transitioned from producing the Late Show with David Letterman to founding his own entertainment group, Jackhole, with Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla, and launching a digital platform, JASH, with Michael Cera, Reggie Watts, and Sarah Silverman. During our interview, he echoed Pirandello’s thoughts almost exactly. Comedians, he says, [are] largely different thinkers. They’re people who look at the world from a different viewpoint. And a lot of times their comedy is born from neuroses, and you know, the insecurity we all have. . . . You know that [the neuroses] are universal, but people don’t speak to them. . . . When you can tap into something that you feel like is uniquely your own and you realize it’s universal, those are great moments in comedy.

If we had to face the truth head-on about our vanities and the masks we put on each day, it would be too painful. At the same time, Pirandello

Chemistry of a Comedian

31

and Kellison suggest there is something in us that wants to know the truth about who we are and how we act, if only we could spare ourselves the humiliation of being revealed as frauds. Comedians bear this cross for us. As comedy writer and producer Betsy Borns explains, when we surrender our fears and insecurities to the comic, we want the performer to remain in control and treat them with care.11 When we laugh at the performance, we laugh at ourselves and our own shallowness. When we laugh together, we learn we are not alone in our fear and shame. So, it is well established that comedians, in this sense, are outsiders, and indeed, many comedy workers think of themselves as such. But one of the most important arguments in this book is that we must be as precise as possible when describing this outsider status. Comedy workers may be outsiders in the ways just described, but they are not antisocial. It is a terrible mistake to think of them as loners who never fit in anywhere and have trouble building friendships. Instead, the idea of comedians as outsiders shows itself most clearly in contexts in which the outsider is defined less as one with a marginal social position and more as one with the ability to look at something from a different point of view. As Kellison suggests, comic talent is about the ability to adopt the perspective of the outsider—in other words, to be astute, observant, and perceptive (or emotionally intelligent), as we learned above. Another idea in Pirandello’s description that shines through the interviews is that comedy workers care about truth and honesty. When asked what separates comedy from other performing arts, New York stand-up Danny Cruz said plainly, “It’s the most honest art form.” Dobie Maxwell’s description of comics as people who see “the bullshit” certainly supports this claim, and several of his peers, such as New York stand-up Tim Warner, also describe comedy as a means to “point out the ugliest things.” Chicago improv performer Patrick Rowland expands on this idea, arguing that comedy allows us to face and tell the truth without feeling guilty or miserable. He says, “It helps you think and see the beauty and the horrors without making you feel like a jerk for thinking a certain way.” These comments focus on comic content. What makes comedy unique and honest is that the things people say are “true,” and the ability to find the truth is certainly connected to ideas about intelligence. But truth in

32

Chapter 1

comedy is not just about the veracity of comic analysis or the intelligence of the analyst; it is about the honesty of performance, or performers’ courage. Indeed, the phrase “truth in comedy” is also the title and thesis of one of the most important books written on performance. Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation (1994), by improv trailblazer Del Close, iO founder Charna Halpern, and Kim “Howard” Johnson, was the first widely read instructional guide for performing improv. It lays out the cardinal rules of improv, including the “Yes, and” principle, which is a shorthand phrase for accepting the choices your improv partners make (“Yes”) and building on them (“and”).12 Honesty is vital in improv performance, not only because the truth is funny but also because honest reactions move the scene forward and prevent performers from trying to force jokes that disturb the flow. Chicago performer and teacher Rebecca Sohn loves “the honesty of the thought and the uniqueness of the experience that turns out to be universal.” She goes on to say, “But you wouldn’t know that unless somebody was brave enough to sort of strip down how they’re feeling and share that onstage.” Being truthful onstage pays dividends not just for the comic but for everyone in the room. Jamie Flam thinks of comedy as a form of “enchantment” not unlike music or other performing arts. When these arts are successful, it is because they are driven by truth. “When that room is at its peak level, it’s church,” Jamie says. “A good comedian is connecting; that’s no different from a preacher or a rabbi or any religious figure going up there and speaking their truth. And when you have a lineup of people that are all doing that, you can feel it in the room.” Peak performance happens when the relationship between performer and audience is reciprocal, and again, truth and honesty lie at the core of this relationship. Henry Phillips observes, “When you’re up there you know whether that comedian did well or not by whether people are laughing. There’s an honesty there that you can’t fake. Like, if a guy tells a joke and nobody laughs, that’s failure.” So truth and honesty in comedy are important in a few different ways. First, we feel bad about the ugly truths we conceal from ourselves and others. Comics confess for us and help us face our shame by transforming the unique into the universal. Second, honesty is the spark for comic performance and the starting point for interacting with the audience. Third,

Chemistry of a Comedian

33

although laughter can be faked from time to time, performers and club managers consider the overall audience reaction to be truthful feedback in exchange for honest effort. Thus, truth emerges as a key moral boundary for people who work in comedy; it ties this community together and gives comedy workers a sense of dignity despite the pitfalls of the comedy business.

Entering Comedy These descriptions of how comedy workers see themselves and their work are fairly rosy, and perhaps we might expect them to be, given the source of the descriptions. People in comedy believe there is honor in comedy’s truth, and caring and thoughtfulness emerge as prerequisites for comedic work. Performers take pride in their vocation, but they are equally forthcoming about the perils of working in comedy and belonging to comedy communities. The deeper we dig into their experiences and thoughts about the business, the more complex comedy workers’ worldviews become and the more built-in inequality reveals itself throughout the comedy universe. To get to the more troubling elements of comic life, we start at the beginning, with how people either tiptoe or plunge into comedy for the first time. Some of the people I interviewed believe comedy has always been their calling, but actually pursuing comedy did not fall within the rhythm of their lives, so their choice to do so involved a radical change. For other performers, the transition to comedy was more natural, as their comic development was an outgrowth of time they invested in music or dramatic theater. There is romance in many of these stories, but as we celebrate the courage it takes for aspiring comedy workers to chase their dreams, I want to call attention to how opportunity is distributed among the group. Passion, luck, and chance certainly matter, but fortune (or, in this case, fulfi lling work in comedy) favors the prepared and the privileged. We live in an age in which established institutions, such as iO, The Second City, and Annoyance Theater in Chicago, have the reputation and track record to command the heft y fees they charge for classes and the commitment they inspire to their philosophies. These theaters, in addition to UCB (founded by iO alumni) and The Groundlings, are flagship pro-

34

Chapter 1

grams that have taken the mystery out of how to pursue careers in comedy. But just because these pathways are more widely known does not mean that everyone has an equal opportunity to take advantage of them. The same institutions that push comedy forward and bolster professional development and collaboration among performers can reproduce social inequality. Four-year colleges and universities are not comedy institutions in the same way that UCB is, but they are crucial to comedy workers’ early professional development and the reproduction of social inequality in comedy.

College Screenwriter and longtime UCB sketch performer John Phillips was obsessed with comedy from an early age. His parents wouldn’t let him watch TV, so he secretly watched cable at his grandparents’ house, consuming hours of stand-up on Comedy Central and Saturday Night Live. He hid comedy tapes in his bedroom and watched them in secret, mimicking and memorizing routines and sketches. In middle school, he started making his own videos in his basement with his friends, and those involved concealed the fi lms from their families and classmates. Phillips wrote, directed, and starred in these productions, which were, as a rule, bizarre and disturbing. In one of his most cherished adolescent comedic roles, Phillips played an undercover police officer who feigned a disability to gain the confidence of the drug dealers he busted. Just before high-school graduation, John’s mom and dad found his stash of videotapes. They called the parents of all the kids involved, forced the families to watch the movies together, and scolded the cast and crew unmercifully. Perhaps the public shaming left an imprint, as comedy wasn’t on John’s radar when he first arrived as a freshman at Yale University. Phillips was a decorated distance runner throughout middle and high school, and as a varsity athlete on the track-and-field team he had little time for additional extracurricular activities. But a severe leg injury changed the way he spent his time, and it ultimately changed his life. My injury was so bad that I had to do something. You know, I was just bored. And so just on a whim I auditioned for the sketch-comedy group at Yale, The

Chemistry of a Comedian

35

Fift h Humor, on the recommendation of a few friends on the track team. . . . So I did it, and I got in, and immediately I was just like, “This. This is it. This is what I want to be doing.”

Performer Holly Laurent’s story bears some similarities to John’s, despite her dramatically different upbringing. Holly’s father was an evangelical preacher, and she and her three siblings sometimes traveled with him during the summer to watch him spread the Word. She credits her dad with giving her dramatic charisma and a first-hand introduction to performance, but her interests were not in line with the discipline and modesty that characterized her family life. Instead, like John, Holly was obsessed with Saturday Night Live. She would tape the show each week and spend the following Sunday through Friday performing and perfecting the sketches for her family at the dinner table, despite her parents’ disapproval. But there were never any formal outlets for this passion in school or anywhere else outside the house. Holly called it her “quiet” preoccupation. “I wouldn’t admit it,” she says, “but I was obsessed with comedy.” Given this obsession, we might expect someone like Holly to throw herself into comedy the minute she had more freedom from her family. But in college, Holly majored in acting, and comedy was her least favorite part of her studies. We had to do two full semesters of improv and I hated it. . . . Now I understand why I hated it so much. It was because improv is all your own words, and I was very self-conscious of my own words. And I was more comfortable being like, “Well, these are the words of the playwrights and I’m just doing my job to bring them to life.” But when you’re improvising it’s all you. However hideous your point of view. However cruel. However beautiful. Funny or not funny. It’s you and you alone.

Holly’s description of the accountability of comedy and the power it had over her echoes much of what her colleagues described earlier. The fear she feels is linked to the necessity of finding her own voice and to the special value she places on individuality. Holly also embraces comedy as a force that reveals our hideousness for all to see, and performers’ fear of performing is not just the fear that they won’t get laughs but that the truth

36

Chapter 1

will come out and it won’t be pretty. This prospect is especially terrifying in improv, where you never know what you will say next. After college, both John and Holly moved to comedy havens to further their careers. John became embedded in UCB New York, earning plenty of stage time and acclaim for an original sketch show called Mace Bacon: The Worst Guy Ever! Holly moved to Chicago specifically to pursue improv, climbing the ranks of The Second City to a starring role in The Second City’s 101st Revue, Let Them Eat Chaos, and performing with her acclaimed group, The Reckoning, on the main stage at iO Chicago and iO West in Los Angeles. John and Holly began at different starting points and had different college experiences. It was by no means certain that their obsessions with comedy would flourish; as young performers, they either ignored or disdained the opportunities before them when they first arrived on campus. The reason college is such a catalyst in comic careers is that it gives people time to grow into comedy, offering prolonged exposure to both formal (theater programs) and informal (student groups) comic opportunities. So even if someone is scared or ambivalent about giving comedy a serious chance, he has a huge window of time to try it out without costs beyond those required to remain enrolled. Of the sixty-seven comedy workers I interviewed for this book, fi ft yfour had graduated from four-year colleges and two had master’s degrees. There is no way to know exactly what portion of professional comedy workers in the United States have college degrees, but experience at a four-year college is commonplace among those who perform comedy for a living. Indeed, one of the simplest points in this book is that attending college is an immense advantage for those interested in comedy. These class-status differences are even more acute when you enter the realm of screenwriting for film and television, which can be far more lucrative and stable than piecing together income from live performances. As Chris Rock laments in the introduction, tastemakers in Hollywood are social elites, and the chance to enter the fi lm and television production industry at the very lowest levels requires cultural capital and social networks accumulated through a college education. Simpsons writer and producer Matt Selman got into the business in the mid-1990s, right around the time that many of his peers began looking to television and fi lm comedy as a glam-

Chemistry of a Comedian

37

orous occupation. Selman, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, explains: There was an article in Esquire magazine. [It] came out in 1992 [and was] called something to the effect of “Stupid TV, Smart People.” And it talked about how all these Harvard guys and Ivy League smarty-pants were going to LA and making big money. This was 1992. At the time, that was, like, a crazy idea. Like, “Can you believe people would waste their college degree?!” Now it’s like, you know you’re fighting through the Yale graduates to get a job.

Clearly, comedy is not immune to the elitism and class, race, and gender politics that shape so many of America’s cultural industries. College degrees are expected credentials for the most prestigious comedy jobs, and not every college degree is viewed equally in the labor market. Later in the book, I explore how the homogeneity and elitism of the business impedes risk taking and forward thinking when it comes to the politics of race and gender in comedic fi lm and television. Exposure to organized comedy and to comedy training during college, however, is an experience that cuts across lines of race and gender and opens up new possibilities for people who are not rich, white, and male. Chicago stand-up Calvin Evans was not active in the performing arts during high school and had never told jokes onstage before a classmate at the University of Illinois asked him to do three minutes of stand-up during a student-run variety show. From there, Calvin regularly entered standup competitions on campus and emerged as one of the most talented performers at school and a reliable host for such competitions. This exposure was vital for Calvin, especially because he is black, and the stand-up scene in Chicago is racially segregated along the same basic lines as the city’s residential neighborhoods, as it is in most American cities. Black performers build their reputation and amass a considerable following on both the South Side and West Side of the city, but that fame may not benefit them at all on the mostly white North Side, where the most prestigious comedy establishments are located. As race intersects with class, black performers often have to cross geographic and cultural boundaries to appeal to privileged white audiences. In other words, they must acquire cultural capital and demonstrate familiarity and comfort with certain tastes, manner-

38

Chapter 1

isms, values, and cultural reference points. This cultural capital can then be transformed into economic capital, opening up new opportunities to perform and new pools of followers. Calvin doesn’t describe this process as the accumulation of cultural capital the way sociologists might. But when I asked him about a quality that distinguished him from many of his peers, he explained that Chicago is a divided city. It’s racially segregated. So I started in college; I’m doing black people, white people, Latinos. Every walk of life. So when I came to Chicago, I wasn’t confined to just one side of the city. And I felt comfortable just going wherever because to me it was like college.

Calvin’s story is different from John’s in that he recognizes college as a space in which he engaged audiences that were markedly different from him for the first time. But he also shares a connection with John in that both performers ventured into comedy at the suggestion of their friends. Colleges and universities are home to organizations in which students teach and produce comedy, and they are home to physical space for performance. But colleges also facilitate social life outside the classroom, in which performers and their friends support and encourage each other to give comedy a try. Again, it is a mistake to think of comedy performers as social outsiders. The people I spoke with explained that comedians are not loners. Rather, the skill and willingness to adopt the perspective of the outsider is a trait that bonds comedy workers. If John and Calvin had spent their college days as outcasts without friends, they might never have been pushed toward comedy. College was not just a place the interviewees lived; it was the time they had their comic awakening and realized comedy was something they wanted to commit to. But colleges and universities cannot provide all the space necessary for performers’ development, and the next step down the comedy path for many of the people I spoke with was performing at openmic nights.

Stand-Up and Open-Mic Nights Open mics are the most crucial training resource for aspiring stand-up performers. In fact, almost all the stand-up comics I spoke with got their

Chemistry of a Comedian

39

starts at open-mic events, at which amateur comedians get three to five minutes of stage time regardless of their age, day job, experience, or reputation. Unlike the more formal comedy organizations on college campuses, in which paying tuition is a prerequisite, open mics are often truly free. Many comedy clubs have open-mic nights that require sign-ups in advance, but bars and other noncomedy venues host open mics as well. The quality of the performances is uneven, but that is precisely the point: open mics give performers the freedom to fail. Stand-up Myq Kaplan’s introduction to comedy demonstrates the value of these events. Kaplan began his comedy career as a college student in Boston. A guitarist and singer without any real interest in stand-up, Myq said he thought of comedy as “a thing that famous people did, as far as I knew. I didn’t even know that comedy clubs existed at all.” In search of a venue in which he could perform a few of the offbeat parody songs he had written, Kaplan searched the Internet for “Clubs, Boston,” and The Comedy Studio in Cambridge appeared on his screen.13 He called the owner and manager, Rick Jenkins, and asked whether he could perform his music sometime; Jenkins acceded, giving Kaplan a spot every couple of months even though he wasn’t a stand-up. Kaplan explained, “I would go there and play songs, and in between, I would talk and do what I would call ‘riffing’ now, but at the time I called it ‘talking until they stop laughing, and then playing another song.’” After a while, he realized that the happy accident he had stumbled on to, the fun he had making people laugh, was something he wanted to do purposefully, and he challenged himself to see how long he could do it without his guitar. With this motivation and very little effort, Myq searched and found other comedy clubs that had openmic nights so that he didn’t have to rely solely on The Comedy Studio. Every thing Kaplan had read or heard about comedy suggested that practice and repetition were the only means to improve, so he hit every mic he could in the Boston area on his way to becoming the professional he is today. Open mics are vital because they have a low barrier to entry for performers, and many comedy workers would never have started without these opportunities. But interviews provide insight into what actually happens at open mics and why they are so important to performers’ devel-

40

Chapter 1

opment. Kaplan had little knowledge of comedy and no real interest in it when he first took the stage, but the privilege of experimentation and the low stakes of each performance at The Comedy Studio allowed him to discover his passion in the empty spaces between the songs he sang. He then began to use open mics purposefully as his training ground. Similarly, when New York comic Danny Cruz books a Friday or Saturday show, he uses open mics throughout the week to prepare for it. His work cycle begins on Sunday, when he takes all his new ideas up onstage at an open mic, knowing many of them will fall flat. He continues to perform at open mics throughout the week, narrowing down all the material he began with on Sunday to one or two bits that are sharp and funny enough for the real show on the weekend. In contrast to Danny’s intense focus on his own material, Andrew Short describes the benefits of focusing on the other comics who get up during open mics. He calls open mics “the most important thing you can do” to improve, because you become comfortable with being judged and because “you can see a lot of mistakes that people are making and be like, ‘Oh. Well, I do that, too.’” Because open mics are crucial for professional development, much of the crowd at these events is comprised of aspiring comics, and they see each other’s mistakes. For many performers, open-mic nights are the first places at which most of the people around them are equally invested in improving at comedy. Hanging out and socializing is a key part of the job. Stand-up, sketch player, and The Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj gives us a glimpse into how community-building in stand-up is directly tied to the open-mic scene. Hasan got his start while in college near Sacramento, when, like Myq Kaplan, he called the local comedy club as a complete amateur. And they were like, “Look, we have this open mic. Just show up on Tuesdays.” So I just started hanging out. I was eighteen at the time. A lot of the comedians were older than me, but I got to get a lot of lessons from them: “This is how you should write. This is how you should perform. Get up. Get up every night.” All these things they taught me, kind of like the young Padawan was taught by all these Jedi. . . . Like, “You’re starting in a small town. You take a lot of risks. Try things. No one’s really going to see you.”

Chemistry of a Comedian

41

Hasan got into the club and got onstage as a college freshman. He stayed after his set and felt comfortable and devoted enough to return on nights when he wasn’t even performing. He became a familiar face that older comics recognized as a student of comedy and someone who might actually appreciate their advice. Hasan gladly accepted their guidance, treating Sacramento as a laboratory for his jokes before taking them to bigger stages in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The importance of the lessons that Hasan learned from comedy-club regulars as an upstart comic in Sacramento should not be understated. Todd Glass is twenty-five years older than Hasan, but he describes a similar experience starting out as a teenage stand-up in Philadelphia. When asked about gaining the respect of his peers, Todd recounted the significance of being paid a compliment by a veteran performer. Might not even be household names. Might have been another comedian working the open-mic night in front of you, but he was respected in that scene. It could’ve been when I was doing comedy two years a comedian that was doing comedy for five years said something nice. And that was monumental at that point. That guy, he knows everything in your world. He knows a lot more than you.

Older performers’ opinions are respected not because they are rich or famous but because they have experience and deep knowledge of comedy. Performers are not necessarily looking for laughs from their colleagues; in fact, interviewees repeatedly mentioned that it can be difficult to get fellow comics to crack up. Instead, they’re looking for honest feedback that demonstrates real engagement with their work and makes them feel like they belong to a comedy community. Sometimes the most improvement needs to be made in achieving the comfort level needed to please a crowd instead of in the jokes themselves. Understanding one’s shortcomings as a performer is just as important as refining and experimenting with jokes or bits. Joel Walkowski moved to New York at twenty-three years old specifically to try stand-up, and he got onstage at his first open mic just one day after he arrived in the city. When I asked him how he measures his own improvement three years later, he explained,

42

Chapter 1

It’s just where you’re so comfortable up there it doesn’t matter if it’s going poorly. . . . For the longest time, if they weren’t on board with me from the start, it would just be like, dread. And I would shut down. [Now] I feel like, “Okay, I’ve been through this before; this is something that happens. . . . ” I have no problem embracing the fact that I’m failing.

Joel then describes a few tricks he developed for pulling himself out of a tailspin onstage. If his jokes are not landing, he will often turn to selfdeprecating humor, making fun of his own appearance and the midwestern mannerisms that may seem awkward and out of place to New York audiences. His repeated failures at open mics have not only strengthened his backbone and taught him that one bad performance is not the end of the world but also helped him develop skills for pulling himself out of a nosedive and bonding with the audience by validating their uneasiness with him. At the other end of the career spectrum, Chicago stand-up Tim Walkoe has long been a professional comedian, headlining clubs for decades, acquiring dozens of television credits, and making a steady living off of corporate bookings well into his sixties. For Tim, performing is pure enjoyment without the faintest echo of fear or dread, and he is loyal to his own creative and evaluative processes. He no longer attends open mics to develop new material, but he always keeps a pen or pencil with him to write down ideas. Tim also describes an instantaneous, intuitive feeling of knowing when he has a good joke. But a good joke will not always be successful, and despite all his accomplishments, experience, and selfconfidence, he never overrules the audience. “Try it,” he says. “If it doesn’t work, try it again. If it doesn’t work, you’re done with it. The audience is the judge.” The audience is the not-so-silent partner in this tough-love training process, and it is important for comedians to take their cues from the crowd. Performers are wise to listen to the audience, because the people who run the clubs—bookers and managers who dole out stage time—are fi xated not simply on laughter but also on the back and forth relationship between the performer and the customers. When I asked Comedy Cellar

Chemistry of a Comedian

43

booker Estee Adoram what she thinks is the biggest mistake that a comic can make, she answered without hesitation. When the artist thinks that they are better than the audience, and if the audience didn’t laugh, that’s their fault. [If the comic thinks,] “They are stupid; I’m the smart one,” I see red when they do that. I can’t tell you how angry that makes me. . . . Sometimes audiences are not as hip, maybe, or late audiences, maybe they had a couple drinks, [but] we don’t let them get drunk. Integrity of the show. Respect for the stage and the comedian. Well, the comedian has to do the same thing towards the audience. In this little basement, you have doctors, you have professors, you have politicians, you have celebrities; we have a mix of all those people. Don’t tell me that they are idiots and you are smart. That is the thing that galls me the most. That is one of the biggest mistakes that a comedian can [make]. Don’t overestimate yourself, and don’t underestimate the audience. Never.

The first portion of this quote alludes to the idea that “good” comedy is “smart” comedy. Estee, Charna Halpern, and several other bookers prioritize smart, observational comedy over cheap, bawdy laughs when evaluating performers. The challenge for performers is to craft smart jokes and build up their confidence without embodying the social taboos of class privilege: elitism, smugness, and arrogance. As Estee describes, intelligence does not guarantee a connection with the audience. Even in New York City, where comics often expect and encounter more educated and politically aware crowds than in other parts of the country, performers have to stay in the moment and work to build relationships with each individual audience. Estee also explains that she values performers who guard against arrogance, because her ideal club atmosphere is built on respect. She does all she can to ensure respect for the performer, and she expects comics to treat her customers with respect as well. Estee evaluates comedy not merely on how funny or clever it is but on whether it contributes to the integrity and reputation of her venue. And make no mistake: reputation matters, because if a theater does well enough for long enough, it becomes a brand and an ideology rather than just a stage.

44

Chapter 1

Sketch and Improv Training The stand-up industry has shrunk considerably since its peak in the 1980s, and improv and sketch theaters have moved to the forefront of comedy training. On one hand, training centers like The Second City, UCB, The Groundlings, and iO protect their brand and keep their secrets by banning outside observers from sitting in on classes and witnessing the instruction and feedback. On the other hand, these institutions raise their profi les by merchandizing and by publishing books that explain the history and principles of improv and include exercises for readers to practice. When improv began, it was dominated by “short-form” performances, with individual segments that never lasted more than a few minutes and were governed by the rules of one or more improv games. Del Close is largely credited with inventing the now-ubiquitous “long-form” improv—a lengthy, improvised performance, usually sparked by suggestions from the audience, in which the humor is not drawn from playing by predetermined rules. Long-form improvisers use the format to their advantage, eliciting laughs driven by character and plot development, usually over the course of multiple scenes. Close, Halpern, and Johnson’s Truth in Comedy (1994) was the standard text for teaching improv for no less than a decade after its publication. UCB’s Comedy Improvisation Manual (2013), by Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, is the new standard in “how-to” comedy books, with over 350 pages of graphics-packed definitions, examples, and exercises for readers to learn and practice. Importantly, training centers like iO and UCB are not populated solely by aspiring performers. These theaters also do big business with corporate clients, putting on shows and running training programs that are integrated into corporations’ professional-development programs. No theater has done this more successfully than The Second City, which started a division in 1989 specifically dedicated to working with the business world. As explained by longtime administrators Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton, Second City Works (previously The Second City Marketing Group) is “a training ground for individual professionals and teams increasingly confounded by the amount of information they are expected to process, the speed at which industries, technology, and markets change, the volatility

Chemistry of a Comedian

45

of the workplace, and the new standards for transparency and customer engagement.”14 Leonard and Yorton’s book, Yes, And: How Improvisation Reverses “No, But” Thinking and Improves Creativity and Collaboration (2015) is unapologetically corporate in tone and promises to help readers •

generate ideas more quickly,

•

communicate more effectively,

•

create ensembles that rise to every occasion,

•

create open dialogue with employees and with customers,

•

break down organizational silos that threaten collaborative success, and

•

make something out of nothing.15

The Second City and its peers teach that improv skills are not merely comedy skills but also life skills. As such, preaching the improv gospel as a tool that everyone can use seems rather populist—you don’t have to be a gifted performer to benefit from the training. But this sort of appeal to corporate sensibilities, combined with the prohibitive cost of classes, reveals that the primary audience and the access channels for acquiring improv skills are restricted by social class. The Second City speaks the language of corporate America fluently, and as Leonard and Yorton point out, their turn toward corporate training could never have been anticipated given the theater’s long-held commitment to challenging the status quo.16 So what do performers who go through these programs actually learn? How to be good corporate executives, how to speak truth to power, or how to be funny? Rather than summarizing books like those just mentioned and assuming that everyone who attends these schools walks away with the same ideas and principles, I asked respondents who have been through the training programs to describe their experiences. None of the comedy workers I spoke with boasted about their newfound ability to “break down organizational silos,” but reviews were overwhelmingly positive, even for those who did not enter the training program with an improv or sketch background. Chicago stand-up Calvin Evans explains:

46

Chapter 1

It was a great experience. I met a lot of great people. Second City teaches you the business side of improv. How to write sketches, how to put together a show. So it teaches you everything you need to know to be successful in improv and just in writing. . . . It’s just like getting a degree from one of the top universities. It means something. I can put it on my resume.

Performers benefit not only from the training they receive but also from the connections they make and the credential they acquire having made it through the conservatory, which is a competitive process. In addition, many of the performers who “graduate” from these theaters use the credential to build careers as improv teachers themselves. Teaching provides an opportunity to earn a living while examining the mentoring and teaching relationship from the vantage point of both the student and the master. Performers who had been through these improv schools emphasized “Yes, and” as improv’s core principle, which has applications beyond the stage. Improv performers talk about their community as a collection of “Yes, and” people who have positive outlooks and enjoy supporting each other. Before examining those community boundaries in more detail, it is important to understand why “Yes, and” is so central to improv performance. Chicago performer Ali Barthwell graduated from The Second City conservatory and now performs with the theater’s touring company. She defines “Yes, and” as acceptance and heightening. If we’re doing a scene and I ask you, “Hey. Do you want to go to the movies?” [You say,] “Yes. That new Hulk movie is out and I want to see it.” If your partner asks you a question, go along with it. It’s more fun to go along with what they’re suggesting than fight against it. But the real reason that they teach you “Yes, and” is to accept the reality that the other person is giving you.

At the most basic level, the scene cannot continue if performers don’t agree with each other. But Ali’s explanation also hints that the scene is not about getting from point A to point B; it is about creating a reality. Performers repeatedly emphasized the cooperative process at play between those onstage and those in the audience. The new reality that improv play-

Chemistry of a Comedian

47

ers create is not confined to the performers themselves; it is the place to which everyone in the room must travel. “Yes, and” is the vehicle for this journey, and although stand-up comics might disagree, Rebecca Sohn was one of several interviewees who highlighted the group dynamics of improv as something that sets it apart from stand-up. “It involves everyone,” she says. “Not just the people onstage, but the people in the audience. So it doesn’t feel as lonely as I’ve been led to believe stand-up is.” To keep the collective reality intact, improv players need to refrain from asking too many questions during the performance. The reason for this, Ali explains, is that if she asks questions, she’s “just making work for you. And I’m never going to get the answer that I want, so it’s just easier. If I’m asking you what are we going to do today and I’m hoping that you tell me that we’re going to go to the beach, I should just say, ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ so you don’t have to say, ‘We’re going to go to the roller rink.’” This is a bold philosophy and conversational style. It encourages rapid and repeated risk taking rather than cautious discussion and development of performers’ dramatic world. It is not difficult to imagine how this principle might cause problems onstage, as it seems to encourage circumstances in which performers talk over each other and ram their vision of reality down each other’s throats. But another core principle—listening— prevents this sort of mayhem from breaking loose too frequently, and in fact, several veteran improv teachers from a range of schools identified this precept as the key to all successful improv performances. The Second City performer and instructor Steve Waltien puts it simply: “What you’re looking for in improv is just to kind of get caught up and get interested in it. Get into that character and be interested in what the other character’s saying, and really be listening. Listening is the key to improvisation.” Fellow Chicago performer and teacher Dina Facklis still reminds herself to listen before every performance and class. “The one rule that I stick by is: listen, listen, listen, listen,” she says. “I have to say that a billion times to myself before I go onstage. If I go out and I’m like, ‘Oh, you have to be hilarious tonight,’ it won’t happen. So I always tell people to listen.” Former-Groundling-turned-actor-and-improv-instructor Brian Palermo emphasizes the same thing with his students.

48

Chapter 1

Listening skills. That helps with so much communication across the board. [In] improv specifically, you must be a good listener, because there’s no script. You don’t know what your partner is going to say; you must actively listen to them and see what they are presenting so you can build with them.

One of the ways that Brian communicates this principle to his students is by helping them understand that listening is not just the most important skill for improv comedy but also the foundation for navigating day-to-day life. He says, That translates best, because life is improvised. It’s another one of these horrible cliché things, but when you are going to get your morning coffee and they’re out of caramel or whatever, you have to improvise a new choice; or [when] your teenage daughter comes home pregnant, you have to improvise. Your life might have a plan, but rarely does it stick to it.

Performers are forthright about the attention-seeking nature of those in their field. They know that everyone wants to be seen and heard, and everyone wants to deliver the joke or give the reaction that gets the big laugh. But in the world of improv and sketch, one’s greatness is dependent on cooperation, and you have to give up some control and support each other in order to reach your full potential. You must be an active listener even when it appears you are doing very little onstage. This truth is always one of the most striking things about seeing a group of expert players perform a classic improv game called “The Harold” in person. Some of the biggest laughs are sparked by references to phrases, objects, or characters from previous scenes. Audiences revel in performers’ ability to remember small details from these previous and parallel universes and delightfully invoke them amid all the unpredictable goofi ness that unfolds onstage. They listen closely to each other the entire time. Another key point that Dina makes and that I cannot emphasize strongly enough is that performers are taught not to go for jokes but to resist the urge to be funny. Halpern, Close, and Johnson emphasize this dictum ad nauseam in Truth in Comedy. The interviewees for this book did not draw on the elegant academic theories of humor described earlier in this chapter, and they were not interested in questions such as “What is

Chemistry of a Comedian

49

comedy?” or “What is humor?” They do not elevate being funny, amusing, or irreverent as the most important piece of their identities or their work lives. Bert Haas and Estee Adoram certainly need to find funny performers to fill out the lineups at their clubs, but funniness without respect for the venue and audience will not get a performer to the stage. Steve Waltien downplays the importance of beginning with a funny premise and pursuing predetermined comic goals, and Dina reminds herself to listen first and let everything else follow. The Groundlings continues the trend of prioritizing something other than funniness as they mold students into professional comedy workers. The Groundlings managing director Heather de Michele says that above all, The Groundlings is a “character-focused” theater. I asked her what it means to be character focused, and she replied, Well, an example is Kristen Wiig, who is one of our alumni. When she was here at Groundlings, she created Target Lady and several other characters that she brought to Saturday Night Live. So she wasn’t improvising or creating the material necessarily as Kristen; she was creating as someone from a different place, someone who had a different experience, and seeing where that took the scene.

The Groundlings trains performers to invest in the characters they create rather than to hunt for opportunities to get laughs. Heather describes an exercise called Five through the Door that forces performers to stay true to their characters regardless of the circumstances they find themselves in. You are asked to come up with five characters, and the group gives you a location that you haven’t planned for. So, you come through the door five times as whatever characters you’ve already cooked up. So, someone says, “It’s a hardware store and it’s pouring down rain.” You need to be able to come out of that door in that character you decided, that rural cowboy or whatever it is, and talk to us about what’s going on in this hardware store that everyone is trapped in because it’s raining so hard outside. That’s where people start to discover how to tell stories in different ways. . . . What’s [the rural cowboy’s] point of view versus the guy who is studying to be an actor in Hollywood? It just helps people expand the way they hear and tell stories, and of course it can lend itself to the funny.

50

Chapter 1

In Heather’s account, funniness emerges as a by-product of good storytelling and commitment to character. Famous alums like Kristen Wiig, who excel at both comedy writing and character portrayal, exemplify these dual priorities. Wiig was not an overnight success. She and her colleagues at The Groundlings completed a lengthy, rigorous, and competitive training program before arriving in the main company. Anyone who wants to take classes at the theater has to audition, and passing the audition is a requirement for enrollment in basic improv, which consists of twelve class meetings. At the end of basic improv, the student is evaluated by the instructor and told one of three things: (1) she passed the course and is ready for the next level; (2) she did not pass the course but should repeat it; or (3) she did not pass, and The Groundlings is not a good fit. More than half the students at each level (basic, intermediate, and advanced improv) are asked to repeat, and again, the courses are not free.17 Although this is not an ideal outcome, it is often framed as encouragement, because it means the student has potential but has not yet mastered the skills required for the next level. Intermediate improv follows basic improv and is the level at which instructors and students focus more intensely on character work. The third level is advanced improv, in which students apply everything they have learned from the first two levels. Advanced improv culminates in a live performance open to the public, and this is the first point at which students can perform in the theater. There is no option to repeat after the advanced course; students either pass and advance to writer’s lab, where they focus on sketch writing for the first time, or leave the training program. The former indicates a shift from the “core track” to the “professional track,” which emphasizes character-sketch writing rather than pure improv. The aim on the professional track is to create sketch material similar to that seen on Saturday Night Live, in which each performer plays multiple characters over the course of a show. Sketches from writer’s lab are performed on the main stage, which is a step up in prestige and theater size from the performance at the end of advanced improv. As with the advanced class, there is no option to repeat writer’s lab. Those who pass move on to advanced lab, which is a more rigorous, twoshow version of the first lab. Those who distinguish themselves in ad-

Chemistry of a Comedian

51

vanced lab can be invited to the Sunday Company, which is the top level of The Groundlings school. The Groundlings Sunday Company performs weekly for a minimum of six months and a maximum of eighteen months. At the end of eighteen months, performers from the Sunday Company are placed in contention for the main company, called The Groundlings.18 I asked Heather what it takes to survive this gauntlet, and again, she prioritized a quality other than one’s sense of humor or funniness. To make your way through the program, it’s imperative that you are a good actor, whether you come to us with an acting background or you acquire it. You have to be a good actor. You have to be able to get emotional. You have to be able to be very real and very sensitive and really tuned into your partner— all the things that make a good actor in general. And then you can add the layers of improv training on that. Because it’s when you see those moments that are really relatable and really genuine that bring up humor in you but [are] not obviously funny, those are the moments that really shine.

Heather is not a performer, and she grew into her administrative role from a noncomedic theater background. Still, she repeats what we heard from accomplished stand-ups and improv players about the character traits that set performers apart from the rest of the population. Being “sensitive” and “tuned into your partner” reinforces performers’ prioritization of emotional intelligence. Once more, we arrive at humor indirectly, as something that bubbles to life when we recognize genuine moments in the portrayal and relate to each other. The value is inherent in the subjective social connection between the audience and those onstage, not in the objective funniness of an individual performer. The emphasis on playing genuine characters and scenes is reinforced at UCB. The artistic director there is similar to a booker at a stand-up club and decides which acts get to perform there. At UCB Los Angeles, performer and instructor Alex Berg fi lled that role in 2013. I asked him how he identifies talent and what qualities he sees in performers that compel him to put them onstage. He answered, I tend to gravitate towards people who play in what we call a more “grounded” way. You know, [it’s not as compelling when] you have to say, “That’s too

52

Chapter 1

much, pal. . . . ” I’m kind of more drawn to the people who, like, just make it feel “real,” for lack of a better word. Because I get that it’s fantasy. I don’t need anybody to explain to me why this is fantasy and why this isn’t happening. I need someone who can show me what this might look like if it were to actually happen.

We might expect someone with Berg’s job to say that performers who make him laugh hardest or most frequently are those who capture his attention. But to the contrary, Berg discounts laughter when he is teaching and when he is evaluating talent. I never laugh when I’m teaching. I’ll laugh after people finish scenes, but I never laugh during scenes. So I have to explain that to people ahead of time. I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m in, like, analytic mode. You know I can’t relax enough to laugh and give you notes. . . . ” It’s either, you can have my laughter or my insight. I can’t give you both.

By his own admission, Berg falls on the more cerebral side of the spectrum when it comes to teaching and appraising comic performance. An analytic approach, however, can encompass several different priorities. Berg’s top priority is teaching about the role of emotion, and he crafted a nine-page document that explains his approach. As mentioned earlier, outsiders are not welcome to visit and observe UCB classes, but in sharing this document, Berg gives us a valuable glimpse into his teaching philosophy and approach. It begins as follows: Since we’re doing improv in a black-box theater space, the only thing we can REALLY show the audience is our emotional reaction to something. An emotional response is the only thing in any improv scene that can be shown in full onstage—everything else is constrained by the fundamental nature of the art form to being only an approximation of its true self, so we must give audiences honest emotional responses so that there is a part of the reality that they can unequivocally recognize and latch on to.

Berg begins by echoing Heather’s insistence on emotion, again reinforcing the value of emotional intelligence. Honesty is critical not only because it allows the performer to find her true voice but also because it en-

Chemistry of a Comedian

53

ables connections between performer and audience. Berg also makes the point that performers are seriously constrained (and enabled) by the space they perform in. The stage at UCB Los Angeles is downright unimpressive. As Berg describes, the performance space is a glorified black-box theater, and although props and music are integrated into many performances, the audience knows the scene is only an “approximation of its true self” or a “fantasy,” in Berg’s words. This knowledge means that the audience is distant by nature, and the only tool that performers have to close the gap is genuine emotion. When performers and audience members feel truly connected to each other, they can achieve a peak experience. Again, Berg describes this phenomenon in a decidedly analytic manner, providing links to TED Talks by neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He then connects improv to the broader phenomenon of human conversation and ties in maxims from the study of the philosophy of language. I want to pause here to point out that all of this appears on the very first page of the nine-page handout, and it leaves quite an impression. Students immediately understand Berg as an instructor who takes his job seriously and strives to understand and teach comedy beyond the parameters of joke structure and improv games. The progression of his training program mirrors the development of a college course. It will feel familiar and sensible for those who have been in college classes with similar expectations and foreign to those who have not. Berg’s lesson shows that, at its core, comedy is about engendering shared experience and social exchange. Where is laughter and funniness amid all this science? He explains: If students focus too much on the unusual thing, I find they hit a wall pretty quickly, where things are so absurd that it’s tough to say when something is MORE absurd. It reaches a saturation point. . . . Whereas the unusual thing can hit a saturation point of absurdity where it can go no further, emotions morph into one another at heightened states and so can be heightened indefinitely. One can only be so angry before they become upset, upset for only so long until they begin to laugh at themselves, laugh for only so long before they are reminded of what made them angry in the first place, and we start again.

54

Chapter 1

What keeps the scene going is that one emotion turns into another. Anyone can crack a joke or tell a quick story to get a laugh, but keeping the audience’s attention at a comedy show requires other tactics. According to Berg, if the goal of the performance is to be funny from beginning to end, it is doomed to stall or burn out, because funniness and amusement are fluid and dependent on other emotions. Great comic performance requires accessing and mastering the entire emotional palette. A couple of the comedy workers I spoke with told me that natural funniness as a personality trait is something that can’t be taught. Bert Haas makes a suggestion along these lines when listing the qualities that he looks for in a performer at Zanies; he tells comics he is looking for someone who “tickles his funny bone.” At the least, it’s fair to say that some people are more naturally inclined to performing comedy and drawing out amusement than others. But being naturally funny is not the same thing as being good at comedy, and trying to be funny can actually be a hindrance to developing as a performer.

Community Training The belief that comedy workers share traits such as sensitivity, intelligence, and honesty is a key boundary of comedy workers’ collective identity. But it’s important to note that these qualities are not necessarily character traits that comedy workers are born with; they are painstakingly cultivated at comedy institutions. Theaters and clubs teach trainees to agree with each other, build relationships with mentors, sacrifice for the good of the group, respect the theater, enjoy your work and your company, and cherish and strive for honesty. Both formal and informal institutions create a communal culture that rewards emotional vulnerability and celebrates self-actualization through connections with others. They do not teach about exploitation, justice, or collective resistance, and in so doing, they privilege workers with the financial resources to weather exploitative working conditions. These patterns sustain inequities in comedy work. But they also create artistic space that seems completely worthwhile for those who invest in it, not just because it is thrilling to bear your soul onstage and hear the roar of the audience but also because all the unseen hard work that goes

Chemistry of a Comedian

55

into comedy is socially rewarding. It is not enough to read about joke mechanics and improv exercises in a book or training manual. To get to the truth in comedy, performers need the time and space to transform these concepts into embodied knowledge through practice and repetition. And sharpened performance skills and understanding of comedy are not the only things that students leave these schools with. The time and money they invest yield networks and social connections that are equally important to comedy workers’ careers and identities.

This page intentionally left blank

From Funny to Family The job is a social life. And the people are your work friends, but they’re your friends. —Matt Selman

2

CHESLEY CALLOWAY is a natural host. Onstage at Comedy as a Second Language (CSL) in New York, he is charming and quick with a smile and has more than enough clean material to fi ll the dead spots between acts. Much of his banter is improvised, and he primes the audience without becoming the show himself. But Chesley’s gift for hosting is best observed right before showtime. On Thursday nights, before the lights go on, Chesley arranges seats and tables in the back room of Kabin Bar and Lounge to optimize sightlines. He also props up the worn, wobbly chairs and sofas. He checks and double-checks the lighting and sound. He greets everyone he sees and mills around the audience sharing drinks and laughs with friends before he walks onstage. Chesley has been producing comedy since his college days, and he takes great pride in his attention to detail. But he is also relaxed and warm and the sort of person who puts others at ease. When he first moved from Louisiana to New York, Chesley had the same personality but had trouble finding his groove. He was alone, and he was frustrated, as he found that his credits down south amounted to very little in Gotham. “It was actually really discouraging,” he explains. “I would go to all these shows, these independent shows; I would look in Time Out and I would ask people, and I could never get booked on any of them. . . . I didn’t know, like, are they all booking each other because

57

58

Chapter 2

they’re all friends?” He went from doing twenty-five- or thirty-minute feature sets in Louisiana to four- or five-minute sets at shabby open mics on the periphery of the comedy scene. His material also needed work. He was “leaning in” too hard at the open mics, doing rehearsed routines better fit for more captive audiences instead of experimenting and refining new jokes. In Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Chesley’s political views placed him at the far-left end of the comedy spectrum. But in New York his views were boilerplate, and audiences were lukewarm. He said, “They were like, yeah, of course George Bush is an asshole. We all know that; we’re in New York.” Instead of burrowing deeper into the comedy scene, becoming obsessed with attending the right shows, and pestering producers and bookers, Chesley spread himself thin among the New York nightlife. He met hundreds of comics and developed a sense of where he fit in the New York scene, but he was also waiting tables, partying until all hours of the night, and going to concerts and art openings. He started producing independent shows, both on his own and with other performers, and friends from all his social circles would stop by and lend support. In 2007, when he and fellow Louisiana native Sean Patton finally convinced the owner of Kabin Bar and Lounge to let them use his back room once a week for CSL, Chesley knew he could count on his friends and Sean’s to keep the show afloat for at least a few months. Four years later, Time Out named CSL the best independent comedy show in New York City. I asked Chesley what advice he would give to aspiring producers, and he said, “You gotta think about social capital and call up your friends.” “Social capital” is a simple idea: we benefit as individuals from participating in group activities and building relationships with others. The more social capital we accumulate, the better able we are to utilize social connections to our benefit. Perhaps the most basic way to think about these benefits is in terms of our mental health; that is, we enjoy hanging out with friends who make us feel good about ourselves. But social scientists developed the phrase “social capital” to explain economic forces and the politics of social inequality. It’s a concept that helps us understand not only how we live but also how we work and who gets the best jobs and the greatest rewards for their labor.

From Funny to Family

59

Social networks are indispensable across all job markets, but networks and social capital are especially important in societies and situations in which governments and markets are ineffective or unpredictable.1 Comedy as a cultural market certainly fits this description. Research shows that across industries, roughly half of all job seekers use social networks in their searches, one-third of organizations recruit through social networks, and almost 50 percent of workers who change jobs find their new positions through social networks.2 For all these reasons, you must be connected to the right people to skillfully navigate the job market. More specifically, social capital is most valuable if you are connected to those with power—those who know about jobs and are charged with hiring and firing employees. These considerations make it easy to see how social networks reflect and preserve social inequality. Power brokers often come from the privileged class, and they protect and pass on their privileges through institutions such as schools and families that keep them connected to others with similar backgrounds.3 Low-status minorities, including racial and ethnic minorities, may have high levels of social capital among themselves in a given setting. But unlike privileged groups, their social-capital accumulation is unlikely to result in improved social and economic status.4 Organizations can and do try to mitigate inequality by setting up networking programs that build connections between groups with different levels of social capital. But even in these cases, diversity is insufficient for improving the status of disadvantaged groups,5 and everyday interactions and habits among coworkers often reinforce old patterns of inequality, as people withdraw into social enclaves in which they are most comfortable.6 For comedy workers, there are no assurances that well-trodden career paths lead to security and rewards. So Chesley’s advice about social capital and networking is not a sufficient tactic for improving one’s lot, and even workers with a knack for socializing and exchanging information with others may never make the connections that improve their status. But what is clear from my interviews is that Chesley and his peers don’t view the social elements of their careers merely as tactics for getting better jobs; instead, socializing is part of the job itself. In fact, it can be impossible to tell where the “social” ends and the “professional” begins in comedy, be-

60

Chapter 2

cause the substance of both social and professional comedy work is pleasure, caretaking, and community.

Friends with Benefits The effects of networking on psychological and physical health are contested. There is evidence that people with strong social-support networks have lower mortality rates from serious diseases, such as cardiovascular illnesses and cancer. But there are also studies that show that the actual level of support or strength of one’s network is less important for health and wellness than is the subject’s perception of her social relationships. That is, the social-support system alone is not what makes you feel good. Rather, if you feel good about your social-support system, you will feel good across other measures of personal health and wellness.7 So it matters how comedy workers feel about those they work and socialize with, and it matters what meaning they give to those relationships. When I asked interviewees about the best parts of their jobs, the people and relationships in comedy stood out as elements that gave them great pleasure. Dina Facklis explains: I enjoy the people. They’re “yes” people. The best ones are givers, in terms of giving gifts onstage. The best ones are ensemble players that take care of each other, and I’ve been really fortunate in terms of those people.

The “Yes, and” philosophy of improv certainly informs Dina’s appreciation for her colleagues during performance, but Patrick Rowland describes how the social habits of improv helped him grow when he was away from the stage. The first thing they teach you is to say, “Yes, and.” It’s like they beat it into you so much that it just translates not only onstage but [also] offstage. And that’s really helped me do stuff outside of comedy. Just in general, I’ll say “yes” to something instead of denying it. . . . You start doing it with people. Like, “Yeah. Come on over to my barbeque.” Or, “Yeah, I’ll go for a drink with you guys.” That’s what made me do it, because I used to be the shiest person in the world.

From Funny to Family

61

Solo performers report similar appreciation for the social perks of their job. In response to the same question about what he enjoys most about his work, Henry Phillips tells us, “I literally get to hang out with some of the funniest people in the world, you know? I can actually say that I’ve just sat around with the people that, according to the box offices, people regard as the funniest people ever.” Dina, Patrick, and Henry, three performers with drastically different life and career experiences, are all grateful for the company they keep and the social gifts of comedy. It is not only selfaffirming to build social lives in the professional world of comedy but also fun. There is a deep sense of appreciation and reverence for the people who occupy this world. Richard Barrett, booker at the Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California, tells us the best part of his job is “having a relationship with people I consider geniuses and some of the best people and the brightest minds in the world.” A shared understanding emerges from these contributions, in that even if comedy workers are not paid and treated as social and economic elites, they still think of themselves as part of an elite community in terms of the socioemotional perks of the job and the intelligence and talent shared by those at the top of the profession. Th is shared understanding also becomes a social boundary, as hanging out with people outside the comedy community, or “civilians,” as they’re sometimes called, can be quite dull. Former Groundling Brian Palermo explains: It compares to other social groups, to me, more favorably. I like being around fun people who can make me laugh. . . . But most people not in comedy— I wouldn’t say they’re not funny, but they’re not trying to be funny so much. People in comedy, whether they’re performing onstage or not, they are trying to be funny a lot of the time. . . . It’s now ingrained in me. . . . Any given conversation, any given thought, I’m starting from a place of, “Can I make a witty comment about that? Can I move the conversation along in a funny way?”

Alex Berg reinforces Brian’s thoughts in his description of what it’s like to hang out almost exclusively with comedy people. Everybody is trained in the art of doing bits and fucking around. And it’s so effortless. . . . You tend to gravitate towards people who do the kinds of bits

62

Chapter 2

you like, and then, “Surprise, surprise,” those wind up being the kind of people who like the kind of comedy you like. . . . When I go home for the holidays and I’m around. . . . My family’s very funny, but not necessarily everybody in my hometown is. And so when I have to have conversations with civilians, there’s a lot of, like [hesitates awkwardly], like, sincerity is really weird for me.

Seasoned comedy workers recognize that comedic impulses drive most of their conversations forward in social settings, even when they’re not performing and there is no financial reward for being funny. Importantly, they do not describe these impulses as products of their natural talent. Both Brian and Alex explicitly refer to their training as the force that shaped them into the social beings they are today. Performers are taught to build on comedic momentum in conversations and seek out laughs more frequently than are civilians. Hanging out and talking to each other this way becomes habit, and the line between comedy workers and civilians seems natural, despite the acknowledgments by Brian and Alex of all the training that made them the way they are. We can hear the sense of naturalness in Alex’s sarcastic use of the phrase “Surprise, surprise” in his earlier description of how friendships solidify. For some comedians, these social settings are the only places they are truly comfortable being themselves. Performer and screenwriter Eliza Skinner echoes the sentiments of Brian and Alex about feeling at home in the company of peers. “I know a lot of noncomedians think their comic friends are always ‘on,’ and because of that I think a lot of us are self-conscious about trying to ‘cool out,’ just be ‘normal,’” she says. “But ‘normal’ to us is ‘joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke,’ so it just becomes more and more comfortable just to hang out with other comedians.” Unlike Brian and Alex, Eliza recognizes that part of the discomfort she feels in the civilian world is as the result of oppressive gender expectations that she has never conformed to. The comedy world, both on- and offstage, is a safer space. She explains: Half of the reason why I go to the green room is just to spend time with other comedians, because that’s one of the places where I feel normal. Especially as a woman, because I was always a little bit too loud as a regular girl. A little too loud, a little too weird, and I always felt like I wasn’t good at getting along

From Funny to Family

63

with other women. And then the more I started hanging out with other comedians, the less I felt like that.

Gender scripts and sexism remain massive issues across all sorts of comedy communities, and Eliza is not arguing that the social world of comedy renders these problems irrelevant. But Eliza’s social life as a comedian allows for communal bonds that traditional gender expectations prevent her from forging in the civilian world. Hanging out with other comics bolsters her self-confidence and illustrates how having social capital can affect our health and well-being. As Eliza’s testimony shows, the collective identity of comedians is shaped by their interactions both during performances and in the downtime between gigs and sets. Much of the socializing that occurs off the clock is framed by the natural sorting that occurs within the comedy business. If a stand-up has a road gig at a club he is unfamiliar with, he is likely to stay at a hotel recommended by the club owner along with the two or three other comics on the bill for that weekend. Often, these solo travelers stick out like sore thumbs at the hotel bar or restaurant. They recognize each other instantly even if they have never met, and over the course of the weekend they might take in a ball game, go out for drinks, and carpool from the hotel to the venue each time they perform. Dobie Maxwell describes it as “an arranged marriage” and says that the ease and naturalness he feels with comics he has met only a few times is one of the greatest perks of the business, as he always feels as though he has friends he can call on, no matter what city he is playing in. Stand-up Pat Dixon agrees: You do feel an instant kinship with most people who do comedy. . . . You’ve been to a lot of the same places and you’ve done a lot of the same things. You’ve stayed in the same shitty condos or really nice hotels, and you know a lot of the same people. . . . It’s like how parents, they can talk to other parents because they’re having the same experience in raising a kid. I think it’s like that with comedy, too.

Comedic socializing and sorting by career stage clearly provide the foundation for connections and friendship in the comedy world. But the

64

Chapter 2

social bonds between comedy workers are not woven from sterile professionalism dictated by circumstance. They are sustained by much more than working the same schedule and feeling comfortable in conversations driven by jokes. When comics describe their relationships using words such as “kinship” and “marriage,” the character of their collective identity becomes normative rather than merely descriptive. One of the more unexpected distinctions the interviewees drew when talking about their relationships within comedy was between people who are “nice” and those who are not. This runs counter to expectations because performers often flout social conventions and get paid to make audiences uncomfortable. But both performers and people on the business side of comedy emphasize the role of basic decency and kindness in their working relationships. Estee Adoram jokes: We’re nice to all the comics, and when Louis [CK] comes, and Chris [Rock], we’re even nicer! [Laughs.] And so one hand washes the other, and we support each other. . . . Jim Norton, Colin Quinn—we have dinners. This is totally social. They don’t need us, but we still get together. We enjoy each other. We care about each other; we talk about personal things. Families. Breakups. Auditions. We talk all the time.

Bert Haas discussed likability as one of the key traits he looks for during his speech before the amateur showcase. Estee’s contribution, however, moves beyond a performer’s charisma and into the reciprocal support she enjoys with people she has been in business with for a long time. Jennie Church-Cooper, a talent manager at Haven Entertainment, acknowledges that she looks for talent first when she considers adding a comedic performer or screenwriter to her client list. But she derives great satisfaction from building a roster of comedy workers who get along well with others. Sometimes I tell people, and it comes off as Polly Anna-ish, but I like really gracious, nice people. That’s the greatest compliment I get from people in the business. Directors, casting—when they meet a few of my clients, they go, “God, your clients are really such nice people!” And I go, “I’m doing something right.” To me, I’m not in it for the money. I make more now than I ever would have made in my entire career as a teacher. So [the money] is icing on the cake.

From Funny to Family

65

Jennie came to talent management after working as a teacher for several years, and she has already exceeded her expectations and financial goals for her stint in the entertainment business. The value of her work is not measured solely by what she earns each year but also by the relationships she builds. Like Estee, Jennie takes the time to cultivate relationships with her clients outside the parameters of the industry. In fact, she got her start managing her brother Joel, who performs at UCB Los Angeles. The emphasis these women place on being nice comes in the context of dealing with people they are already close to or invested in forging lasting bonds with. But treating people kindly may be even more important for comedy workers interacting with people they do not know especially well. Standup Matteo Lane knows that kindness is a quality that businesspeople such as Estee and Jennie look for. He asks: If you’re talented and you’re good, people want you. But people also like you if you’re nice. Are you a good person? Are you nice to other people? Are you supportive?

Matteo reinforces the idea that “nice” is not only good for business but part of what it means to be a good person. This is a moral boundary. If treating friends, acquaintances, and strangers kindly lies on the favorable side of the border, it stands to reason that being mean or rude lies on the other side. Indeed, Andrew Short tells us that “not talking bad about people is really important.” Patrick Rowland expands on this idea a bit, talking about the business implications of being a jerk. You have people who are like, “Oh, they’re not funny.” Or they’ll be a jerk to people. And that is the dumbest thing you can do because you never know who’s going to make it. You never know if that person in your Writing 1 class might someday be a writer on Conan or writing for SNL.

But even if a performer is not a full-fledged jerk, not being nice or likable enough can be a major detriment to her career. Screenwriter Adam Cole-Kelly recognizes and counts social dexterity as one of his most important skills. Probably a greater strength than our writing was that we were good in a room. There are a lot of comedy writers who are socially awkward and prob-

66

Chapter 2

ably ten times the writers that we are. But you know, eye contact maybe isn’t their thing. And so, we’re fairly well adjusted socially, and being in the room, I think, is always a good thing for us.

Mark Normand takes the analysis a step further, suggesting that often the problem is not simply that the performer is socially awkward but that he is scared to take risks and make the social investment necessary for success. And a lot of comics now are just like, “I’m going to be awkward. It’s who I am.” It’s like, “No. You have to try not to. . . . ” I have a couple of comedy friends who are amazing comics, brilliant joke writers, and they just can’t talk to an agent or a manager. They’re just like, “Who’s that guy in a suit? I can’t do it.” And you’re like, “Go! He likes your stuff. Just go talk to him! He’ll sign you in a minute! You’ll be on TV!” And he’ll be like, “Nah. Maybe later.” There’s a big fear of success in the business.

Adam’s and Mark’s descriptions of social aptitude bring us to the intersection of social capital and cultural capital. Merely accumulating social capital, or expanding your network to include brokers and gatekeepers who can enhance your career, is not enough to leverage social success into financial success. You need to both make contact with and connect with those actors and agents for social capital to pay off. Sometimes, inexplicable social awkwardness or fear prevents these connections from forming, and sometimes comics just don’t enjoy or believe in the sort of socializing that is understood as a job requirement. New York stand-up and writer Mike Lawrence explains: One of the toughest things is [that] it’s so much about getting to like you offstage. It’s all about, you know, people giving you a chance and booking you, and that stuff is tough. You know, I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I’m not a party guy. And so, you know, having to hang out afterwards is often tough for me.

When I asked Mike how he deals with this social pressure, he answered: I don’t stay too long. When it gets really drunk and rowdy, I get out. I accept that most of the promises are empty. At parties and stuff, it’s not the best

From Funny to Family

67

place to make real connections. It’s a good place to show how loose you are, but it’s not necessary all the time. Someone with a lot of power wants you to like them and is going to tell you everything [you want to hear] when they’re drunk. I used to believe it because I was new. I don’t anymore.

So the social unevenness may be partially driven by the personalities involved, but in Mike’s case, it’s also informed by his experience, as he has been in the business long enough to know that you cannot take people’s drunken praise or promises seriously. Other times, there are massive social divides that are taxing to cross, caused by different experiences along the lines of race, gender, class, and other identity markers. Recall Calvin Evans’s accumulation of cultural capital through his performances in college, which gave him the chance to grow comfortable with the tastes, sensibilities, and values of white audiences he had never encountered growing up in black Chicago. Without the institutional setting of the university, it would be even more difficult for performers whose bodies are marked as “other” to make inroads in the privileged-white-male-dominated business and social scene that is mainstream American comedy. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the white performers I spoke with did not acknowledge or weigh in on how social- and cultural-capital accumulation reflects racial inequality and segregation. But black performers like Calvin Evans and Jeffrey Joseph understand this challenge as part of social networking. When I asked Jeff rey what explains the wide range of venues and longevity he has enjoyed as a stand-up, writer, and comedic actor, his answer wove all of these strands together. I know how to form relationships with people. That holds true on- and offstage. When I’m onstage I have a presence and I know how to connect with the people that are in the audience. . . . When I’m offstage I also know how to talk to a club owner. I know how to talk to an audience member that comes up to me. I know how to talk to other comedians. I may not like everybody, and I may not agree with what everybody’s doing, but I don’t create a contentious atmosphere that’s impossible to abide by. And then, I talk to white people. “Hello?” [He is implying that this is an obvious part of his job.] And I know how to talk to black people. And I mean, there’s some really talented [black] people that just don’t know how to talk to white people.

68

Chapter 2

Both performers and people on the business side value being kind, treating people with respect, and having the confidence to socialize with unfamiliar people. Feeling at ease and being able to put strangers at ease is critical for building social capital. These values apply largely to a type of social aptness that solidifies relationships during the early stages, when the parties do not know each other that well. But interviewees also described the substance of social capital in their long-term relationships, and their testimony reinforces the family ethic of comedy communities. The feeling of kinship springs not only from sharing work and social experiences and being kind to one another but also from trusting and taking care of one another over the long haul.

Trust and Caretaking Rebecca Trent’s venue, The Creek and the Cave, is a unique space in that it is also a restaurant and bar and operates more like a comedy clubhouse than a theater. Many of the acts featured at the Creek have worked for or found work through their connections to Rebecca, and she considers it her job to provide a safe environment for comics to not just perform in but also socialize and create in. “Part of that is being involved in comedians’ lives,” she says. “Part of that is making sure that if somebody needs a bed, they get one. Sometimes it’s haircutting, and sometimes it’s cooking Christmas dinner, and sometimes it’s sitting down and giving notes. And sometimes it’s reviewing tapes and making suggestions for who I think the funniest people would be for [Jimmy] Fallon or for a festival.” Richard Barrett’s role at the Comedy and Magic Club is different from Rebecca’s. Richard is the booker, not the owner, and the Comedy and Magic Club caters to a different clientele. The audience is older and less edgy, and the acts, which range from amateurs to stars like Jay Leno and Ray Romano, are expected to perform entirely clean sets. Richard does not cut their hair or cook them Christmas dinner. When I asked him how he does his job, though, the same values of caretaking and long-term trust emerge. My job is about building a relationship, because I want these guys to come back, and it’s not going to be strictly a financial thing. So I do work hard on

From Funny to Family

69

the social aspect and trying to get to know guys. The comic life is pretty solitary. They perform by themselves. They travel by themselves. For the most part, their days are spent writing by themselves. So when they walk in this building, I want them to see a friendly face, someone who knows their name.

Richard specifically cites Jay Leno’s longstanding Sunday spot at the Comedy and Magic Club as proof that money is not what keeps the big acts coming back. Leno sells out theaters in Las Vegas but continues to play Hermosa Beach because it feels like home. Richard puts himself in the performers’ shoes and is mindful of how much time they spend alone or with strangers. But again, the fact that the stand-up lifestyle can be solitary at times does not mean that performers are antisocial. To the contrary, their social connections keep their spirits up and counter the loneliness and isolation that can seep into the job. Richard continues: There’s a lot of turnover in this business, and for [club owner] Mike Lacey to have been here thirty-five years and for me to [have been] here for half of that, those guys know that one of us is in here with a smile on our face and [that when we] say, “Hey, pal, how are you?,” [we] truly mean it. And we enable them to have a performance setting that is ideal, so they just go out there and do what they do and not have to worry about the exterior stuff. That’s really important to those guys.

Trust emerges as a key value for performers and people on the business side because of their labor context. Richard addresses the day-to-day atmosphere and operations of the club when performers are actually doing their job onstage, and he also touches on the shape and character of the industry as a whole. Part of what makes Richard trustworthy is his consistency. He has a record of professionalism and treating the talent with respect, and performers can count on these conditions because the owner and booker have maintained them as partners for eighteen years in an industry rife with turnover. Trust as a social value certainly improves working conditions for performers. Sociological research confirms that trust reinforces mere networking as a way to regulate informal and unstable markets,8 but there is less clarity about exactly what sort of function trust performs. In the

70

Chapter 2

comedy world, trust does more than simply enable relationship building and economic exchange. Its positive effects ripple across the artistic dimensions and overall business of comedy. Just as Rebecca does, Richard adds something to performers’ creative lives even though he is not a comedian. Performers trust his input, and he feels confident giving it. The relationship is reciprocal, Richard says, “because I don’t manage a specific one; they know where I’m coming from. I’m coming from a place where I want them to do well, because the more comics that are out there that I can use, the easier my job becomes. I want to help them, and I’m going to give them advice where they feel that there’s no ulterior motive.” Like so many aspects of professional development, this sort of mentoring is severely affected by race. Mary Lindsey, founder and owner of Jokes and Notes—the only black-owned comedy club in Chicago—describes how she uses open mics to screen comics for larger platforms and get them acclimated to the stage. If a comic does well in a three-minute set during open mic night on Wednesday, Mary invites her back to the club for a five- to seven-minute set on Thursday night, when she provides extensive feedback. Much of her criticism focuses on two central themes. First, Mary warns novice comics that cracking jokes in your living room in front of your friends does not prepare you for club performance. She tells them that “when you get on that stage and you’ve got 150 people staring you in the face—this is pressure.” Second, because Mary works almost entirely with black comics and black audiences, she explains to aspiring professionals that eventually they will have to expand their repertoire and find something that appeals to “mainstream” [white] America. These can be difficult truths to swallow for young people who have been told how funny they are for most of their lives and have never failed in front of a crowd. “It’s a hard thing for them,” Mary says, “because they thought it was about being funny and telling their standard little jokes.” But when they finally come around and tell Mary, “You were right; I really appreciate all your input,” those moments of growth and reflection become “a constant source of inspiration” and drive Mary to continue her work. She is proud to “take that type of interest in their craft, because they feel like they have no one else that’s going to tell them, and they know I’m going to tell them the truth.”

From Funny to Family

71

Mary’s description of mentoring in an industry with stark racial divisions echoes Chris Rock’s searing critique of racism in Hollywood. Like Mary, Chris tells us that if he doesn’t reach down and lift other young black comics as he climbs, nobody else will be there to help them scale the mountain. I try to help young black guys coming up because those people took chances on me. Eddie [Murphy] didn’t have to put me in Beverly Hills Cop II. Keenan Wayans didn’t have to put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka. Arsenio didn’t have to let me on his show. I’d do the same for a young white guy, but here’s the difference: someone’s going to help the white guy. Multiple people will. The people whom I’ve tried to help, I’m not sure anybody was going to help them.9

The statements from both Chris Rock and Mary Lindsey are important because they confirm discrimination at multiple levels of the comedy business. People of color have to deal with inequities in professional development at every stage of their careers, from the first time they appear onstage at amateur night in Chicago to their screen tests for multimilliondollar movies in Los Angeles. In addition to confirming the impact of racial segregation in the professional development of comedy creators, the testimony from Chris and Mary demonstrates that kindness and courtesy transform into a deeper form of trust and caregiving when we understand social bonds as long-term investments. When trust is violated, there are consequences. Estee Adoram explains: If an agent has a new client, and they push them on me, and I say, “Okay, send them in,” and it’s not working, it’s bad. . . . Next time I’m not going to take their suggestion or their recommendation. And some people, as I just said, blindfolded I would trust them, because they know better. We are here for the long haul. You cannot fool me by sending somebody that’s a lemon.

Getting booked at the Comedy Cellar is a major accomplishment for an up-and-coming performer. But if an agent sends Estee a client who is not yet ready for that platform, it can backfire in the long run, not only for the comic but for the agent and all his clients. This is a fragile business, in which mismanaging key relationships can be difficult for perform-

72

Chapter 2

ers to recover from, even when the miscommunication or misstep isn’t entirely their fault. There is no antidote for these issues and no career plan that will protect performers from the intrinsic uncertainty and subjectivity of their industry. But in order to survive and navigate this terrain, you cannot withdraw. You need to keep socializing, keep trusting, and keep building friendships until you feel at home in a creative community. Jennie Church-Cooper draws parallels between performers and her peers in representation and management. No two paths are the same. Whether it’s UCB, whether it’s Groundlings, iO, Second City, whether it’s an acting class, whatever it is, you need a community. That’s what I tell my clients. You need a community of people to come out of. . . . You need that core group of people that you at each level move up with and you help each other out. We always say every time it’s staffing season for TV shows, there are so few jobs open. What’s the first thing you do if you get a TV show? [You say,] “I’m going to hire all my friends. Because I trust them, and I’m going to want to work with them, and I think they’re really good writers.” If you’re not friends with someone who sold a show that year, you’re in a really competitive situation.

Producer and screenwriter Annie O’Rourke explains how rooting oneself in a community not only yields opportunities for more work but also serves as a psychological buffer against the harshness of the business. Comics root themselves in peer groups for support because it’s a crazy market. I think especially in this town [Los Angeles]. You could write a pilot, your own pilot, starring you, and it could seem like the most amazing success you could ever imagine in your life. And then it goes away so quickly, just as it came. So I think just knowing that you will constantly have to be doing something else, and there’s going to be highs and lows. It’s the only way you can get through it, I imagine.

There is empathy here, not only because of the uncertainty and volatility of the business but also because Annie knows it is painful. Comedy workers tie their fates to those of others and keep friends close to heal themselves when misfortune and malady strike. There is certainly a practical and calculated aspect to the fusion of social and professional lives in

From Funny to Family

73

comedy. Those from sketch, improv, stand-up, and screenwriting all affirm that you need your friends to help you find work and that loyalty and reciprocity are the norms in the business. Jeff Joseph says flatly, “When I was a writer in LA, every job I got was from someone I know. They hire friends for something they’d be perfect for.” On the flip side, Dobie Maxwell looks back on the opportunities he missed in his career because he refused to ask friends and colleagues like Drew Carey and Jeff Foxworthy for work; he thought he wasn’t good enough, and it seemed pathetic to hit up famous friends for favors. But years later, when Dobie bumped into friends of his who had made it, they told him they wished he had called, because they needed Dobie and trusted him to play roles that they knew he would master. It’s a symbiotic relationship, Dobie explains, because the performer with lower status gets an opportunity he would never have had if not for the friendship and the performer with higher status eliminates much of the risk of hiring new and unpredictable people to work with. Jeff and Dobie are stand-ups, and they moved through the business without the networking benefits of teaching or training for years at a comedy theater. As with college-alumni networks, comedy schools like The Second City and The Groundlings have proven to be major resources and shortcuts for networking and making the transition from amateur to professional. As UCB New York performer Langan Kingsley observes, “Any big movie that someone from UCB is behind, you will see a ton of bit parts played by UCB people.” Of course, leveraging these networks depends on their size and scale, and simply knowing someone does not mean you are guaranteed to get a paying job, especially considering how many people now have a line or two about UCB or the iO on their resume. Networks do not guarantee jobs, but they do enable comedy workers to make connections they would not otherwise make. The phrase “I was in Coed Prison Sluts” is not likely to impress just any potential employer or collaborator. But to comedians who have the shared experience of coming through the Annoyance Theater in Chicago, that lewd credit is a stamp of legitimacy. These are practical truths about the business; gaining experiences at specific theaters and venues is like learning a language required to speak and share information in comedy networks. But again, the social life of comedians cannot be reduced to a sterile and calculated exercise in schmoozing.

74

Chapter 2

Performers offered strong expressions of love, caretaking, and community as they described the overlapping nature of their social and professional lives. One especially poignant example is the case of Kate James, who had these bonds and commitments stretched to their limit when she broke up with her longtime boyfriend, who remains a partner in her sketch-comedy group, Schadenfreude. “A lot of people I know would have been like, ‘Fuck it, fuck this, fuck you, I’m out,’ and thrown the baby out with the bath water,” Kate says. “And I think I was like, ‘I’m going to treat this company like a child.’ So we had a child, and you don’t walk away from a child.” Both Kate and her partner did all they could to make sure that their problems were theirs alone, and the company and collaboration survived. In describing the company as “a child,” Kate underscores the caretaking that members of the comedy community use to characterize their colleagues and the nature of the bonds they build. Sketch performer Rebecca Delgado-Smith foregrounds this love ethic as well. “I love my friends, and I love the people I work with, because I feel like I’ve chosen a lot of them. And I think that’s not the same in other fields,” she says. “In this lifestyle, I think that’s one of the perks, where obviously the drawback is you don’t have constant work.” Like Annie and Jennie, Rebecca tells us that caretaking and community are the armor that comedy workers need to survive unpredictability and unfavorable working conditions in the business. Socializing is part of the job but not simply because networking is a means to find work. In practice, social-capital accumulation in comedy is trusting, caretaking, and community building. The social acceptance and pleasure that comedy workers derive from one another’s company builds resilience and social identity.

Social Costs Despite the perks that come with the overlay of comedians’ professional and social lives, there are significant drawbacks. One glaring problem articulated by Dobie and others is that networking can trump talent, experience, and skill. The relationship between merit and success in comedy is explored throughout this book, but there are two special points worth making here, elucidated by Pat Dixon. First, the importance of social lives

From Funny to Family

75

and informal connections can distort relationships between performers, their managers, and the owners and bookers who employ them. Second, the art of making friends undermines the professionalism that so many club owners and bookers claim to prioritize. Presenting oneself as a respectful professional with a strong record of work experience is ultimately futile, according to Pat. The mistakes I made were things like walking into a club with a DVD of a half-hour special from TV and saying, “This is me. Watch this, and I’d like to work here.” Nobody really responds to that. . . . Coming in and just introducing myself cold to people was a mistake. Relying too much on management to make contacts for me was a mistake. Relying on management too much for anything is a mistake. . . . Ultimately they [management] can’t really move the ball for you. . . . I was always of the mind that they [bookers] would appreciate the professionalism of somebody who would just come in and do their time and leave, but it isn’t that way.

It should be noted that Pat is speaking based on his experience as a stand-up. Although he is a regular on VH1’s Best Week Ever, he is not a comedic actor, and the relationship between management and talent in television and fi lm casting is different than in the comedy club and theater scene. But in Pat’s world, speaking for yourself or allowing your experience and tapes to speak for you is less impactful than friends vouching for you or you finding a way into the social circle of the booker or club owner. Pat learned that instead of doing his set and leaving the club, he needed to stick around to hang out with the managers, staff, and other comics to get the job completely done. “What I would do differently is you need to have your friends introduce you to people,” he says. “And just go to clubs, hang, and get in that way.” This has serious consequences not only for the career of an individual performer but for the industry as a whole, as Pat laments. He says, “There’s so many funny people that [being funny] doesn’t mean anything.” What means something, as we’ve learned, is taking the time to invest in others and join a comedy community. But communities have boundaries, and wherever there is community-building, there will be rejection and exclusion. Alex Berg and Brian Palermo describe the social distance

76

Chapter 2

between comedians and civilians in somewhat neutral terms. They know they have grown apart from some of the people they grew up with, and they choose to hang out with comedy people without guilt or regret. But these social chasms are more troubling for performers like Patrick Rowland, who grew up in black Chicago but feels disconnected from the life he knew there as a result of throwing himself into the white-dominated social scene of improv. He reports: I barely get to see my friends. I think that would be the hardest part. I barely see my friends that are outside of the improv and sketch worlds. And I’ve recently been trying to make time to see my family. Because I get so [hesitates]. . . . I’m consumed by it.

What’s important about this admission from Patrick is that he offers this commentary in response to an open-ended question about the most difficult or challenging aspects of his life in comedy. He is the one who introduces the notion of the social demands of his job. Despite earlier comments about the way his improv training has helped him grow socially and say “yes” more often, he pays a high cost for these benefits. Screenwriter Lee Eisenberg, who lives in Los Angeles and has seen far greater financial rewards than Patrick although they are at the same point in their careers, tells a similar story. He reports, “[The writing room] kind of becomes your surrogate family—you spend more time with them than you do with your own family. . . . We work all the time, so the people that we see the most are the people we work with, which obviously affects our social lives, which are shit.” The insular nature of the comedy world not only limits performers’ social lives but impacts their material as well. Emily Berg explains: There’s a fair amount of people [who] have just completely immersed themselves in the world. . . . They’re performing for kind of the same people because all of those people are also at open mics every single night. They’re just around and seeing the same people, and I just think if you get into that enough it’s like, where are you getting the material from? What are you pulling from if you’re just hearing other people’s jokes constantly?

We know that open mics are valuable training grounds for aspiring professionals because they allow novice comedians to experiment and ac-

From Funny to Family

77

cumulate more repetitions onstage. Open mics are equally important as social and professional spaces in which performers bond with and mentor one another, gaining insights from others with more experience. For all these reasons, there is great pressure to put in as much face time as possible and gain acceptance into a local comedy community. It isn’t easy to join the club, though. Part of the difficulty in finding a circle of comedy coworkers with whom you are comfortable is that not all comics are willing to give outsiders or novices the benefit of the doubt. Chesley Calloway says this tendency is a huge mistake, especially for performers who also want to produce their own shows. When comedy workers restrict their social circles or are hesitant to invest in relationships outside of comedy, they limit potential supporters and collaborators who might be able to help them get a show or an act off the ground. A lot of people show up to the city thinking they’re going to produce a show and everyone is just going to come out, and they wonder why it doesn’t have legs or why people don’t come out. Put in the effort to be a real human being outside of being just a comic. You have to be friends with civilians and support them too. A lot of comics do not do that at all. A lot of comics, as soon as they find out you’re not a comic, they’ll be like, “Oh.” And they’re rude.

We have already heard several comedy workers talk about the importance of being nice, and their comments in combination with Chesley’s suggest that the jerk quotient in comedy circles is larger than in other kinds of social and professional circles. That is, if rudeness were a truly rare occurrence, fewer people across the comedy landscape would take the time to emphasize the importance of being considerate and supportive. But part of the reason people in comedy can be prickly is the brutality of the industry. It is not hard to become jaded working in comedy, and investing time and money in relationships does not always yield returns, because so many people become frustrated, get bored, or burn out and quit the business. Danny Cruz provides a window into this mind-set. I see people starting out, and I’m nice to them. But are you going to be here in six months? I don’t know. Because this is rough, you know? If you’re here in six months we’ll be friends. But if you’re not, you know, I will be courteous

78

Chapter 2

enough to say, “Hey. How’s it going?” Just don’t be surprised if the bigger guys don’t want a minute of your time. I guess, like a war, like, so many new recruits come in. And it’s just like, I’m not going to learn your name; you’re going to die any second now.

If war is an apt metaphor for comedy, one thing that makes the business so gruesome is that solidarity with your fellow soldiers can be hard to sustain. The industry itself is fearsome enough, as the daunting odds of piecing together a long and prosperous career cause plenty of capable comedy workers to give up the fight. And then, as Kate James explained earlier, when your success is tied to that of the friends and partners you collaborate with, the resulting strain placed on those friendships necessitates a resiliency that is above and beyond that which a performer has to continually summon to survive in comedy. Eliza Skinner underscores this point. You’re very close with who you work with, which can be amazing or difficult depending on how those relationships go. I had a comedy partner for a long time, and I’ve never been married, but it felt very similar to what I imagine being married is, in that you commit to this person and you decide my life, my future, my financial future and all that is connected to how things go with you. That can put a lot of pressure on a relationship.

Even when an individual or group withstands the pressure, beats the odds, and lands a job that propels them into a new echelon in the labor market, the victory can feel like defeat for colleagues and friends. Comedy workers have to steel themselves to face rejection, and equally important, they have to ward off jealousy when they are ignored but someone close to them is rewarded or recognized. Comedy is not a zero-sum game, as new venues and opportunities to perform and build followings are created every day. But movie and television studios purchase and produce only a finite number of scripts, and comedy festivals have a limited number of spots. And because social networks are so robust, information travels quickly, and everyone knows who the winners and losers are each season. Matteo Lane laments: I don’t like dealing with feeling competitive with my best friends. One of my best friends here [New York] just got a Montreal [Just for Laughs com-

From Funny to Family

79

edy festival] audition. I just got here six months ago, so why the fuck would I get a Montreal audition? But I was still so jealous, and I hate being jealous about people that I really love. . . . I don’t act on it. I’m not like, “We can’t be friends.” Because there are comics like that.

Jealousy and disappointment are real social costs associated with the fusion of the social and the professional within comedy communities. Overcoming these feelings is no easy feat, but Matteo does not act on them because he values his friendships. Comedians also know that if someone close to them is presented with an opportunity, they may benefit from their friend’s success. “It’s competitive with all these people,” writer and stand-up Nora Nolan says, “but then all you want is for them to succeed. The ones you really like and the ones you connect with, it feels good and it makes it a thousand times more likely that you’ll succeed.” Another way that comedy workers manage these challenges is by building different categories for their friends in the business. As Andrew Short tells us, “There’s the friend group of people who you think are better than you and are getting stuff [prestigious bookings], who start to take you under their wing. You have to manage that relationship way, way differently. And then being friends with people who do hold some power and can get your name out there, that’s an entirely different friend group too.” So friendship becomes stratified, and behaviors are adjusted accordingly. This does not sound much like familial or unconditional love and caretaking, and it jibes with a concern shared by Ashley Brooke Roberts, who thinks that most comedy friendships are friendships of convenience and circumstance that are dictated by career stage. Most comedy friends, she says, probably wouldn’t be friends outside of comedy. When everyone participating understands the professional losses and gains at stake, the line between friend and colleague can get too murky, friendships can be superficial, and the social scene attracts people “who are just there for friends.” Ashley warns, “It’s a trap you fall into, where they’re like, ‘This is my social life.’ You’re like, ‘No, it’s not.’” Presumably, the misguided outsiders seeking entry into this world enjoy being around funny people. While Alex Berg, Brian Palermo, Henry Phillips, and others derive great pleasure from hanging out with fellow

80

Chapter 2

performers, being around people who are always “on” can be tiresome. Nora identifies this problem as her “biggest failure as a comedian, because it’s hard to really get close to people who are so jokey all the time. They never turn it off.” And improv performer and teacher Emily Berg further explains the difficulty of dealing with attention seekers who are constantly performing for each other. The thing that is frustrating and the thing that we all share is . . . a level of hamminess and competition within that hamminess. I’ve been with lots of friends, and I know I do it too. One of us will say a joke and then the other one instantly re-says it but makes it just a little bit better. And when you’re trying to write together that’s awesome. Because that’s how you get to the good stuff. Where if you’re just having coffee, it’s like, “Yeah. I just said that. I just said that joke.”

As Eliza Skinner described earlier, “hamminess” is constitutive of the social bonds that tie comedy communities together. It has real professional benefits, as comedy creators feed off each other’s attention and comments when they’re producing content. But when Emily wants to hang out without feeling like she is at work, the competitive habits of attention-seeking performers make it difficult to have a drink and relax. And if it is tiresome to people who are used to hanging out this way, it can be downright loathsome to outsiders. Improv performer and writer Langan Kingsley warns: If you were to go and see an improv show, and I was like, “Come, like, grab a drink after,” you would hate it. It’s horrible to bring other people in. My brother came to see something once, and he was like, “Doesn’t it get really tiring with everyone trying to outdo each other all the time?” Because there’s a lot of bits that go on, and people are just trying to be funny; and people just do bits and don’t have real conversations. And that’s extremely irritating and tiring sometimes.

Performers value and take pride in being funny and making people laugh. This ability is part of what they share in common with one another, and it is what separates them from outsiders. They also share the common experience of having to deal with this style of social interaction all the time and sometimes being annoyed by it. But comedians can’t afford to

From Funny to Family

81

simply withdraw, because there is social and professional pressure to hang out all the time, even when you don’t want to. Rojo Perez explains: Like, sometimes you don’t hang out, and they’re like, “Oh. What, are you too good? You can’t fucking hang out?” And then, there’s so many comedians in New York. It’s not that they don’t like you; they just don’t see you. You forget that certain people are in town. You forget certain people live in New York, and then when you’ll be hanging out, you’re like, “Oh, this person’s funny. Why haven’t I had them do my show? Why haven’t I worked with them in a while? Oh, because I just never see them.”

The comedy scenes in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are dense, with a reserve workforce of aspiring performers eager to step into open time slots. Even when performers have established themselves as part of a community, they can’t afford to withdraw into small social units if they hope to keep working. They have to create a social persona that is always on call and alert to new opportunities. Unfortunately, remaining on call creates additional burdens, as collaborators and coworkers feel they have free reign to talk business whenever they see you. When I asked Dina Facklis about the most frustrating part of her job as an improv teacher, director, and performer, she offered the following: I was directing for Second City, and I’ll never forget this: I just thought I was going to party with my friends, and this one guy cornered me by the keg. It was New Year’s Eve, and he was like, “Why didn’t I get a call back this year?” And I was like, “This is my holiday.” Sometimes people just see you and they see what you do instead of who you are.

Comedy is a unique cultural market because the performer must sell her personality and worldview in addition to selling her skills. Richard Barrett says that “it’s tough to hide anything onstage” because “they’re saying, ‘Here’s a story that happened about me,’ or, ‘Here’s a story about my family’; something that is personal to them in some fashion. Sometimes even with a joke, you can tell if it’s this person’s belief about a certain thing.” But what the testimony in this chapter shows is that it’s equally tough for comedians to hide when they’re offstage. The elision of person and product is hastened by the social demands of comedy work, in which

82

Chapter 2

social reputation impacts producers’ and bookers’ beliefs about performers’ employability. So there is no clear path to steady work in comedy, not just because the business has changed but also because big breaks hinge just as much on chance encounters in which strangers become fast friends as they do on joke telling and performance. No two success stories are the same in comedy, which throws the very meaning of success into question.

Succeeding at Not Failing

3

I think a successful career is one where I died and I was still doing comedy or still acting a few days before. Not quitting is a huge success. —Rebecca Delgado-Smith

MARC MARON IS a comedy icon and “a comic’s comic,” but in 2009, he was a

mess. Recently divorced and going through a lull in his career, Maron struggled with depression and was falling out of love with his life’s work. In an interview with National Public Radio, he explained that he had “lost a lot of hope for my comedy and everything else. . . . I had lost my ability to really kind of listen and enjoy the company of other people.”1 Out of desperation, and out of his garage, Maron started recording and distributing his podcast, WTF with Marc Maron. The podcast, which consists of Maron talking with his friends in comedy and show business about their problems, triumphs, relationships, and careers, revolutionized both podcasting and comedy. It averages 450,000 downloads per episode2 and is among the most foundational cultural reference points for comedy workers, who discuss their favorite WTF episodes the way they discuss their favorite movies. Maron says that WTF “brought him back to the world of the living, emotionally.”3 It also made him rich and turned him into an international celebrity. Myq Kaplan e-mailed Maron shortly after he landed his Independent Film Channel (IFC) television show, Maron, the cherry on top of the comedy empire that Maron had built in just over five years. Kaplan congratulated Maron and asked him whether he was happier on a day-to-day ba-

83

84

Chapter 3

sis. Maron’s reply was: “A little.” Even if Maron remains more charmingly downtrodden than most, it is not altogether shocking that someone who has made it would want more. It’s human nature, after all, to desire what you do not have, and very few of the comedy workers I interviewed told me that they were exactly where they wanted to be, regardless of their career stage. This phenomenon—getting some and wanting more—is not unique to comedy, of course. But comedy as a career is an ideal site for delving into some of the major themes in the study of work in the twenty-fi rst century, in which researchers are increasingly taken with the notion of the “boundaryless” career and the subjectivity of success. The study of labor and careers used to sit more comfortably in the realm of quantitative data and hypothesis testing. Researchers uncovered patterns in career choices and optimization based on the relationships between education and skills acquisition and easily observable outcomes such as income or job stability.4 Sociologists used ideas such as social and cultural capital to trace network effects on job opportunities and demonstrate the importance of who you know relative to what you know.5 Alternatively, researchers with a more psychological bent might have evaluated people’s personality types and offered findings that indicated which kinds of jobs or roles were best suited for people who were extroverts versus those who were introverts, for example. In all these cases, the evaluation of careers is undertaken by the researcher, who relies on stable and observable data (for example, earnings) to make objective claims that can be generalized across populations. Recently, the field has shifted toward a more subjective approach that emphasizes workers’ meaning-making processes and their own evaluations of work and careers. There are several reasons for this change. First, the new research is simply a better reflection of how everyday people think of their careers. We know that workers think about their jobs and arrive at ideas about success based on both objective and subjective measures,6 so it is only sensible that new studies reflect this reality. In addition, workers spanning several generations have come to recognize that their personal definitions of success do not necessarily match up with those of their peers. As a result, the idea of success itself is increasingly replaced with the

Succeeding at Not Failing

85

notion of satisfaction; a successful career is one in which the worker is satisfied with her experiences rather than one in which she has achieved a publicly recognizable and agreed-upon measure of success.7 Second, the shift in research approach reflects late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century economic changes that have upset traditional notions of what a career path is. Involuntary job loss, lateral job movement within and across organizations, and career interruptions are increasingly common, which has led researchers to theorize contemporary careers as “boundaryless.” Boundaryless careers “transcend organizational memberships and consist of sequences of experiences across both organizations and jobs.”8 In addition, they place a premium on an individual’s real and perceived marketability both within her current organization and in the eyes of other potential employers.9 Subjective self-concept and self-fashioning are key elements of life as a worker, and given that the product of performers is often themselves, the constructivist/boundaryless approach is useful for understanding their working lives. It might seem as though the turn toward constructivism and subjectivity is a cop out. If the new research frame is just a fancy way of saying that success is whatever you want it to be, and this discussion is totally subjective and idiosyncratic, how can we ever say anything sociologically meaningful about careers and achievement? But the best research on these topics reveals more than just what is going on inside respondents’ heads. Rather, it sketches the relationships between the values that respondents invoke and the structures that exert unspoken power and produce unchallenged assumptions. Success is a fluid idea for comedy workers, but its constitutive elements are mental toughness, the respect of one’s peers, and, above all, hard work. The value placed on hard work allows us to see how ideas about success and failure are related to larger social structures. Hard work must be a constant for comedy workers because their occupational lives are perilously uncertain. Comedy workers sense that they have little control over their employment status and financial future and have little understanding of why some people get paid and others remain broke. As Maron says, “You never know when success is going to happen. It’s not a meritocracy;

86

Chapter 3

so much of it is about some weird shit aligning that’s usually out of your control, and you catch your break. And a lot of people don’t ever catch it.”10 Not surprisingly, comedians often place themselves in opposition to “the suits” who dole out rewards. They are not especially interested, however, in organizing to challenge the system or in rejecting established comedy institutions. In other words, there is a sense of resignation about the institutional inequality of comedy work, and hard work becomes both gravity and delusion in their quest for success.

Boundaryless Careers and Hard Work When owner and comedy producer Rebecca Trent bought The Creek and The Cave, recently named the best independent stand-up comedy showcase in New York, it was not the comedy theater and clubhouse it is today. Ms. Trent, a proud, no-nonsense ambassador for the Creek and for independent comedy, did not move to New York to get into show business. She initially worked a variety of jobs, from personal shopper to technology consultant to general manager of a lingerie store. Rebecca fell into her first job in theater as an assistant director for a small production of A Christmas Carol. She saw the job as a sign and decided to pursue her passion more seriously. She joined an upstart theater company that had just moved to the multilevel venue that became The Creek and The Cave, and when the company disbanded, she scraped together her savings and went into debt to buy the space. Initially she had two business partners, one of whom ran the bar at the Creek while she took charge of the theater company. But both partnerships dissolved within a year and a half, and Rebecca assumed responsibility for everything under the Creek’s roof. The overwhelming responsibilities in combination with a litany of changes in Trent’s personal life sparked the Creek’s evolution. First, the dramatic theater became a music venue, but Trent realized that soundproofing, which the Creek desperately needed, was financially impossible. So she made a choice. At the end of the day, I decided to spend my time with the people that I wanted to break bread with. There is a significant lack of advocacy on the

Succeeding at Not Failing

87

part of comedians in the art world. They’re not considered artists. They’re not considered eligible. And I fi nd that incredibly offensive. I think of comedy as the most relevant art form that this country has to offer.

Although she is not a performer, Rebecca’s story is instructive in more ways than one. She is committed to comedy because she loves the relationships she has built. Her venue has all the street credibility she could hope for, but street credibility neither pays her bills nor pays the artists who grace the Creek’s stage. And her career as a producer, club owner, and comedy Svengali has never moved in a straight line. She never had a master plan, and other comedy workers suggest that even if she had, it wouldn’t have panned out. One of the ways performers try to shoulder this uncertainty is to gain representation in the form of agents and managers. As Ashley Brooke Roberts explains, getting a manager does not guarantee smooth sailing, but the working partnership helps lessen the burden of dealing with uncertainty and boundaryless work. I thought that getting a manager would mean almost immediate success, and it did not. But it does mean, like, feeling more secure about where I’m going— my trajectory. I’m sort of unfocused when it comes to my career. I’m not good at thinking, where do I want to be in ten years? It’s never been something that has interested me—doing that sort of planning for the future. So [my manager] does that. She’s like, “We should work toward this together.”

Although managers can help performers work toward goals and give advice about which opportunities to pursue, they rarely claim to have a master plan. Talent manager Jennie Church-Cooper, who manages dozens of performers and has seen hundreds more, reports, “I have never seen things move in a direct A to B path.” Performers agree. There’s no path. Especially now—that’s all gone. So it’s like, just figuring out what the hell to do. I don’t know. I try to figure it out every day. (Chris Laker, stand-up) There’s no road map to comedy. Nobody knows like, “Oh. Do this and do this and you’re going to be successful.” It’s just like you keep running on this road until somebody picks you out and takes you home with them. (Calvin Evans)

88

Chapter 3

A young comedian wants to get into these festivals, and then he wants to get seen, and he wants to get a manager, and then he wants to get into this, and he wants to get into that. And you know, all that stuff can happen. But how it happens finally is a bit of an intangible. It’s like, you get [gigs], and when you look back you say, “Oh. That’s how I got here?” It used to be a road. You get on The Tonight Show, and you do this, and you do that. But not anymore. (Jeff rey Joseph)

Not all respondents suggest that pathways simply do not exist. The old formula for stand-ups—start at open mics, get on a showcase, become a headliner, go on the road, get on television, and so on—is still out there, and the comedy-training-center model for sketch and improv players has been widely adopted. The point comedy workers make, though, is that very few people follow one path from start to finish because the industry is loaded with uncertainty and innovation. There is no consensus about what plan is best, but the lack of consensus does not lead to absolute discouragement and inertia. To the contrary, it produces an increased investment in hard work, even if the direction of the work isn’t entirely clear. “Hard work” is an ideologically loaded value, especially in the American context, in which it is indispensable to myths of meritocracy. MSNBC host and author Chris Hayes explains that this is because meritocracy needs principles of difference and mobility.11 Those who are best suited to the most difficult and important jobs deserve the most prestige and power, and they demonstrate their fitness and distinguish themselves through their labor rather than through their inheritance. For meritocracy to survive, those at the top must always be under threat from those beneath them, who will rightfully ascend if they work harder and smarter than the kings and queens of the hill. Although this is the meritocratic ideal, labor and rewards have never played out in such a way in the United States, where the kings and queens of the hill defend their position, consolidate their power, and create rules that prevent underprivileged people from ascending the hierarchy, no matter how hard they work.12 But in theory, hard work is the means through which we gain a sense of fairness in meritocratic systems, and usually, when we see a group exalting hard work as ideology, we take it as a signal that they are invested in a meritocratic myth.

Succeeding at Not Failing

89

Some respondents made their investment clear. Todd Glass told me, as he has told many others, “Wherever you are in your career, that’s exactly where you’re supposed to be.” Todd believes that we all have faults, and if you can’t recognize yours and overcome them, you will always blame someone else for your failures and never truly maximize your potential. Matt Selman was loath to offer career advice, but the guidance that he “always gave comedy writers is, well, ‘Just be great.’ Most people aren’t; I’m not. If you are exceptionally good you deserve to have a career, and no one will stop you.” There is, then, a strong current of meritocratic investment among some comedy workers, and these beliefs are not held exclusively by those who have race, class, and gender privileges. Across all industries, women are more likely to sustain decreased productivity and interruptions to their careers as family demands increase. Further, the expectation that women take on the majority of family labor remains, and this inequality is not viewed as a social problem.13 Rebecca Trent emphasizes the gendered dimensions of comedians’ commitment to hard work, and she knows it’s a disadvantage, but she affirms hard work as a value despite the fact that it has different costs for women. It’s difficult to maintain a healthy relationship. It’s difficult, certainly, to have children. It’s a harder profession to want to do full-time as a woman, to be a road dog, which is a lot of their ultimate goal. So God bless Nikki Glaser. God bless Amy Schumer. Those girls that are working their asses off and headlining nationally. . . . I’m so sick of creating separate categories for them. It’s insulting. Nikki Glaser works hard every goddamn day.

Although Trent acknowledges sexism, she invokes hard work as proof that these women are deserving of their stature. Her claim bolsters the meritocratic myth, even if she does not believe comedy is a meritocracy. In contrast, longtime Chicago stand-up Ken Sevara wholly rejects the notion that comedy is meritocratic. He warns that there’s no fairness in this. Comics always go, “Hey, that’s not fair; I didn’t get on that showcase!” If you’re looking for fair, you’re in the wrong business. It’s

90

Chapter 3

not always based on talent. A lot of it is based on politics. A lot of it’s based on hanging out at the clubs. A lot of it is based on whether the manager likes you. And every time you get turned down, you have to work harder and just keep coming at them.

Here, Ken emphasizes the politics and the networking requirements of professional comedy. But the richest piece of this quotation is Ken’s insistence on hard work not because it produces fairness, as the myth of meritocracy suggests, but because it is the only option in the face of unfairness. “You have to work harder and just keep coming at them,” he says. One of the reasons for doing this is that respondents believe hard work maximizes exposure. Calvin Evans explains: Man, it kind of is all on faith. You’ve just got to believe, like, “If I do as much as I can, somebody is going to notice me. . . . ” Let me work as many comedy clubs as I can. Let me take classes at Second City. Let me graduate. Let me have the tools needed so that when the opportunity comes I can showcase that.

Hard work is not a moral commitment; it is a practical strategy. I detailed the ways in which the boundaries between different genres of comedy have eroded over the past two decades, and Calvin’s description of his work ethic reveals how genre crossing is related to the value placed on hard work. Versatility is valued at least as much as specialization, and opportunities often appear out of nowhere, so comedy creators have to be ready to take advantage of them when they present themselves. Myq Kaplan gave two very specific examples of comics who were “ready with the work.” When a new medium caught fire, it seemed to fit their personalities and their material perfectly. Rob [Delaney] has been a comedian for many years. And he got on the Twitter thing, and now he’s still putting in the time and work of living and creating, but he got a gigantic bump of exposure. Same thing with Dane Cook—[he] had been doing comedy for a long time. Not only marketing but that marketing window, MySpace, opened, and he was ready with the work. . . . The work is the important thing.

Succeeding at Not Failing

91

Working hard as a means to ensure readiness is not the same as saying that every break you get is a matter of luck. The emergence of new platforms of communication and promotion isn’t luck. The pace and rate of turnover in the entertainment industry isn’t luck either; it is dictated by the demands of studios, the calendars of pilot season and comedy festivals, and the working capacity of talent agencies and managers. Big breaks are not random, but they are driven by many factors that are beyond the control of comedy creators. Effort is something they can control, and screenwriter Lee Eisenberg believes the capacity for hard work is a common thread that ties him to his peers. I think we work harder than pretty much everyone else. I always felt like that’s something you can control. Like, there’s all these things when you’re coming up and you’re trying to write. You can’t control how fast the agent’s going to read your script if you’re an unsigned writer. And you can’t control how funny people think you are. . . . When I think of the people both in comedy and outside of comedy that are really successful, I’d say, like, the most consistent part of them is hard work.

Part of what is at stake here is a self-concept that affirms that Lee deserves the benefits he has reaped. But this is also yet another example in which the idea of “funniness” is a secondary consideration, at best, in the trajectory of comedy workers. Like Matt Selman, another successful writer and producer, Lee does not believe he deserves his success because he is simply funnier than his competitors. He stops short of delving into the politics of taste making, but he recognizes that the fluidity of taste contributes to the uncertainty that shapes his work life. As I continued my conversation with Lee and his writing partner, Gene Stupnitsky, it became clear that this prioritization of hard work is not free of the class privilege and exploitation discussed earlier in the book. Lee: I do know writers that have been kind of treated unfairly or are doing unpaid work. But even when we were not particularly successful we never accounted for that. I think a lot of that is personality. Like, I think that we always kind of approached it a little bit more business minded. So the idea of

92

Chapter 3

doing work that we weren’t being acknowledged for or being paid for was just not something that we would have tolerated. Gene: We also did it for years before we actually became writers. We put in our time, and we worked for free. Lee: Yeah, but I think once you get to a certain level you can dictate your terms a little bit.

Again, we see the power of hard work as a value and a career strategy that privilege some at the expense of others. The work that Lee, Gene, Calvin, and Myq describe isn’t just hard; it’s also largely unpaid. Lee and Gene worked for years before they became professional writers. This is not at all uncommon in screenwriting, and people from disadvantaged class backgrounds with other financial obligations simply cannot put in the same amount of unpaid time during their twenties. Now that Lee and Gene are professionals who negotiated several lucrative development deals on the strength of their screenwriting credits, they are able to cite their hardworking, “business-minded” approach as a reason for their sustained viability in the industry. They may have been just as business minded at the beginning of their careers, but as workers, they were treated poorly. This raises the question of how comedy workers make the transition from unpaid laborers to professional comedy creators.

Getting Paid Although I have repeatedly argued for a more open-ended definition of what it means to be a comedy worker, what distinguishes the respondents I spoke with from everyone who has ever dabbled in comedy is that they are, or want to be, full-time comedy professionals. Comedy is their livelihood, and they care about getting paid. Bert Haas explains why this sense of professionalism is indispensable to clubs like Zanies, and he tries to impress it on the amateur comics about to take the stage for his showcase. A lot of comedians, when you’re first starting out you’re just so eager to get stage time you think that’s what the goal is: “I’m just going to become a great comedian.” No. Your goal is to get paid for this. If you’re not getting paid it’s

Succeeding at Not Failing

93

just a hobby. Which is fine. But this isn’t where you practice your hobby. Because the customers at Zanies are paying twenty, twenty-five, thirty dollars to watch the show. And they want to see a professional show. They’re demanding a professional show. So, your number-one goal: get paid.

Although pathways to a successful career and definitions of success may be dramatically different from performer to performer, pay standards and types of jobs for which comedy workers receive compensation are relatively stable. Myq Kaplan’s career comes closer than that of any of the other people I interviewed to following the traditional route to life as a professional stand-up. He entered comedy via open mics in Boston, developed enough material to start opening for bigger acts, and “got paid like fift y dollars to do an opening spot during the first year and a half.” Once he had a solid hour, he started contacting college booking agents, and the agent who took him on recommended the National Association for Campus Activities (NACA), which is a massive booking organization that has conferences every year. He performed at the NACA conference on a yearly basis beginning in 2007, and for the next several years, that one showcase would net him between twelve and twenty college spots at a couple thousand dollars per appearance. “From that point,” he says, “I felt like I have been a full-time comedian.” He moved to New York and was able to start headlining some clubs on the road. In 2009 he performed at the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal as a “New Face,” and he also appeared on television for the first time. Today, he does between twenty and thirty clubs and a handful of colleges each month. He is on the road as much as he is at home in New York, and he also goes to Los Angeles a few times a year to do shows, television spots, auditions, and podcasts. He is a stand-up, but he likes “having fingers in all the comedy pies.” This is a refrain I heard over and over again. As Jennie Church-Cooper tells her clients, “You have to be working on a million different things, and not be married to one.” Improv performers have to adopt this philosophy early in their careers, because they know they are unlikely to be paid for performing, even at the most prestigious venues. Eliza Skinner came up through the UCB system, eventually landing a weekly show at UCB Los Angeles, but she didn’t start getting paid regularly until she

94

Chapter 3

moved into stand-up. What changed her career, however, was the transition from performing to writing for late-night television. Sitcom writers can make between $150,000 and $200,000 per year on a network show and from $70,000 to $100,000 on cable. Novice writers on late-night television shows usually make between $3,000 and $4,000 per week with a thirteenweek commitment.14 Eliza says that everyone still does free shows from time to time unless they are a major headliner. But the important thing about her television credit is that it made it easier to get booked on all her shows, both improv and stand-up. Eliza notes that getting one writing job is not license to simply stop performing. Just because studio executives buy one treatment from you does not mean they will buy the next, especially if the pilot is not picked up or the movie never gets made. For this reason, early-career writers have to be mindful not to get too self-indulgent; they have to keep their mind on their money, as Bert suggests. Lee Eisenberg has an almost innate sense of the importance of writing something that will sell, mostly because the practice of writing is so difficult. I remember being in writers’ groups and people would be writing something just as a sample, and that just used to gall me. Because I think writing is so hard that the idea of writing something that can never get produced, or is unsellable because the idea’s too inaccessible, always seemed really silly. I was always kind of asking people on the business side, “Well, I have two comedy specs. And what else do I need?” [They’d say,] “Okay. You need a pilot.” Then I’d write a pilot. I wouldn’t write sketches if people said I needed a pilot. Again, just because there’s only so much creative bandwidth a person has. And particularly when you’re not getting paid. Even now, I’m getting paid, [but I still] think writing is really hard.

One point in Lee’s analysis worth highlighting is his honest admission of his own limited bandwidth and the fight against exhaustion. It might seem as though this challenge is unrelated to industry forces, because the struggle to express oneself and make art seems applicable to all forms of cultural production. But, to the contrary, Lee describes the challenge of continuous artistic creation with direct reference to the business side of the comedy world. It is hard to make comedy, and it is meaningful to the peo-

Succeeding at Not Failing

95

ple who produce it. Artists feel insulted when they are criticized or rejected by someone who does not share the same struggle to create. But Lee thinks it would be foolish to simply ignore “the suits” and keep making art for its own sake. He may not agree with every opinion that people on the business side have about his work, but he does respect their advice when it comes to getting paid. In this, he joins several creators who admit to relying on people on the business side to make their living. Nancy Perkins is one of the people responsible for identifying talent; her career in television casting includes serving as casting director for HBO’s The Newsroom and NBC’s Parks and Recreation. Nancy shared several insights into the world of casting and television production during the sitcom boom of the 1980s and 1990s. She told me there was an obsession with finding the next Roseanne or The Cosby Show, which led to intense pressure on and competition between studio executives. “And then a funny thing happened,” she said, which was if somebody did a set somewhere and really hit a home run, normally you would say, “Well, I don’t know if that person can act. I’m going to bring them in and have them screen test or something.” But because there was so much competition for them, people would say no [to the screen test]. Nobody is making him do that. So, people were making deals with people and making them tons of money with really no knowledge of whether they would be able to really act in the confi nes of doing a show. It was competitive, but I also think there was a lot of fear among the people that looked for those people that, you know, somebody was going to explode over here. And the obvious question would be, “Well, why didn’t you find them?” Or, “Why didn’t you sign them?” So in order to be competitive you really had to go to the comedy clubs all the time. You had to go to the tiny place downtown. You had to go to the funky clubs. Even though, as I said, looking back, you could see someone that was really funny and appealing and there was no guarantee that that would translate.

This was at an unprecedented time in comedy. Networks had a stranglehold on viewers, as cable was a novelty until the mid-1990s. The sitcom was the undisputed king of television programming because it cost less than a drama and was a more natural fit for syndication. Nancy’s de-

96

Chapter 3

scription of the competition to find the next big thing sounds like a dream for comedy workers. They knew where to go to be discovered—comedy clubs—and the opportunities they were afforded did not require additional years of training to develop their acting or screenwriting skills. But, as Nancy explains, such a heated industry environment ultimately harms everyone swept up in it, including the comedy creators who think of themselves as people committed to producing the best content no matter what the working conditions and terms of employment might be. I was happy to see the days of throwing money at whatever was shiny go away. Because inevitably what would then happen is if that particular show, comedian, [or] development was not successful, it was just written off, and you move on to the next one, and the person was sort of discouraged. [It was as though we said,] “You had your shot. We paid you a lot of money. It didn’t work. Now there’s someone new over there.” And so I think it’s to everyone’s benefit to get back to process. The end result is going to benefit from that. You know, the enemy of creativity is to just have people reacting out of fear of competition and fear of losing their job.

One of the key themes in Nancy’s description of her industry is that decisions are driven by industry pressures at least as much as they are by the creative talent of comedy workers. Today, comedy on television is more fragmented and less profitable. Executives are not expected to find the next Roseanne or Seinfeld, because the days of the network sitcom as the anchor of the television industry are gone. No doubt, many comedy creators remain frustrated by what they understand as risk-averse and unimaginative behavior by executives, but change is most definitely afoot. Perhaps the person most commonly associated with the paradigm shift in the comedy business is Louis CK. Louis was not the first to use improvements in digital technology to wrestle creative control away from production studios and build his own brand. But the 2010 appearance of Louis’s television show, Louie, on FX and the digital release of his wildly successful stand-up comedy special showed just how much power artists can have today and how important it is to stick with the process and resist the temptation to move on to the next shiny new act. Louis had been performing since the 1980s, and in 2006 he had a short run on HBO as the focal point

Succeeding at Not Failing

97

of his own show, Lucky Louie, which was panned by critics and abandoned by funders. When he was approached by FX president John Landgraf with another television offer, Louis was determined to do it his way. He never submitted a pitch of any kind to FX, never showed them a script, and never gave them any say in casting. Landgraf gave Louis $200,000 on blind faith, and Louis wrote, cast, and directed the show using that money and nothing more. He edited the footage himself on his MacBook and submitted something closer to a series of vignettes than a traditional three-act sitcom. The pilot ended with Louis’s dog dying, which audiences, according to Landgraf, absolutely hated. But when Landgraf gave Louis that feedback, he never for a second implied that Louis should change the show based on data from target groups. Louis told the New York Times that his interpretation of the information from Landgraf was: “Here’s the strongest data we got, and I as the network president am urging you to ignore it.”15 Louie earned critical acclaim, bolstered Louis’s brand, and opened the door to new development opportunities, such as his web series, Horace and Pete, which he initially sold directly to consumers via his website. Louis’s success has forced studio executives to acknowledge that audiences are not especially invested in the three-act-sitcom format, with joke quotas for every episode’s script and a season’s worth of episodes planned out right from the moment the pilot receives a green light.16 Even more threatening to the traditional sitcom model, Louis’s accomplishments demonstrate that comedy creators can produce sellable content without any input from studio executives. Louis experienced similar risk and triumph in the realm of live standup. The normal arrangement for stand-ups who have their sets aired on cable is that the cable company pays the performer up front, and the studio then handles production costs, advertising, and distribution. The performer rarely receives additional compensation on the back end, no matter how good the ratings are, how many DVDs are sold, or how many times the content is downloaded or streamed. On December 10, 2011, CK released his special, Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater, exclusively on his own website, louisck.net. He charged website visitors five dollars to download the special in its entirety and took no precautions to prevent those who downloaded the fi le from pirating it. Production and distribu-

98

Chapter 3

tion cost Louis $250,000 of his own money. Within two weeks of the special’s release, he had earned back over $1 million. He released a statement on his website thanking fans for their patronage and explaining where that $1 million would go. He shared that the fi rst $250,000 would go back to his pocket to cover production and the second $250,000 would be redistributed as bonuses for the staff who work for him on the web, on the road, and on television. He kept $220,000 for himself and dedicated the remaining $280,000 to charity.17 This profit allocation reinforced the brand and persona CK has built as an everyman who fans can support without wondering how much of their money ultimately lands in the pockets of studio executives who undermine artists’ freedom. It is important not to overstate the victories Louis has achieved, as several caveats apply to his story. First, CK already had a national following before he was offered the show on FX, and he had been selling out theaters for years before he took the risk of distributing his act through his website. FX certainly took a risk in handing over complete creative control, but they handed the reins to a comedy creator with a long track record and an established fan base. CK built his following based on the old model for comedy careers: starting with open mics, landing spots on television, and growing into a national headliner with lengthy tours and stand-up specials broadcast on cable television. Second, because of his experiences in both the old and new worlds of stand-up, CK does not cast of himself as a freedom fighter or enemy of the establishment. In another New York Times piece, he goes out of his way to paint television studios in a favorable light, describing them as outdated rather than malicious. He explains: I am not sticking it to “the Man.” There is no the Man in this story and if there were, he would be like a kindly old father. HBO gave me a half-hour comedy show, a series that I had complete control over, and then a full-hour comedy special. They have been nothing but great to me. But they don’t really want what I have anymore. Comedy specials are just like grist to the mill to them, so I thought it was time to try something else.18

Finally, although he has an unprecedented amount of control over Louie on FX, he is quick to dispel rumors that his deal is any different, con-

Succeeding at Not Failing

99

tractually speaking, from those of other creators. There is no contractual model for other artists to follow, because there is “nothing on paper that says they don’t bother me. Everything on paper says they can make me do everything they want, says I serve at their pleasure and they get approval over everything. But they’re not going to exercise it as long as things are going well.”19 For all these reasons—CK was an established act long before megastardom, he is not comfortable with politicizing his career, and he has left no contractual model for others to follow—Louis’s accomplishments do not guarantee similar success for his peers and early-career comedy creators. But they do constitute incontrovertible evidence that working conditions are simply different than they were a generation ago and that despite the considerable advantages large studios hold over comedy talent when it comes to marketing and distribution, the culture of comedy creation and self-promotion is changing from the bottom up. The manifesto for this revolution and the accompanying change in artists’ mind-set is Patton Oswalt’s now-famous keynote address at the Just for Laughs festival in 2012. Oswalt’s remarks, titled “Letter to Both Sides,”20 tie comedy creators’ personal ideas about success and failure to broader trends in the business of comedy. The first “side” Oswalt addresses is his side, the side of the artists, and he uses his personal story to critique the mind-set of his creative community by describing the two times he became “worthless” as a comedy worker. The first time was the day Johnny Carson did his final Tonight Show, because it was the beginning of the end of the blueprint Oswalt had used for his career until that point. The comics who had mentored him had told him “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.” Their advice is useless, for reasons detailed throughout this book. The second time Oswalt became worthless, he explained, was “pretty much every day for the last three years.” Oswalt continued by naming several of his film and television credits, describing the good fortune he has enjoyed since the late 1990s. “I’ve been lucky enough to be given specials on HBO, Comedy Central, and Showtime,” he said. “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.”

100

Chapter 3

In running down his achievements, Patton emphasized two key words that produced his daily, recurring “worthlessness”: lucky and given. So long as Oswalt thinks of himself as someone who is lucky to be given prestigious and lucrative jobs and awards, he renders himself obsolete. He admonishes himself, admitting, “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.” The new comedy creator, the creator who has value and who has her creative life in front of her, is she who does not need luck, studio approval, or, in Calvin Evans’s words, “someone to reach down and take [her] home with them.” After closing his comments to the first side, Oswalt addresses the second side: “the industry.” His message to studio executives is simple. He said, “You guys need to stop thinking like gatekeepers. You need to do it for the sake of your own survival.” The gates are “gone,” according to Oswalt, thanks to Louis CK, Marc Maron, the growth of UCB theaters, and the plethora of comedy personalities who made their way on YouTube and Twitter. What has changed, Oswalt says, is that comedy creators now have more choices than ever, and if studios try to fit performances and scripts into their outdated, paint-by-number sitcom and movie format, artists can walk away without the fear that they have just blown their one-and-only shot. Oswalt then held up the secret weapon that enables creators to fend for themselves: the iPhone. He proclaimed that “[our phones have] the same amount of cinematography, postediting, sound-editing, and broadcast capabilities as you have at your TV network.” Studios are not obsolete, but if they want to survive, they need to cooperate with creators by simply getting out of artists’ way. Several interviewees agreed with Oswalt about the direction the industry is headed. Daniel Kellison cited his business partner, Adam Carolla, as another example of someone who built his own audience through podcasting and became a brand despite the fact that he never really fit within the traditional bounds of comedy celebrity or the expectations of executives. Kellison went on to say that it is “a golden age in comedy for the performers and the producers. And I think we’re going to see a winnowing out of the middlemen. Of the people who rub their stink on comedy and ruin it.” Kellison took this belief to the extreme with the creation of JASH, a

Succeeding at Not Failing

101

digital entertainment platform he cofounded with Sarah Silverman, Michael Cera, Reggie Watts, and several other comedy producers. When he negotiated the contract for the production company, his agent thought it was so awful that their twenty-year partnership almost ended. Google and YouTube gave JASH millions of dollars in startup money, and in return, Kellison had to deliver an agreed-upon amount of content over the first couple of years. But the talent—Silverman, Cera, and company—was under no such obligation. “We had all these deliverables we had to do, but we said, ‘Talent has no deliverables.’ But I thought if they felt like they had homework to do they wouldn’t want to do it.” Kellison banked on comedy creators’ desire to make strings-free content without any contractual obligation, without any executives looking over their shoulders and giving them notes, though it came with the drawback of little potential for shortterm earnings. He felt that if he policed talent and pestered them about submitting their content, their motivation and the quality of their work would suffer. In JASH’s first year, Kellison actually had too much content, and the hardest part of the job proved to be making decisions about when and how to distribute it. Even in digital spaces, start-up money doesn’t last forever, and eventually advertising has to be a major revenue stream. YouTube comedychannel collectives such as JASH can earn ad revenue via the same process as individual YouTube-user channels. YouTube monetization is not based purely on how many views or subscribers a channel has; it is based on advertising revenue generated by the videos. Once a YouTube user enables her account for monetization, YouTube reviews the content to make sure it hasn’t violated any terms of service, including copyright infringement. After that test is passed, YouTube attaches ads to the video with the help of an algorithm that determines the frequency with which ads should be shown. Some of the factors considered in this process are the means by which the viewer found the video, the time of day, and how long the viewer is likely to watch ads without closing a given video. Finally, YouTube finds an available ad for the video in question, at which point the adenabled videos are competing against each other to see which one is most valuable to the advertiser based on popularity, shares, and other metrics.21 Facebook’s monetization process has been similar to YouTube’s for some

102

Chapter 3

time, and in October 2015, Twitter announced an expansion of its video advertising system that places it squarely in the same neighborhood. At the time of that announcement, Twitter stated it would take just 30 percent of the revenue generated by the ads, whereas Facebook and YouTube took 45 percent.22 The YouTube marketplace is competitive, and it can be costly to produce high-quality content as a do-it-yourselfer, so relying on digital spaces as a source of income is not a sound business strategy. But there are a few massive success stories, and although YouTube’s biggest comedy star, Jenna Marbles, doesn’t make quite what Louis CK does, she estimates her income at $350,000 per year.23 Additionally, product integration, rather than advertisements during breaks in a show or act, has emerged as an alternative with perks for the artists and the brands. Annie O’Rourke explains, “When Jimmy Kimmel does a Subway sponsorship it’s an integration. It’s a segment; it’s a bit; it’s funny.” So when Broad City creators Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer build an entire episode around Abbi’s drug-fueled hallucination and indulgence in Whole Foods, everyone wins. The supermarket attaches itself to Broad City as a trendy brand, the comedy creators get paid, and even if the audience feels as though they’re being bombarded with advertising, the experience feels like a self-aware and humorous critique of urban gentrification and the Whole Foods empire. The monetization of comedy becomes comic content. Despite these new trends in creator control and revenue and the hopeful, self-affirming rhetoric of Oswalt, Kellison, and countless others, rejection and disappointment remain defining features of comedy work. Comedians’ descriptions of these challenges and of the distance between disappointment and failure reveal their greatest strengths and weaknesses as cultural workers.

Failure and Success So much of comedy work is about gaining acceptance, either during a performance from the audience, offstage while hanging out with peers, or in the offices of a movie or television studio pitching ideas to executives. The

Succeeding at Not Failing

103

stories of acceptance are what we often hear and repeat, but of course they are counterbalanced by rejection. As mentioned earlier, it takes an almost pathological self-belief to pursue comedy, not only because of the long odds of financial success but also because during the journey you are likely to have your self-confidence as an artist and worker shaken on a weekly basis. So it’s not merely about the rejection; it’s also about the insult and the need to repair your ego. Kate James testifies: This industry, more than most jobs you can choose to pursue, has you constantly evaluating and doubting yourself. It’s about rejection. If you’re going to be someone who is pursuing the arts, you have to be game to hear, like, “No. No. No, thank you. No. No.”

Mike Lawrence agrees that the most challenging part of his job is “the failure and humiliation. The rejections accumulate. You have to try to mentally restore yourself, and it doesn’t always work.” The challenge for the people I interviewed and for someone trying to understand comedy work sociologically is to make meaning from rejection. The research focused on success and careers is helpful because it reminds us to look for meaning not only in the individual narratives but also in the institutions that train artists and produce and sell comedy. Recall Pat Dixon’s lament that “there [are] so many funny people, that being funny doesn’t mean anything.” On the one hand, this is a straightforward statement about supply and demand: there will always be more funny people than there are lucrative, stable jobs in comedy. On the other hand, “being funny doesn’t mean anything” can be read as a statement about the fluidity of funniness. An individual performer’s capacity to be funny or to be a good performer changes over the course of her career. Comedy workers do not all develop their skills at the same pace, and comedy institutions encourage and provide second chances. For example, as documented earlier, The Groundlings may encourage a performer to repeat a training module if the instructors see potential but not mastery. Even stand-up bookers, who do not charge performers for the privilege of stage and training time, are reluctant to close the door completely on someone who gives an unsatisfying performance. Richard Barrett explains:

104

Chapter 3

[I’m] realizing that this [is] a business, a career, an art form . . . that could be advanced. You might see someone five years down the road, and their act has changed considerably as they’ve grown and learned. So [I’m] learning that you don’t say “no” to someone; you form it in a “not yet” or some way that encourages. I try to be as encouraging as possible. There were a number of acts that when I first saw them they weren’t ready for us, but now they headline here.

Bert Haas made similar comments during his lecture before the amateur showcase at Zanies. If you did not get the part it simply means that you did not show the booker what he was looking for that night. It doesn’t mean you’re not funny. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It simply means you did not show the booker what he was looking for that night. Same booker, six months later, same set, he might book you because he’s looking for something different. So don’t take it personally. Keep showcasing.

Comedy workers know they have to be resilient if they plan to stay in the business for the long haul. The positive feedback they receive about their work and the socioemotional benefits of belonging to comedy communities certainly boost their spirits and give performers the fuel to persevere. But unexpectedly, even the rejection they have to swallow is often framed in a way that suggests that failure, although painful, is only temporary and that they shouldn’t take it personally. Even in a business in which rejection is the norm, there is no such thing as absolute rejection or absolute failure when it is defined by others. As long as a performer keeps trying and keeps creating comedy, she is the only one who can truly say that she is no good or that she should quit. A lot of people fail, and I haven’t failed yet. And every year I think to myself, “This is the best year of my career.” But it better not be. It’s so interesting, because people often make a conscious decision, whether they openly say it or not, to give up. And I haven’t yet, and I’m proud of that. (Mike Lawrence) I feel a certain amount of success right now. It’s not huge. But the fact that I’m still doing this is a sign of personal success. A lot of people quit. I think a suc-

Succeeding at Not Failing

105

cessful career is one where I died and I was still doing comedy or still acting a few days before. Not quitting is a huge success. (Rebecca Delgado-Smith) Success, I think, is a daily thing. If I have a good show, that feels successful. If I have a good scene, that’s successful. Career wise I feel like there’s never going to be enough. So as long as I’m happy with pushing for it, getting out there and auditioning and performing, I feel like that’s a success because I’m still working towards what I want. The moment I feel like I’m not going to succeed is when I don’t want to do it anymore. (Eugene Cordero, improv performer and actor)

All three of these excerpts highlight the power of the comedy worker as the one who defines success and failure. Rebecca and Eugene also insist that success is not simply about refusing to give up but also about constantly working hard on comedy. Those who do quit might be cast as people who were never really committed to comedy work in the first place. Patrick Rowland says, “If you’re like, ‘I’m going to do this, and if this doesn’t happen, then I don’t want to do it anymore,’ then you shouldn’t be doing it at all. You have a lot of people that, if it doesn’t work out, if they don’t make a Harold team or something like that, they’ll quit. And it’s like, ‘Well, you never really loved it.’” So, if you love it, you cannot measure the value of your career or the successes and failures by the roles you get or the gigs you book as a performer. Or, as Patton Oswalt would say, you cannot measure your career by something that was given to you by someone else. Another force that contributes to this culture of self-defined success and failure is the capacity for reinvention. It is important for comedy workers to keep performing, but several interviewees described the benefits of reinvention not only as part of bouncing back from rejection, but as reinvigoration when they achieve some success. Adam Cole-Kelly reflects: I think my personal definition for success is ever-changing. So while five years ago or seven years ago if you’d asked me or told me I would have been doing all of the things that I’d done, I would have been like, “I am killing it! When is my star going on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?” But now I’m not satisfied selling [screenplays and scripts]; I want to get things made.

106

Chapter 3

Kate James agrees with Adam, and she says, “I think anybody who does this for a living is constantly re-creating their goal.” She also explains that one of the reasons it’s important for comedy workers to reinvent themselves is that it seems as though everyone they meet has their own expectations for what comedy success should be, and performers need to be comfortable in their own skin rather than worrying about outsiders’ perceptions of the comedy world. What’s interesting about this industry is other people’s perceptions of what your goals should be. . . . I’ve had this conversation with lots of people, like, “Should I want that more? Should I be more disappointed that I’m not?” Or people who have a really hard time admitting that they want something. That self-preservation thing that they do: the justification of what we don’t have yet. But to me, I always wanted to make a living using my talents, and I do, and I’m so grateful for it. I feel like I’m cheating.

When interviewees frame success and failure in these terms—hard work, perseverance through rejection, self-determination, and reinvention—it is remarkably empowering. Kate and Adam recognize how far they have come since they began, and they feel lucky to be where they are, striving for more. But when the power to identify and acknowledge failure lies only with the performer herself, it can be dangerous. In a boundaryless, volatile business without collective bargaining power, health insurance, and other worker benefits, laborers who define success and failure for themselves can become delusional about their earning power and selfsufficiency. In addition, the capacity to reinvent oneself is not solely a tool for establishing new and worthy career goals; it can also be a byproduct of regret, profound disappointment, and a lack of satisfaction at work. Many comedy workers view bitterness as a symptom of misplaced priorities and a misunderstanding of the uncertainty and boundaryless nature of comedy work. Alex Berg explains: People who you meet who are bitter about where they are, or where they aren’t, are the people who really had a super-crystal-clear idea of where they should be. Some arbitrary goalpost. And then you’re not there. I don’t know, man. If you really like it, it shouldn’t matter whether or not you have a fuck-

Succeeding at Not Failing

107

ing house in the Hills, or, you know, if comedy has bought you a new Prius lately.

Not surprisingly, respondents who have been in the business upwards of twenty or thirty years have more to say about tragedy and disappointment in comedy work. Haas implores aspiring professionals to remember how much fun it was when you did it for free. Because you’ve all met them—the guys that have been doing this for twenty-five or thirty years—and they’re all bitter pricks. You don’t want to become that person. You want to keep that passion alive.

But even if veteran performers keep the flame alive and love the pleasure and community of comedy just as much as they did when they began, they can find themselves in dire straits when the end is near. When I asked Dobie Maxwell about the hardest part of his job, he said, The exit plan. There’s a very funny comedian named Danny Storts. He had a line which he used twenty years ago: “My retirement plan is a bullet.” And it was a funny joke at the time, but now I know guys who went through their forties and fift ies and sixties and can’t do anything else. I played sports; I wanted to be the next Cy Young [or] Nolan Ryan, and there’s only one or two spaces for that. How do you deal with that disappointment? Athletes, you have a shot in your twenties, [and then] you’re done. Comedians, we can bullshit the world into [our] fift ies or sixties.

Jason Kanter is in the middle of his career, but he has similar concerns, and he echoes the fear that runs through Dobie’s confession. I’m thirty-six years old, and I’ve been doing this for twelve years. I have a psychology degree, but I would need to go back to grad school. I don’t have that many marketable skills that I can do. I wonder if I did quit, you know, what I would have to do for the rest of my life? So, fear, I guess, is what I’m saying sort of keeps you in it. Not knowing what else to do. And also, when it comes down to it, I really do love it.

These comments complicate a romantic reading of comedy workers’ resilience. Again, the temptation to “bullshit the world” about one’s career

108

Chapter 3

prospects arises not only from the determination of comedy workers as a group but also from the nature of the comedy business. Men, in particular, can reach their prime as performers and screenwriters far later in life than they might in other industries. If they spend their twenties and midthirties sharpening their comedy skills instead of getting advanced degrees and gaining valuable work experience industries, their value in more traditional job markets declines. In addition, bookers, managers, and comedy schools tell performers that “no” really means “not yet.” Marc Maron speaks directly to this issue in a piece he wrote for Vanity Fair. Maron affirms the importance of networking and trumpets the hardworking credo described above. He says, “I’ve learned from talking to people over the last few years on my podcast [WTF with Marc Maron] that people who work hard find something.” But he also emphasizes how important it is for comedy workers not only to understand the odds against making it big but also to figure out what they are actually good at instead of just chasing stardom as a performer. As he puts it, “The ability to get away from your ego enough to recognize your limitations and to take action toward becoming a writer or working for a sketch group—that’s a big moment. The thing I now know is that the people who were aware and cognizant of the business ultimately found a little more peace of mind—a place to express partially, if not more so, their particular sense of humor.”24 Again, the structure of the business exploits early-career comedy workers, and the open-ended, taste-based nature of comedy careers inhibits more objective evaluations of comic talent. But Maron tells us that comedy workers need to shoulder some responsibility for the more troubling aspects of their working lives, and guarding against hubris is paramount. Comedy workers who strike it rich are no safer from danger. Matt Selman offers some advice. Here’s my advice for comedy writers: bank it and spank it [masturbate]. Which means: save your money. Bank it. Don’t live like you’re going to make this kind of money forever, because you’re not. You’re making all your money now, and then you’re going to be out on the street. “On the bread line,” as David Mamet said. You’ll be out on the bread line. And then, don’t get divorced. Spank it. If you’re a regular comedy writer you cannot afford to get di-

Succeeding at Not Failing

109

vorced. So don’t get married, or become so successful that you can afford to get divorced.

Selman’s advice is crude and funny, but it is no laughing matter. Writers are among the most fortunate comedy workers. Their membership organization, the Writers Guild, gives them collective bargaining power that others in the humor business sorely lack. Even if writers are unable to hold on to their jobs for more than one season of television, they can find work “punching up” other people’s scripts until they land on a new team, and if something they work on goes into syndication, they can keep collecting checks regardless of employment status. But tastes and fortunes change far too quickly to view current earning power as a guarantee of career longevity, and Selman recommends all comedy workers proceed with a little healthy anxiety about their livelihood. Comedians draw boundaries between those who work hard and those who do not, and hard work is a cultural value even if it is not heavily moralized. The system is not fair or meritocratic, so those who work the hardest and are the funniest are not guaranteed better results than are those with less talent and commitment. But hard work is practical, and it is tied to resilience in the face of rejection. Overall, these values emotionally preserve the workers, give them the sense that they belong to an honorable community, and add value to their unpaid labor. But they also contribute to the preservation of the labor system, as comedy workers are told that “no” is never forever and that they should work for the love of the art rather than for external rewards. Allowing someone else to define success for them is the death knell for artists, but it is hard not to let others’ opinions creep into self-evaluations, especially because in the entertainment industry, fame becomes part of the job for those who are most successful. Comedians often critique celebrities and the celebrity system as they endeavor to build reputations as relatable social observers who speak truth to power. Where their distaste for fame manifests most strongly is in their discussion of outsiders’ perceptions of their work and career. Kate James told me how frequently she has to politely deflect questions about when she will make it to Saturday Night Live. “I can’t tell you how many people have been like, ‘So when are

110

Chapter 3

you going to be on SNL?’” she says. “And I’m like, ‘I’m not. I’m not ever going to be on SNL. I’m not going to be Chris Farley.’” This is a common experience for the people interviewed in this book, and they locate the root of their vexation not only in casual fans’ ignorance about the wide range of experiences in the comedy business but also in society’s obsession with fame. Rebecca Sohn says that dealing with these expectations is the hardest part of her job. I basically play all day long, and I love my life. But then somebody tells me, “Can’t wait to see you on SNL!” There’s just such a disconnect. So when people say that, like, I know they mean well. They have no other frame of reference. And also we value fame to a disgustingly stupid degree. And we just don’t see any other kind of success. There’s incredible fame, and being in tabloids, and then there’s failure.

Steve Waltien adds, They go, “Oh, man! You know what you should do? You should do Saturday Night Live! Have you ever thought about that?” It’s like you meet somebody and you’re like, “What do you do?” And they say, “Oh, I’m an attorney.” And you’re like, “Hey, have you ever thought about that Supreme Court? Do you know anybody who’s on the Supreme Court?” Come on.

Becoming famous is an unrealistic career goal and a narrow measure of success. But building a following is essential to comedy workers’ livelihoods, and if they do their jobs well enough, they will be celebrated for it. The fame game is an exhilarating and rapidly changing dimension of the social life of comedy.

4

Celebrity in the Making Getting a laugh is being famous for a second. —Eugene Cordero

BETWEEN 2004 AND 2006, four different women—Barbara Bowman, Andrea

Constand, Beth Ferrier, and Tamara Green—publicly accused comedy legend Bill Cosby of sexual assault. Bowman had lined up multiple witnesses with similar stories. The details of each assault revealed a clear pattern of behavior, and the lawsuit was covered on the Today Show and in People magazine,1 but the case was barely a blip on the entertainment-news radar. Eight years later, the Cosby story gained new traction with the September 2014 publication of a Cosby biography by Mark Whitaker titled Bill Cosby: His Life and Times. Whitaker skimmed over the accusations, and he explained his actions by saying that he couldn’t independently validate any of the claims leveled against Cosby.2 The absence in the book of any serious treatment of Cosby’s transgressions was deemed a notable omission by the National Enquirer, although reviews in more respectable publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Washington Post, called little attention to the allegations and the way Whitaker treated the scandal. The accusations, and Cosby’s and Whitaker’s silence about them, were disturbing, but the controversy remained largely ignored by America’s most powerful media outlets. On October 16, 2014, rising stand-up star Hannibal Buress changed the tide of public opinion, media coverage, and Cosby’s career. Buress, who is African American, took time during his set at Trocadero Theater in Phila111

112

Chapter 4

delphia to fire back at Cosby for decades of pedantic, insulting, and deeply flawed criticism of “pathological” black culture. Bill Cosby has the fucking smuggest old-black-man public persona that I hate. [He mimics Cosby:] “Pull your pants up, black people, I was on TV in the eighties! I can talk down to you because I had a successful sitcom!” Yeah, but you raped women, Bill Cosby. So, [that] brings you down a couple notches. . . . I want to just at least make it weird for you to watch Cosby Show reruns. . . . I’ve done this bit onstage, and people don’t believe. People think I’m making it up. . . . That shit is upsetting. If you didn’t know about it, trust me. You leave here and Google “Bill Cosby rape.” It’s not funny. That shit has more results than “Hannibal Buress.”3

An audience member recorded Buress’s rant and posted it to YouTube on October 17. By October 20, the clip was a story on Buzzfeed, Gawker, Time, and a few other websites. Buress discussed the incident on The Howard Stern Show on October 21, and in an October 27 interview with The Daily Mail, Barbara Bowman declared that “it’s time to make a fuss.” Cosby canceled an October 30 appearance on The Queen Latifah Show, and on October 31, the Washington Post ran a story titled “Is the World Starting to Turn Against Bill Cosby?” At this point, the story was not yet a sensation on social media, but the tipping point came on November 10, when Cosby’s own website started a meme generator allowing site visitors to add their own captions to photos of Cosby from television and other performances. The ill-timed campaign resulted in hundreds of images of Cosby with silly facial expressions, framed by captions such as “My Two Favorite Things: Jell-O and Rape.” Mentions of “Bill Cosby” on Twitter, which had held steady at between 1,000 and 1,500 per day, jumped to 9,000 per day. On November 13, Bowman published a story in the Washington Post called “Bill Cosby Raped Me,” and Twitter was ablaze the following day with 10,000 Cosby tweets.4 The floodgates opened, and dozens of accusers came forward in the months that followed. Netflix canceled distribution of a previously recorded Cosby special, and colleges and universities rescinded honorary degrees and stripped the Cosby name from endowed professorships and scholarships. Cosby remained defiant, initially laugh-

Celebrity in the Making

113

ing off the accusations and continuing to schedule performances. But by the time New York Magazine released its devastating story about thirtyfive Cosby accusers, “I’m No Longer Afraid,” in July 2015, his legacy and lovable public image had been completely incinerated. There are two lenses through which we might look at Cosby’s downfall. First, without question, the most important element of this story is Cosby’s alleged history of sexual violence and the dozens of women who were traumatized by his attacks. Court documents indicate that Cosby paid several accusers to remain silent, and many of the women will never get the justice they deserve. The fact that Cosby preyed on women for decades and was never held to account speaks to the power of rape culture in America, where sexual assault against women is an epidemic enabled by systems of reporting and restitution that shame and blame victims for their plight.5 Second, the Buress/Cosby controversy was one in which racial politics, more specifically, the politics of respectability among black Americans, were dramatized for public audiences. Cosby’s insistence that black “culture” is the root cause of racial inequality is yet another example of the long-discredited argument that if blacks want to improve their lot, they should clean up their language, their music, and their family lives instead of complaining about racism. Buress challenges not only the logic of this argument—which is absurd, given that we live in a world in which the overlay of race and class segregation is worse than it was in the 1960s and mass incarceration has destroyed three generations of black American families—but also Cosby’s authority to act as preacher and spokesman. Cosby’s television show was beloved by people with a range of ethnic backgrounds, and it was powerful in that his depiction of bourgeois black life countered pernicious stereotypes about black families. But his stature as someone who was viewed as a voice for African Americans was enabled by his public chastising of less-fortunate blacks, which fit seamlessly into the political discourse of the Reagan-Bush era in the 1980s and early 1990s. Cosby should never have had the platform he was granted, not only because he has no legitimate expertise on the matters he was so quick to comment on but also because, as Buress points out, Cosby’s private behavior reveals how loathsome his sanctimonious performance of respectability politics truly is.

114

Chapter 4

As important the implications of the Cosby story are for race and gender politics, his saga is equally compelling for what it reveals about how fame is built, maintained, and destroyed. Cosby’s celebrity was constructed using traditional entertainment-industry machinery. He was a successful stand-up who transitioned to network television, and he amassed a fortune by selling out theaters, scoring massive television contracts, and cashing in on syndication. The fame and adoration that characterized Cosby’s public life was not just a product or an output of his work; the brand he built became a source, an input for his work and the heinous transgressions he perpetrated. His celebrity was a machine that enabled him to violate people under the guise of mentorship and to cover up his wrongdoing via bribery and fear. The machine broke because the rules of fame changed. Perhaps Cosby’s empire and public image would have crumbled without Buress’s viral YouTube clip or the Cosby-meme generator that ignited Twitter. The sequence of events that led to Cosby’s unraveling, however, could not have occurred without new tools and rules of celebrity. We all crave recognition and validation, and fame has always been fleeting. But in today’s “Instagram-or-itdidn’t-happen,” click-driven reality, the social and professional life of comedy requires constantly managing the digital demands of the job and the ephemerality of fame.

Sociology of Fame It is easy to point to the digital revolution and the explosion of social media as the inflection points in the meaning and experience of fame. But before Facebook was even invented, sociologist Joshua Gamson argued we had already lived through a massive transformation of the concept of fame that began in the 1950s. The television boom loosened the grip on the control of movie studios over audiences and fi lm stars. Talent agencies and public-relations firms became major players in the crafting of celebrities’ public personae, which allowed movie stars to deviate from the characters they were hired to play and become “proprietors of their own image.”6 These industry shifts accelerated what had been a slow-moving change in the nature of fame. Although recognition and financial rewards for art-

Celebrity in the Making

115

ists and entertainers are always dependent on mediators and collaborators, fame in the entertainment industry was more closely tied to talent and skill through the 1800s. But in the 1900s, the celebrity industry began creating fame through “artificial” production, as entertainers became stars not by virtue of talent alone but thanks to the resources mobilized on their behalf by television and movie studios, marketing agencies, and other organizations. As a result, the public’s fascination with celebrities grew, and following the lives of celebrities even when they were not performing became a popular form of entertainment. The demand of consumers for new ways to consume celebrities’ lives put more pressure on the entertainment industry to actively create celebrities rather than to allow the most talented entertainers to prove themselves and rise to the top. Of course, the entertainment industry has never been meritocratic, especially considering the racism and sexism that still prevent so many people from marginalized groups from gaining the recognition and rewards they deserve for their artistic virtuosity. But celebrity as an industry did not exist in the way we now know it until the mid-twentieth century. As the celebrity industry has grown economically, so too has access to the lives of the stars we follow. Even before the rise of Twitter, celebrity magazines and television shows covered every detail of stars’ romantic relationships, shopping habits, and family vacations. Gamson calls this the rise of “unreality,” as consumers began to pay less attention to their own social lives than to the twists and turns of stars’ careers. We are seduced not only by the power and beauty that famous people project and render accessible through consumption but also by the pleasure of sharing a world in which familiarity exists without responsibility.7 The investment in unreality is reciprocal, as celebrities and their representatives have much to gain from keeping this world spinning. Fans’ loyalty to and emotional investment in their favorite celebrities are powerful commercial forces, as consumers look to the stars to learn which brands of automobiles, clothing, and makeup are most valuable and glamorous. These shifts lead to panic about what they mean for the way we engage with the artists and entertainers who thrill and inspire us as well as for our own capacity for self-validation and happiness. No one has written about the pitfalls of celebrity culture more forcefully than Chris Rojek. In his

116

Chapter 4

2001 book, Celebrity, Rojek picks up on the unreality described by Gamson, warning that it frequently leads to what he calls “achievement famine,” a psychological condition that results from frustrated desires for material and romantic achievements of the sort that rich and famous people enjoy.8 For Rojek, this is a legitimate psychological illness that builds on itself. Once fans realize that they cannot achieve their wishes within the bounds of their ordinary lives, those lives become inadequate, and an insatiable desire to become famous replaces whatever goals and sources of pride used to provide motivation and happiness. Celebrity is equally depressing for stars themselves, who Rojek notes are frequent victims of fatigue or remorse about having become famous. Once celebrities have made it, they begin to experience “acclaim as a burden or sequence of diminishing returns.”9 For all these reasons, celebrity culture is not merely a silly distraction but an actual “attack” on both fans and celebrities that causes numerous psychological disorders.10 Neither Gamson nor Rojek anticipated the remarkable growth of social media when they were writing their books in 1994 and 2001, respectively. Two-thirds of adults who use the Internet are now Facebook members, including 86 percent of Internet users between 18 and 29 years old. Although less than 20 percent of Internet users were on Twitter in 2014, that figure includes 27 percent of 18–24 year olds.11 People under 30 are driving the uptick in social-media use, and importantly, they find different uses for each of the platforms they adopt. Facebook launched in 2004 as a private Internet community that required a college or university e-mail account to join. Connections on Facebook are called “friends,” and the original model was intended as a space in which people who had at least met each other in real life could stay connected and share photos, information, and private messages. Facebook has certainly become more public facing, especially with the advent of fan, group, and business pages, but Twitter was a more public service from its launch in 2006, because any Internet user can view tweets, regardless of whether that user is connected to the person who writes them. Twitter connections are described as “followers” and people you are “following” rather than “friends,” and a Twitter user can have her account followed by someone she does not follow back. For this reason, Twitter more closely mimics the traditional relationship be-

Celebrity in the Making

117

tween celebrities and the fans they will never meet in real life, and many users flock to Twitter specifically to gain access to famous people.12 Twitter is not, however, a simple digital reproduction of the traditional celebrity/fan relationship. The interactive capacities of Twitter add new dimensions to celebrity and fandom, which play out in ways that could not transpire in the material world. As with other forms of social media, Twitter provides space in which multiple audiences exist in the same social context,13 and celebrities who use Twitter with the guiding assumption that their followers are fans have to manage their audiences in different ways. Celebrities are viewed as inauthentic if they use Twitter primarily to give out information about professional appearances or events rather than to interact with fans to let followers get a glimpse of their personal lives.14 Public figures encourage their followers to tweet at them, and they reward this behavior both with traditional prizes (such as autographs, book giveaways, and concert tickets) and with the prospect of being retweeted and seen by hundreds of thousands more people. Famous people may also try to prevent damage to their brand via Twitter by addressing or preempting rumors about their professional or private lives. Nonfamous people’s quest for recognition through their affi liation with celebrities can be interpreted as a “parasocial” relationship, in which followers embrace the illusion of intimacy with those they idolize, or as a more active attempt at “microcelebrity,” in which nonfamous people attempt to build their own brand through social-media “likes,” follows, and affi liations. Psychologist Dara Greenwood points out that because bona fide celebrities share the same space as microcelebrities, the enterprise of microcelebrity becomes all the more enticing for those who practice it.15 In addition, the stigma of being a superfan (with an imagined relationship or level of intimacy with a celebrity) is eroded via Twitter, because what might otherwise be viewed as a pathetic parasocial relationship is played out in public and can be validated when the celebrity replies to her followers. Instagram has emerged as the latest tool for these processes, and its growth is, in large part, a product of the differences between Twitter and Facebook. At the time of this writing, Instagram was a distant third behind the other two platforms, as there are roughly 500 million tweets per

118

Chapter 4

day compared to only 70 million daily shares on Instagram. But Instagram now has over 300 million users each month and is growing more quickly than Twitter, having gained over 200 million users in 2014.16 These users are overwhelmingly young, and many of them use the service as an alternative to Facebook, on which their parents and other undesirables are likely to find them and invade their social-media lives. Instagram is more private and less visually cluttered than the other services, and its staple food is the photograph, unlike the text- and link-heavy spaces fi lled by Facebook and Twitter. Instagram capitalized on the ease with which photo editing and sharing could be executed on smartphones and has gradually added more capacity for communication through text via direct messages. The notion of “virality” is key to understanding the brave new world of communication and information sharing in the digital age. Although there is no consensus about exactly what it means for an article, image, video, or tweet to go viral, researchers who study virality generally talk about it in two ways. First, and most broadly, virality encapsulates “the process which gives any information item (picture, video, text, or any other audio-visualtextual artifact) the maximum exposure, relative to the potential audience, over a short duration, distributed by many nodes.”17 Those who prefer a narrower definition argue that what distinguishes something that has gone viral from other information items is that it diff uses “mostly person-to-person, rather than through broadcasts such as those from the New York Times or other mainstream popular news outlets.”18 The chance to go viral can be exciting for artists, who no longer need to rely on gatekeepers to get their creations to fans and consumers. Virality through social media can also improve transparency and, in theory, democracy when unsavory information that corporations and government agencies repress makes its way to the public through more populist means. In the case of Cosby’s undoing, the viral YouTube video of Buress’s joke actually prompted mainstream organizations to resuscitate the story of Cosby’s assaults, which galvanized the public as well as numerous corporations and organizations to punish Cosby for his offenses. But this person-to-person transmission invokes the idea of contagion, and the sense that virality can be hazardous to health is bolstered when we consider how easy it is for strangers and em-

Celebrity in the Making

119

ployers to gain access to sensitive information never intended for the public and unrelated to the pursuit of justice. As Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have come to redefine friendship, information sharing, and social connection, it is easy to fit the upsurge in social media into the narrative of fame as social epidemic. In summarizing the literature in this field, Greenwood explains that the ubiquity of platforms used to broadcast ourselves “may both reflect and fuel a societal shift toward individualistic values and a quest for fame.”19 Studies show that empathy among college students declines as use of self-oriented social media increases,20 and narcissistic tendencies and social-inclusion anxiety are associated with obsessing over one’s online profi le and a desire for fame.21 But Greenwood provides a more sympathetic reading of these trends, as she notes that social-media use reflects more common worries about being included and recognized and that the quest for fame can be just another way we cope with our own mortality.22 Although nobody has yet argued that social-media use is more psychologically beneficial than faceto-face communication, there are studies that show that social-media connections can strengthen relationships that already exist in the material world and aid in the construction of subcultural identities.23 Put differently, there is no evidence that makes a clear case that the proliferation of social media constitutes any sort of moral and ethical crisis.24 Once we remove the moral panic swirling around social media from the conversation, we can think more clearly about celebrity as practice. Graeme Turner gives us a broad framework for thinking about all of the things celebrity can be: “a genre of representation,” a “commodity traded by the promotions, publicity, and media industries that produce these representations,” and, finally, “a cultural formation that has a social function we can better understand.”25 It is something performed by famous people and nonfamous people, who, unlike in the past, are using many of the same tools as famous people to build their brands. I talked to the interviewees about how they perceive and practice celebrity as comedy workers to get a sense of whether the new practices just described are replacing the old and to pin down the place that fame has in their description of their work and their communities.

120

Chapter 4

Comedy and Fame Dave Chappelle told Late Night host David Letterman that he never actually quit Chappelle’s Show; he was just “seven years late for work.” The circumstances under which Chappelle left his critically acclaimed sketch show on Comedy Central were bizarre. He abruptly stopped showing up in the middle of the show’s third season in 2005, and he left the country to spend a few weeks in South Africa. The network reportedly offered Chappelle $50 million to return to the States and resume filming, but he declined. “There’s not too many people that don’t think I’m crazy,” Chappelle reflected. He admitted that he would love to have the money, which is “fuel for choices,” but “there are other things in my life that I did not purchase with money that are very valuable.”26 Those other things are, he claimed, a stable family life, artistic freedom and integrity, and, perhaps above all, happiness. Chappelle has become a cautionary tale about the excesses, stresses, and toxicity of fame. “You hear so many voices jockeying for position in your mind that you want to make sure that you hear your own voice,” he said. “So I figured, let me just cut myself off from everybody, take a minute and pull a Flintstone—stop a speeding car by using my bare feet as the brakes.”27 These issues can affect the lives and careers of anyone who works in cultural production, and the details of Chappelle’s struggles illustrate just how quickly these problems can morph into wild speculation and moral panic. When Chappelle’s whereabouts were discovered, rumors spread that he either had had a mental breakdown or was in the grips of a terrible drug addiction, neither of which was true. Such spectacular stereotypes and assumptions often find their way into conversations about the pathologies of famous people, but they are especially common when it comes to comedy superstars who become tragic figures. On first reading, Chappelle’s abrupt exit from public life seems like a classic example of the fame attack Rojek describes. Chappelle discussed how disruptive fame had become to his family life and how difficult it is to choose to avoid the spotlight for the sake of normalcy.28 One of the primary reasons Chappelle stepped away is that he believed the audience had come to see his characters, such as Tron (a drug dealer)

Celebrity in the Making

121

and Tyrone Biggums (a drug addict), on Chappelle’s Show not as explosions of stereotypes but as delightful embellishments of racial truths. During a 2006 appearance on Oprah, he described his horror when the white cameramen laughed during the filming of a sketch called “Racial Pixies.” He lamented, “I know the difference between people laughing with me and people laughing at me. And it was the first time I’d ever gotten a laugh that I was uncomfortable with.”29 That Chappelle was immediately labeled “crazy” when he walked away from his show is further testament to the power of and profitability of racism. Market logic demands that we maximize our earning potential because doing so supposedly maximizes happiness. But market logic is often intertwined with racism. It couldn’t be that Chappelle was seeing things clearly and acting rationally by walking away. To call out the “public secret” of racism and, more specifically, the profitability of pandering to white racist fantasies is to expose oneself to the charge of insanity.30 Presumably, only someone who is either clinically depressed or unstable would make the choice to leave so much money and adoration behind. We cannot overlook the way fame is influenced by inequality, racism, and sexism. The terms and conditions of fame are often oppressive for those who sit in disadvantaged positions in the white-supremacist patriarchy. Just as Chappelle’s story highlights the racial dimensions of celebrity, Alexis Wilkinson’s disdain for celebrity is driven by her experiences as the subject of the male gaze in our patriarchal and racist society. Wilkinson, who was the first black woman president of the Harvard Lampoon, told me: I want to be successful. I want to be able to make money doing the thing I love, which is writing. But I have no desire whatsoever to be well known. I mean, that’s part of the reason I don’t want to do performance. And also because being famous is so much tied to your appearance and your physicality, and at the end of the day I’m not willing to play that game. I look how I look. I sound how I sound. I’m not losing weight. I’m not gaining weight. I’m not wearing this thing that you want me to. I’m doing what I want to do.

There is much concern about the potential for fame to erode authenticity, but the way the damage occurs differs on a case-by-case basis. Fame

122

Chapter 4

and celebrity are not monolithic forces; they are social practices and processes. Alexis does not want to be a celebrity because she fears the social relations that famous people are forced to engage in would require her to change her work and public presentation. When we think of celebrity as an interactive phenomenon, we can better understand its power and potential for destruction. For instance, in another interview, Chappelle said that celebrity can destroy live comedy because the crowd’s preestablished reverence for the performer, regardless of how he performs on a given night, prevents sincere reactions to jokes during the show.31 Several interviewees identified this relational quality as one of fame’s defi ning characteristics. It is informed by power structures, and it gives performers power over the audience and those who book them for shows. Calvin Evans told me, “The thing about fame is that fame gives you opportunities. Like if you’re famous it puts you in a position where people are like, ‘Oh, people love this guy, let me put him in.’” And Mike Lawrence describes exactly the sort of paradox that Chappelle describes; where fame guarantees laughs, the laughs can lose their meaning. When you’re already getting claps and laughs because you don’t have to use your first minute as an establishing shock. You’re already established. You know? And I think that cuts both ways. I know there are a lot of comics that, once they get famous, they don’t do it anymore. You know? Jim Carrey. Eddie Murphy. It was like a means to an end. Maybe it wasn’t what they always wanted to do.

When Mike says this phenomenon “cuts both ways,” he means that although getting consistent laughs is in some ways the ultimate goal for performers, once they begin to take those laughs for granted, they can lose the motivation to get back onstage. Eliza Skinner presents another side of the conflict between fame and comedy for its own sake. She disapproves of the premium placed on fame by show bookers, club managers, and hosts, but despite her frustration, she describes the pressure to maintain these practices of celebrity and self-presentation. It seems that everyone in the industry plays by these rules. If she violates the norm, it can damage her relationship with the audience before her opening joke.

Celebrity in the Making

123

The worst part at any stand-up show is when you show up and the host is like, “What are your credits? Have you done anything? Are you famous for any reason?” Because on one hand, it’s like, “Why did you book me?” You should know who I am, and there should be some reason. I don’t want to justify myself right now. The audience will think I’m funny, and they’ll decide on that. I don’t need to tell them I’m on TV. But on the other hand, if everybody else on the show is doing that, and they do, and they should, then if I walk out and I’m like, “I’m just some girl,” the audience is like, “Yeah, we’re less ready to be impressed by you.”

Comedy requires a specific response—laughter—and, as detailed earlier, humor theory suggests that laughter can arise out of recognition or superiority. If the audience recognizes a comic instantly, it is a huge step in the direction of a successful performance. Chappelle got the sense that his majority-white audiences were laughing not only out of recognition but also out of superiority and, importantly, not because they actually understood his jokes and his critique. He has walked offstage in the middle of multiple shows, and in 2004, a crowd in Sacramento kept shouting Chappelle’s famous catchphrase, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” during a set, and he chastised his fans. You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you’re not smart enough to get what I’m doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid.32

But Chappelle couldn’t stay away for long, because he didn’t feel like himself. “The audience-comedian relationship is one of the more consistent relationships in my life,” he explained. “I started doing this at such a young age, that not doing it was alien.”33 Chappelle’s reframing of the audience/performer relationship imparts a sense of intimacy. He was not famous as a child, but performing for a crowd and being the subject of attention feels natural to him. Chappelle’s insights about his need to get back onstage despite his frustrations with fame suggest a favorable reading of attention-seeking as something that is a natural part of the job rather than a pollutant. Langan Kingsley agrees: “I don’t think most people I like and respect want to be famous. But I do think there’s an element of wanting to

124

Chapter 4

create something and have a response or an audience that appreciates it. Comedy is an art that by its very definition requires a response.” And once you understand that you need attention to do your job well and feel fulfi lled as a performer, it becomes much easier to think about fame and celebrity not only as job requirements but also as self-affirmation, as Abigoliah Schamaun does. I say I want to be famous, and I do. Every day in the mirror, I give myself that affirmation. It’s to be successful. To have people who follow my work, and appreciate it, and come out and see me do shows, and keep driving me to do more work. For me, fame would be to make a very comfortable living doing projects I want to do.

Although it might seem narcissistic for a performer to admit she wants to be famous, there is a sense that everyone wants to be famous in one way or another. During my interviews with comedy workers, one pattern that emerged was that they tended to qualify their desire for fame in some way rather than reject it as a career goal. For example, Steve Waltien says, “Who doesn’t want to be rich and famous?” But he understands “that stuff is, like, a little bit of a lottery. It can’t be the motivating force.” In other words, fame is a common goal, but it is unlikely to motivate comedy workers to keep creating. Calvin Evans has this same sense, and he shares pieces of his definition of fame with Abigoliah. He describes fame as “fleeting” and explains, “I would love to be famous, to be recognized for what I’m doing; that’s great. But I think long-term, just long-term, longevity is more important to me than fame.” I purposefully sought out a collection of comedy workers who are not yet famous, because their thoughtful discussion shows that fame and celebrity are part of comedy workers’ mental maps regardless of what career stage they have reached. They do not, as a group, abhor fame, but perhaps that is because few of them have ever truly experienced it. Brandall Cole appeared on BET’s Comic View in 2001. His performance did not turn him into a national celebrity, but it did make him famous in his neighborhood in Chicago. His neighbors, many of whom had known him for most of his life and seen him perform at the few black comedy clubs in Chicago, assumed he had struck it rich. But at the time Brandall’s Comic View appear-

Celebrity in the Making

125

ance aired, he could not afford his utility bill; he told me he was literally writing jokes with the lights off. The television appearance actually made him poorer than he already was, because it paid only $150, and performers were responsible for travel to and lodging in Los Angeles. “But I wanted that television spot,” he told me, because I wanted to show the world what I could do. I showed the world what I could do; they took me in. Now I’m famous, but I’m broke. Fame, it discouraged me from going to grocery stores. It went to a level with autographs, kids surrounding me; it was crazy. I didn’t too much care about that, but what I cared about was people judge you for what you have and what you don’t have. [They say,] “Why you driving that? You on TV!” I couldn’t afford a car, but you expect me to drive. I couldn’t afford to live in what you expect me to live in. I’m a struggling comic, but that TV, that idiot box, makes you think that, “You that dude! I see you every night!” It exposed me so hard. Reruns night after night, no residuals, no nothing. My fame, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t good enough to live up to that image. That was [at] nineteen, twenty years old. Now, at forty-one, I don’t give a damn.

Brandall’s lament encapsulates all the themes and conflicts swirling around celebrity and fame for professional comedy workers. His working conditions were poor, and after surveying the landscape of the industry, he made a choice to use the most widely accessible technological tool to raise his profi le. Brandall’s decision was motivated by a need for attention, by the performer’s natural desire to “show the world what [he] could do.” Audiences embraced him, and his following grew, but the attention he received led to expectations for practicing celebrity that he could not meet. In the early 2000s in West Side Chicago, Brandall was expected to dress and drive as though money was no object. Today, those expectations might include lively and engaging Twitter exchanges with fans and a carefully curated Instagram account that serves as visual proof that he’s living the good life. But practicing celebrity successfully does not guarantee a comfortable lifestyle. In many ways, the years when Brandall could fl ip on the television and catch reruns of himself on Comic View were the most successful of his career. But he was, in his words, “a struggling comedian” then, and his professional life looks much the same today.

126

Chapter 4

Just as the old model of comedy-career building has changed, the pathways to fame have multiplied and expanded. This may be a positive development for upstart comedy creators trying to catch someone’s eye, but Holly Laurent thinks fame has been devalued because so many people are famous for the wrong reasons. There was something a little bit more sacred about it. These few people, and they have a responsibility and all that. And now it’s like you can be famous for being, like, a total fucking ass. . . . I go back to, like, all these proverbs that my parents raised me on. Like, “A man’s reputation and a person’s name is all he has,” or whatever. So if fame comes my way, I sure hope it’s for something good and not, like, the Paris Hilton thing.

Another way interviewees qualify their desire for recognition is by articulating the difference between fame and the respect of their peers. Holly doesn’t seem to have much respect for Paris Hilton, although many of the people she looks up to in the sketch and improv scene will never even sniff the public recognition, adoration, and wealth that Hilton enjoyed at her peak. During our interview, Adam Cole-Kelly asked me whether I knew who Phil Rosenthal was. I replied that I did not, and he informed me that [Rosenthal] created Everybody Loves Raymond. Like, the guy couldn’t be more successful, but the average person doesn’t know who he is. I don’t think fame really exists in the capital F, famous-to-the-public way. I think being respected by your peers and having people who you admire professionally admire or respect you would be as much as you could hope for.

Perhaps many comedy creators want to have a following and want to be famous to the general public, but having the respect of their peers emerged as a much stronger value than did being a celebrity that everyone knows. It used to mean they’re making a lot of money; they’re on TV. It’s not the case. There’s a lot of people that are famous, [but] nobody knows who they are outside of this community. I remember when I did Armando [The Armando Diaz Experience], I did a scene with T. J. [Jagodowski]. I got home and I called my

Celebrity in the Making

127

mother and I’m like, “I did Armando! I did a scene with T. J.!” And she’s like, “Who’s that?” (Patrick Rowland) I don’t know where I’ll end up. But I like what Amy [Sedaris] does because it’s, like, she’s on TV, but she’s also doing what she wants to do. You know? And I feel like there’s a smaller group of people who know her, but that small group of people who do know her really respect her. And I would much rather that than I have private jets and all this stuff. I don’t really look at fame like that. I just want to be respected. (Matteo Lane) More than anything I want to be that guy that other comics just love. You know? The way that you know if [Doug] Stanhope’s in town, I know Todd Barry is sitting in the back watching. If people are in the vicinity and Chappelle comes to The [Comedy] Cellar, you know we’re there. (Tim Warner)

These comedians suggest that earning respect within the comedy communities they belong to is more important than appearing on the cover of People magazine. One of the important aspects of respondents’ descriptions of these famous people in comedy is that during our discussion, they felt comfortable referring to them by one name, be it first or last. Names like “Armando,” “T. J.,” and “Stanhope” probably do not mean much to casual comedy or pop-culture fans. But when the interviewees believe they are talking to someone who takes comedy seriously, they assume basic knowledge of their world, despite the fact that I failed Adam’s test on Phil Rosenthal. Tim and Matteo’s comments convey the weight of their respect and reverence for the Amy Sedaris–level stars of their galaxy, as we get the sense that they feel an unspoken obligation to go to shows and pay homage. The mutual respect between comics such as Stanhope and Barry is, to use Adam’s words, “all you can hope for,” because, as detailed above, celebrity has changed. “Reality TV shows and stuff—that has really skewed, I think, what fame is,” Abigoliah says. “I don’t know who said it, but someone said, ‘If you weren’t famous before 1995, you aren’t famous.’ Because now, anyone can be famous.” Comedians know that the number of tools for exposure has multiplied, but they don’t all use them or regard them in the same way.

128

Chapter 4

Internet Celebrity The great majority of the people I spoke with do not consider social-media platforms to be central determinants of career success, but almost everyone uses Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube regularly. Facebook was the least impactful, as it has little to do with content creation and was most frequently used as a place to store contact information and spread the word about upcoming performances. Twitter and YouTube are far more central to comedy labor today. Rob Delaney, whom I did not interview, is arguably the most famous Twitter comedy star, and he describes his turn to Twitter and his subsequent rise as a celebrity as the result of a few different factors. First, when Delaney joined Twitter in 2009, he joined out of desperation. He was barely making ends meet as a comedian and was sending joke packets to late-night television shows in the hopes of getting hired. Nobody wanted Delaney for writing jobs, so the jokes went unheard, and Twitter, which was already a few years old at that point, seemed like a good place to get an immediate response. Then, Delaney says, comedy writer Graham Linehan started retweeting his jokes with some regularity, and he started getting more live work and accumulating followers. From there, Delaney’s career exploded; he was named funniest person on Twitter by Comedy Central in 2012, and he landed a production deal with Amazon Prime and Great Britain’s Channel 4 for his sitcom, Catastrophe.34 In explaining his success, Delaney is quick to say that he doesn’t believe he is simply funnier than everyone else on Twitter. When asked why some comedians are better at Twitter than others, he offered: I follow [Jerry Seinfeld], and I laugh at some of his tweets. The thing is, he doesn’t have to be funny on Twitter. He’s a multimillionaire. Where’s the incentive? The argument could be made that he’s done perfectly well for himself, and so why bother tweeting? I’m sure if Jerry Seinfeld worked on it at all, he’d be amazing. He just doesn’t have to. For me, operating from a place literally of poverty, it was by necessity that I became good at Twitter.35

Yet again, we see affirmation of hard work as the primary strategy for dealing with the financial stresses and employment hazards of the comedy business. So, on one hand, the turn to Twitter isn’t simply a matter of

Celebrity in the Making

129

joke style or the generation gap; it’s a function of a given comedy worker’s power in the industry. On the other hand, Twitter has been around long enough that we can start to discern what makes for skillful Twitter practice and how comedy workers regard this form of social media as part of their jobs. Delaney says that Twitter doesn’t directly pay the bills. Stand-up does. And they function together: the more Twitter followers I have, the easier it is for me to sell tickets on the road. So I do pay attention to what I put on Twitter and put a little thought and effort and care into it. But you can’t throw up from laughing at a tweet. You can throw up from laughing at stand-up. So, in stand-up, I’m trying to get to much more visceral, deeper stuff.36

There is no more famous Twitter comedian than Delaney, but his mastery of Twitter is not the be-all and end-all of his career. Twitter and other social-media celebrity have not eclipsed or replaced all other forms of celebrity practice or comedy. Comedy creators both need to and want to have their hands in many different pies, as Myq Kaplan said in the preceding chapter. These various media complement and inform one another on both the business and creative sides of comedy work. Eliza Skinner, another prolific tweeter, explains how Twitter informs her live performance. Some comics don’t like to put jokes on Twitter. I love it; I feel like it’s, like, stage one of a joke. I get a little idea, I go to Twitter, I try to craft it into a simple thought that I can put there. Then, when I’m doing a stand-up show I can go through my Twitter feed and look at some of those jokes and think, “Can that be something more?” I’ll try it in front of an audience, and I’ll record my shows and hear what they laugh at and what they didn’t.

Rojo Perez feels similarly, as the character constraints of Twitter help him get straight to the point, even if he doesn’t use Twitter jokes onstage. Twitter helps him ask himself, “How do I just take the fat out? How do I just boil it down really quick to what I’m trying to say?” Of course, identifying the core of a given joke and writing it efficiently does not guarantee success when it is performed. As Matteo Lane explains, “My best friend here thinks Twitter is where jokes go to die, and I’m so much of a performer that Twitter does limit me in terms of how I express myself.” Plenty

130

Chapter 4

of the comedy creators I spoke with think Twitter is either a poor substitute for genuine comedy or a place where “comedy goes to die.” One of the reasons for this is that joke stealing on Twitter is rampant. There is no shortage of talented, successful comedians who have written and spoken about joke stealing and even admitted to doing it themselves. Patton Oswalt is among them, and in a blog post about joke thievery, he makes every effort to communicate that even though joke stealing is a fact of every stand-up comic’s life, it does not mean comedy creators simply accept it as part of the job.37 Joke stealing is damaging to comedy creators’ careers for a couple of reasons. First, one of the drivers of demand for live comedy is that performers release material that is new to the audience. Unlike music concerts, at which fans often expect to hear their favorite singer’s greatest hits, the element of surprise is part of the thrill of a live comedy show, and live performance suffers if a stolen joke has made the rounds via social media. Second, when older, more established comics steal jokes from younger performers and broadcast them to wider audiences, the established comics’ credibility as celebrities gives them advantages over amateur comics when it comes to public disputes over whose joke it is. In July 2015, freelance writer Olga Lexell reported that multiple users had stolen a joke she had written on Twitter, and the service responded by expanding its copyright policy and enforcement to deal with the problem. But that did not prevent comedy workers from stealing Twitter jokes and using them elsewhere, and just days after Twitter announced its policy change, amateur comedian Robert Kaseberg sued Conan O’Brien for performing a joke from Kaseberg’s Twitter feed during his opening monologue.38 In addition to Twitter being a poor substitute for performance and a medium highly susceptible to joke stealing, many comedy workers disdain the service because they view it primarily as a tool for shameless networking and self-promotion. I have repeatedly emphasized how important networking is for comedy and that community-building is one of the defining features and chief perks of comedy work. But the character of that community-building matters; comedy workers value networking not only because they understand it as a necessary evil but also because they value the genuine friendship and caretaking that is woven into working with their

Celebrity in the Making

131

friends. In contrast, spreading the word and making connections in a callous way is widely devalued. As Mark Normand says, “Any good comic hates promoting. Any guy who’s good at promoting is a shitty comic.” In part, the contempt for self-promotion is fueled by an underlying notion that people who pursue creative careers for the love of the art can and should dedicate themselves fully to the creative process. Nobody who enjoys self-promotion has the soul of an artist, the logic goes. Eugene Cordero would much rather focus on performance and allow his representation to do the work of raising his profile via social media, because taking on that role himself feels unnatural. I feel like my representation works hard in the right way for me, because they understand that I’m coming more from this honest place. It’s not about getting as many jokes on Twitter as I can or as many funny pictures on Instagram as I can. They kind of leave me alone with that stuff. . . That’s an aspect of the business that I feel like is too much, and that takes away from the fun of comedy for me. I don’t mind the business side, but that feels forced. Like a forced personality.

Eugene suggests that practicing comedy and celebrity through Twitter and Instagram is not a reflection of who he is. He also reveals that he does not especially mind the business side of comedy, so his stance is not nearly as inflexible as comedy workers who believe that any and all selfpromotion detracts from their jobs. The problem is that he feels dishonest and alienated from himself when he interacts with followers through social media. For many comics, this brave new world requires an adjustment period to clarify the difference between followers and friends. As Pat Dixon says, “The top 3 percent of people who like you will communicate back and forth with you. And you think you’re having a friendship or something with these people, and then you realize, ‘Oh no, this is what having a fan is now.’” But even when comedy creators begin feeling comfortable with the way they practice celebrity and build a following via social media, it can be a dangerous distortion. Henry Phillips warns, “Don’t make the mistake and think that Twitter followers are an accurate representation of how your career is going. Don’t let accumulating followers

132

Chapter 4

cloud out the goals you should actually be pursuing as a comedian.” What matters, Henry says, is how funny you are and how strong your performance is, not how engaging your social media presence is. The problem with Henry’s analysis is that social media has become a primary site and genre of comedy performance. There is an art and science to Twitter jokes and Instagram captions, and for a select few, it has become profitable. When I asked Matt Selman about these trends, he could barely believe how much this dimension of the comedy business had grown, and he seemed worried about what it might mean for the future of comedy. In the nineties, the money was concentrated. Now the money is like, “Blahhhhhh!” [He spreads his arms apart to indicate that money is more spread out.] I just went for a run with this friend of mine. He’s a funny writer and comic and actor. And, like, his thing is just Vines. Literally. I was helping him write Vines. Six-second things [for] which he has, like, three hundred thousand Vine followers. And I mean, it seems like something out of a shitty, postapocalyptic future movie, that people create six-second TV shows. Right? It seems like a bad future movie, yet it happened. He makes money off these things.

The entertainment industry is in the midst of a massive transition, and good old-fashioned sitcoms have been replaced by “six-second TV shows.” Talented people spend time, money, and creative energy making bite-sized content that they throw out into the vast universe of the Internet, hoping that someone finds it and likes their work enough to pay for more. In this sense, the future is already here. “It happened,” as Matt says. But in another sense, nothing has been decided. We don’t know how long this “postapocalyptic future” will last, we don’t know how the financial rewards system will evolve, and we don’t know what will become of the people who get famous and earn a healthy living through digital technology and social media. Mickey Meyer cofounded JASH after massive success at Maker Studios, at which he produced several legendary YouTube series, including “Epic Rap Battles of History.” There is nobody more skilled and invested in the YouTube comedy revolution than Mickey, but even he cannot predict the fate of YouTube comedy celebrities. He reflects:

Celebrity in the Making

133

Jenna Marbles, she’s one of the biggest people on the Internet right now and is a comedian by all means. She uploads one video every Wednesday. She has, I think, probably, like, nine million subscribers now, and she’ll get a million views–plus for a video. And I guarantee she is making a comfortable living doing just that. She doesn’t need to do a movie. She doesn’t need to do a TV show. She doesn’t need to go out and to perform in clubs. It’s on her if she actually wants to do those things or not. If she feels, like, a need to evolve as a comedian, or she may not. She may continue that same voice and always have that same following. That’s what’s interesting about the Internet. Like, it hasn’t happened fully yet where people build this Internet fame. Does it go away? Do people get tired of this person after a while, or do they just stay there? I mean, some of these YouTube channels have maintained a following longer than talk shows.

Most of the comedy creators I spoke with use YouTube primarily as a repository for their recorded performances and a place where they can freely distribute digital content. It is also a resource that allows them to send material to potential employers and collaborators at a moment’s notice. But many of the most successful YouTube celebrities use the site to facilitate more substantial social interactions with their fans and let their personalities shine through. For Jenna Marbles and others, YouTube serves many of the same purposes as the other social-media platforms. Mickey’s thoughts about Jenna Marbles and the digital turn push back against Henry Phillips’s insistence that social-media success not an accurate reflection of the state of one’s career. For Jenna, YouTube is a comedy career. Although Henry—and Rob Delaney, for that matter—suggest that building a following on social media is most valuable as a complement to comedy creators’ other endeavors, Jenna doesn’t need live performances, fi lm, or television to capitalize financially or raise her profi le as a comedian. Two sources of uncertainty may change Jenna’s career path. First, she may decide that she wants to take on new challenges and explore new characters with her followers, and second, we may learn that the following she has built is not quite as loyal as those who watched The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson religiously for thirty years. Although we don’t have enough information to predict exactly how Internet comedy-celebrity ca-

134

Chapter 4

reers will progress, Mickey has indispensable advice for aspiring Internet celebrities in our current moment. When I asked him what qualities are essential for building an Internet and social-media following, he replied, “They’ve got to be funny, they have to be consistent, they have to engage, and then they have to collaborate.” He went on to describe the importance of a couple of these traits in great detail, beginning with consistency. You’re a huge Parks and Rec fan. You are DVRing Parks and Rec, and you’re expecting it every Thursday. So if you don’t get it, then you almost feel, you know, an anger towards the show. In this case [on YouTube or social media], it’s a person. So it’s almost like a friend saying, “Hey. We’re going to meet at this restaurant every Friday at 5:00.” And if they don’t show up, you’re like, “What the? Why would they not fucking show? Fine! I’m not going to be here next week!” You know? It’s a relationship like that. It’s a much more intimate relationship with the audience member.

Turning to the subject of collaboration, Mickey explains: Collaborative, that’s how you build your audience, right? It’s like, if you have a million subscribers and I have ten thousand subscribers, if I go on your channel, you [might] say, “Hey, go check out Mickey. He’s got a channel too.” If you’re not collaborative, if you’re not able to work with other people, then it’s really hard for other people to discover your content. For me, if I’m not collaborative, I’m relying upon those ten thousand people to (a) always be watching my content and then (b) always be sharing my content for other people to find it.

Mickey’s emphasis on consistency in social media and digital distribution reflects not only the shared value of hard work but also the level of intimacy that is introduced by digital practices of celebrity. Those who disdain the rise of social media and digital technology may frame these new trends as the triumph of narcissism and alienation, but Mickey describes how these tools actually place a greater emphasis on interpersonal engagement for those who are professionally invested in them. Mickey’s description of collaboration is not as loaded with the language of caretaking as the testimonies that appear in earlier chapters; it is closer to a practical strategy than a communal commitment. It does, however, challenge tra-

Celebrity in the Making

135

ditional understandings of virality. When something goes viral we often perceive it as a random and unpredictable phenomenon. But the potential to go viral or to make exponential leaps in followers and fame is greatly enhanced by one’s willingness to collaborate. Mickey’s guidelines once again destroy the myth that comedians are distinguished by their social ineptitude. Celebrity practice is another negotiation of the social demands of the job and is a necessity for navigating a job market with no clear path to financial security.

Fame and the Future On balance, the star system and our collective obsession with celebrity seems to truly benefit a very small number of comedy workers. But the winner-take-all celebrity model continues to be a crucial driver of fi lm and television production, especially in a changing landscape in which movie studios have less cash on hand for lavish production and are increasingly reluctant to spend top dollar on actors without a proven track record of ticket sales.39 Film and television sit atop the comedy labor pyramid, and beneath them, clubs and theaters have to work through many of the same issues when it comes to filling their seats and turning a profit. Bert Haas argues that celebrity culture harms both his business and the overall health of comedy. He described what it was like when he fi rst began managing his club, saying, It used to be you ran a comedy nightclub. And what a nightclub does is draws people to itself. So, people would come to Zanies because it was Zanies. And my obligation as the booker was to provide them with a great show. Not necessarily someone that they would recognize. It didn’t matter if they knew the person. In fact, I would say if you asked 95 percent of the people who they saw the last time they were at Zanies they would not remember. But they will tell you they had a good time, and that’s all that matters. And what this does, it allows me to bring in individuals who are very talented but don’t necessarily have a lot of visibility. So I can bring in cutting-edge comedians. I can bring in people that you may not have heard of that I know are funny. In the last ten years there’s been a movement to a larger and larger venue. Our belief is that

136

Chapter 4

the ideal comedy club should not be bigger than two hundred fift y seats. But there’s been a movement towards larger and larger clubs. Three hundred seats. Five hundred seats. There’s clubs in Florida that are seven hundred seats. Those are not comedy clubs, those are venues. Again, this is my opinion. In order to fi ll those seats you have to have marquee acts. People don’t go to your club. They go to your venue. What did you do last week? [They’ll say,] “I went to see so-and-so.” Not “I went to Zanies,” or “I went to a comedy club.” It’s, “I went to see Craig Robinson.”

In Bert’s opinion, bigger stars detract from the character of the club, distort the audience’s expectations, and restrict the booker’s freedom to build the lineup as he sees fit. Recent statements from mega-agents such as APA’s Mike Berkowitz and Nick Nucifaro support much of Bert’s analysis, with one major difference: Zanies and its peers may face new challenges, but comedy as a whole is not in crisis. There has unquestionably been a move away from smaller clubs toward multiuse theaters with 650 to 2,500 seats. Although few people can sell out a 20,000-seat arena, Berkowitz estimates that there are about a hundred comics who can sell out a theater right now. That is more than ten times the number of comics who could do such a thing in the early 2000s.40 Comedy is growing. There are fewer shows that truly carry the title of “must-see TV,” but there are more acclaimed television shows, web series, and thriving comedy venues than ever before. Comedy creators have more platforms for creating and distributing content, including their public personae. Social media and the digital revolution have weakened the power of large television and movie studios, but at this moment, it appears that these new technologies will force the old institutions to evolve and collaborate rather than usher the dinosaurs toward extinction. Importantly, economic growth in comedy and other businesses has never walked in lockstep with social justice and equity. The seemingly infinite possibilities on the digital horizon will never be realized unless comedy workers recognize the poison in their water: class privilege, patriarchy, and racism.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

5

If a white male improviser walks onstage the audience sees an actor. If a woman walks onstage the audience sees a woman. And if a black person walks onstage the audience sees a black person. I’ve got a double whammy. —Ali Barthwell

IN FEBRUARY OF 2014, Buzzfeed editor Peter Lauria interviewed comedy legend

Jerry Seinfeld.1 The conversation was playful and wide ranging, but Lauria drew the comedian’s ire when he asked Seinfeld why the guests on his hit digital series, “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” were almost entirely white and male. There is a history here, as Seinfeld and his producers came under fire decades ago for the absence of nonwhites on Seinfeld, the most successful sitcom of its time. Jerry began his answer by mocking Lauria, highlighting and trivializing the fact that the studio audience was mostly white, and saying, “This pisses me off.” Lauria followed up by referencing an episode of “Comedians in Cars” in which Seinfeld asked Tina Fey about her experiences as a woman in comedy. Seinfeld seemed thoughtful and reflective about the episode with Fey. He certainly knows that the underrepresentation of women and nonwhites is a frequent topic of conversation among comedy fans and workers, but his ultimate answer to Lauria’s question is symptomatic of the systemic inequalities built into comedy work. Seinfeld rhetorically asks: People think it’s the census or something? This has got to represent the actual pie chart of America? Who cares? Funny is the world that I live in. You’re funny? I’m interested. You’re not funny? I’m not interested. I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that, but everyone else is like, calculating, “Is this the exact right mix?” To me, it’s anticomedy.2 137

138

Chapter 5

There is plenty to unpack in Seinfeld’s dismissal of race and gender issues in comedy, but we might start by simply identifying this explanation as a classic example of straight-white-male privilege. No doubt, Seinfeld thinks he is being honorable, fair, and gender- and color-blind when he asserts, “I have no interest in gender or race.” But the option to ignore these issues is available only to those whose bodies are considered “normal.” Only those with race and gender privilege can move through the spaces of work and play in their lives without managing the surveillance, stigma, and stereotypes cast upon them by strangers, friends, and coworkers. More troublingly, Seinfeld’s words illustrate how the very definition of comedy is often written through the negation of race and gender. He cannot tell us what comedy is without telling us what it is not (race and gender concerns). His conception of comedy requires the repeated erasure of race and gender, not only through the exclusion of deviant bodies from sites of performance, such as his sitcom and digital series, but also in the silencing and public ridicule of those who dare speak offstage about racism and sexism. Again, the social and professional worlds of comedy are mutually constitutive. All comedy workers, regardless of race and gender location, are impacted by these dynamics, and they prioritize community-building and caretaking to negotiate these challenges. But this chapter shows that although white men are certainly subject to the unfairness of the comedy business, the challenges faced by women and nonwhites are of a different kind. Managing racism and sexism transforms the work and social lives of comedians who are “othered”; the performative and professional choices they make are dramatically different from their white-male counterparts.

Understanding Racism and Sexism The topic of “white privilege” is now central to popular discussion about race, but it is frequently misunderstood. Rather than merely consisting of material advantages that whites have accumulated as a result of institutionalized racism, white privilege, as explained by Peggy McIntosh, is a way of understanding and moving through the world. It is comprised of “unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was ‘meant’ to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisi-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

139

ble weightless backpack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.”3 This lack of awareness, bravely described by McIntosh and exemplified by Seinfeld’s ideas about diversity, is what makes the concept so useful and salient today. The myth of postracialism suff uses public discussions about racial inequality, and each time there is a new episode of heinous race-based violence or injustice, it is met by too many Americans with naiveté and surprise, as if the country’s shame and mistakes lay only in the past. But insisting that white privilege exists doesn’t fully explain what racism is or how it operates. A more comprehensive description of racism has three key dimensions. First, there are social-psychological considerations. Researchers such as Mahzarin Banaji and Jennifer Eberhardt have demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that biases run rampant and that the tendency to associate nonwhites with deviance or threat plagues American society. The power of implicit bias and stereotyping can show itself in split-second decisions, as when police officers must decide whether someone is dangerous enough to be fired upon. It is also revealed through long, drawn-out decisions, as when nonwhites just don’t seem to be the right “fit” for job openings. These prejudices can exist separate from or alongside explicit beliefs about the inferiority of racial others and the rightfulness of one’s own group position in a racial hierarchy.4 Second, racism is institutionally rooted and sustained. Theories of institutional racism emphasize the ways that institutions and organizations continue to produce racial inequality and white supremacy even when they are governed by rules that are racially neutral. Removing “bad people” with racist biases and beliefs will not eradicate damage to nonwhites produced by our educational, banking, criminal-justice, and health-care systems. Classic racial prejudice decreased through much of the twentieth century, but empirical measures of racial progress did not mirror these beliefs because the government (and much of the citizenry) took a handsoff approach to ameliorating institutional inequality for the last quarter of that century. The results were devastating. Despite the fact that criminaljustice laws and sentencing guidelines are supposedly color-blind, black and Hispanic communities were targeted and devastated by the war on drugs. Black and brown people now comprise roughly two-thirds of Amer-

140

Chapter 5

ica’s 2.4 million prisoners and are disproportionately targets of police harassment and violence. Similarly, banks’ lending and mortgage practices are supposed to be racially neutral, but the overlay of race- and classbased segregation is more severe now than it was forty years ago. When the housing crisis hit in 2008, blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately victimized, and the wealth gap between whites and these two groups was exacerbated. The third and final element required for a firm grip on contemporary racism is intersectionality. Race does not do its work alone; it combines and intersects with other social forces, such as class and gender, to exert its power. Importantly, intersectionality does not mean considering race, class, and gender as complements to each other. Sociologists William Julius Wilson and Patrick Sharkey insist that black urban poverty cannot be calculated by merely adding or multiplying race disadvantage and class disadvantage. They say instead that black urban poverty is poverty of a totally different kind, because the overlay of class segregation and race segregation produces unique forms of social isolation. In addition to the empirical ramifications of intersectionality, there are cultural ramifications, as intersectionality actually changes the meanings we draw from racial terms. Barack and Michelle Obama both self-identify as, and are understood to be, black. But the specific racist stereotypes that each battles against—the un-American Islamic extremist and the “angry black woman”—cannot be grasped solely through phenotypic understandings of blackness. The racist image of Barack as an un-American Islamic extremist is intelligible only when race is influenced by nationality and religion, and the “angry black woman” trope attached to Michelle relies on racist intersections of race, class, and gender. Clearly, then, sexism must be intersectional as well, and the other two approaches to racism—institutional and social-psychological—are equally useful for understanding male supremacy. Institutional sexism is often embedded in theories of patriarchy, a term that describes societies that are male-dominated, male-identified, and male-centered. “Male-dominated” means that men monopolize social and political power at women’s and gender-queer people’s expense, dominating decision-making and the dis-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

141

tribution of resources and disregarding women’s safety in public and private life. “Male-identified” means that our ideas about morality and normalcy are strongly associated with manhood and masculinity. And “male-centered” means that we often focus on men rather than on women, constructing men as active and important subjects while women are objectified and reduced to bystanders.5 At the social-psychological level, the cutting-edge research by Banaji and her colleagues reveals how bias harms women as well as nonwhites.6 Other researchers, such as Claude Steele and Derald Wing Sue, demonstrate the real-world effects of persistent stereotype threat, as women and nondominant groups are forced to dedicate significant mental and emotional resources to ward off negative stigma.7 Institutional and socialpsychological effects of sexism also converge in research on job discrimination, as studies of training and hiring from the natural sciences to orchestra music find that women are routinely misevaluated, ignored, and steered away from prestigious positions.8 One other concept that we need for understanding sexism in comedy is the idea of objectification, or, more specifically, sexual objectification. Martha Nussbaum and Andrea Dworkin are two of the most influential figures in the development of objectification theory, and taken together, their work highlights the central features of the problem.9 People who are objectified are reduced to their appearance, their body, or their body parts. They have no voice or agency and are viewed as interchangeable with others from the same group. Because they function only to serve others’ needs and not their own, there is no concern for the physical or emotional safety of those who are objectified. Objectification is often tied to commerce; to objectify someone is to turn her into a commodity that can be bought and sold, with the profits accruing to those who administer and police the market (men). We see, then, how this cultural and meaning-laden process, a process that transforms who or what we understand a woman to be, fits neatly into a more comprehensive model of institutional and materially rooted patriarchy. Now that we know what racism and sexism are and how they work, we’re ready for some concrete examples from the world of comedy.

142

Chapter 5

Racial Conventions and Stigma The past few years have brought a deluge of shameful stories exposing the racism and sexism of entertainment-industry executives in Hollywood. Of the CEOs of the five biggest movie studios in the country, Kevin Tsujihara of Warner Brothers Entertainment is the only one who is nonwhite. One of Warner Brothers’ biggest competitors is Sony Pictures, a studio victimized by an embarrassing cyberattack in 2014. The Sony Pictures computersystem hack released a wide variety of quantitative and qualitative evidence of racism and sexism. Among the most basic revelations was the confirmation of the persistence of the gender pay gap in Hollywood, as we learned that American Hustle stars Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Addams were paid 7 percent of the film’s profits while their male counterparts, Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper, were paid 9 percent.10 Beyond these numeric discrepancies, the Sony e-mail hack reveals how racial assumptions and stereotypes impact decisions about casting and investing in movies centered around people of color. Sony Movie Studios cochair Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin exchanged e-mails poking fun at President Barack Obama, African American comedy, and black audiences. When Rudin asked, in jest, whether Pascal thought Obama might like to finance some movies, she replied, “I doubt it. Should I ask him if he liked Django [Unchained]? Or The Butler? Or Think Like a Man?” Rudin continued the joke, suggesting that Obama might be interested in comedies such as “Ride Along. I bet he likes Kevin Hart.” In another e-mail exchange between executives that was exposed in the same series of leaks, Hart, who made roughly $14 million in 2013,11 is referred to as a “whore” because he raised his asking price for upcoming fi lms.12 Rudin was shaken by the release of the e-mails and offered the following apology: “I made a series of remarks that were meant only to be funny, but in the cold light of day, they are in fact thoughtless and insensitive—and not funny at all. To anybody I’ve offended, I’m profoundly and deeply sorry, and I regret and apologize for any injury they might have caused.”13 His partner Pascal has, in fact, contributed a great deal of money to the Democratic Party and is likely an Obama supporter. But intent is not the litmus test for racism.14 We cannot evaluate

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

143

instances of racial injustice or degradation according to whether the offending party meant to do harm. Instead, we must look at the impact, and in this case, the impact is a calcification of shallow assumptions about black American tastes and the continued disrespect of African American performers. At issue is not whether black people like Kevin Hart’s fi lms and performances; Hart himself estimates that between 60 and 70 percent of his audience is black.15 These stories matter because they illustrate self-fulfi lling prophecies about casting, audiences, and taste that shape the way we think about comedy and those who make decisions. People of color account for roughly 40 percent of the US population but represent only around 10 percent of lead characters in movies and 12 percent of film directors. Movies with 30 to 40 percent nonwhite casts account for just 2 percent of topgrossing fi lms from 2011 to 2014.16 When people of color do appear in blockbusters, they are often ornamental; in the one hundred top-grossing movies of 2014, 73.1 percent of all speaking or named characters were white.17 These figures seem to suggest that studio executives are simply making rational decisions, because Hart’s movies perform well and there is little evidence that majority nonwhite casts can headline blockbusters. In fact, in the same cache of Sony e-mails, a document reveals that executives were warned not to cast Denzel Washington in a lead role because of the belief that movies with black leads do not fare well overseas.18 But sociologist Darnell Hunt points out that wildly successful movies like Iron Man 3, Star Trek: Into Darkness, and Hunger Games: Catching Fire featured casts that were roughly 30 percent nonwhite. He explains, “Audiences can only vote affirmatively for something that’s there. They can’t tell you what they wanted to see.”19 If Hart is to expand his repertoire, executives have to take risks and cast him in unconventional roles, but studios have essentially given up without trying. Executives can count on black audiences supporting Kevin Hart, so they cast, produce, and market Kevin Hart fi lms by following recognizable racial scripts. When Hart lands parts in fi lms designed to appeal to “mainstream” (white) America, he finds himself typecast. For example, the trope of the cool and clever black sidekick, or “Magic Negro,” who helps inept white guys find their groove is one of many hackneyed conven-

144

Chapter 5

tions in fi lm, and it’s exactly the sort of role Hart has cashed in on in films such as The Wedding Ringer (2015) and Get Hard (2015). Racial stereotyping in comedy has far deeper roots than those exemplified by specific characters such as the Magic Negro, as there are welldocumented assumptions about black comedy as a tradition with different expectations for performers. Myq Kaplan explains: Some positive stereotypes . . . are often borne out, like, if there’s a dichotomy of writing and performing, black performers are better. It’s just such a history or tradition. So you could see on a Def Jam show, like, three comedians do the same almost exact joke but act it out completely differently and make it their own. Like I saw Sommore in the Queens of Comedy do what was a street joke [a joke that is widely known], but [she] really acted it out and made it her own, and that’s a thing that I would never be able to do.

It is too simple to say that black physicality is a racist stereotype created by white people to keep black comics in their place. As Kaplan describes, this is a longstanding tradition within black comedy, and it’s an element of comedic performance that many white comics respect and admire. Kaplan also notes, however, that the cost of these expectations for black performers is that they come with assumptions about black ineptitude when it comes to joke writing, a skill that is considered not only more intellectual than is physical performance, but more vital to building a career as a comedy creator, and, eventually, as a decision-maker, in fi lm and television. In 2013, Alexis Wilkinson was the first black person to be elected editor of the Harvard Lampoon, a storied comedy collective run by Harvard University undergraduates. In recounting her experiences with both stand-up and comedy writing, Alexis describes the pressure she felt to meet racialized expectations. When I did a black audience, I definitely felt like I need[ed] to be more physical. . . . There’s a busy physicality of it, and even a different rhythm of presenting jokes. I felt like these are things that are going to get a black audience on my side. Where, with a white audience, those sorts of things would probably be more alienating than anything. You know, they just got done seeing five white guys walking down the stage rambling. And I get up there, and, like, it’s

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

145

going to look like a coon show is what it’s going to look like. So I’m like, “All right. Let me not do that.” I don’t know if I’m willing to play the game. I know I would need to play to be successful, and if it means that much to me I’d much rather leave my performance and my appearance and everything out of it, and just put the jokes on paper.

I interviewed Alexis while she was still in college, and she continued her drift away from live performance, accepting a screenwriting job after college on the acclaimed HBO show Veep. Alexis is quick to point out that her choice to downplay physical performance in front of white audiences does not reflect the value she places on black comedic traditions. Her decision is both a practical move to win over the audience and a simple matter of dignity. Like all black comics who perform for white audiences, Alexis is keenly aware of the way she is perceived, and she endeavors to avoid racist stereotypes even though they are the audience’s fault, not hers. Despite the best efforts of Alexis and her peers, many of the performers of color I spoke with described their constant battle to ward off racist stereotypes in professional settings. Stand-up comics exert more control over their performances because they perform alone. Like Alexis, they anticipate audience expectations and plan ahead, creating racial personae that they are comfortable with. But improv performers have a different set of challenges, not only because improv is a historically bourgeois, white-male performance tradition but also because racial stigma can be injected at any time during a performance, either through audience participation or the spontaneous choices of fellow improv players. Ali Barthwell, a member of The Second City touring ensemble, recounts such an experience. I was at an audition not that long ago, and we were little kids on a playground and we had a big hole. There was a big hole, and we were going to climb down the hole and explore. And my whole thing was that I want to be an adventurer. I want to be an explorer. And the girl goes, “I don’t want to go down there. It’s scary and black. No offense.” And it’s like, all right. Now I have to deal with this. It’s frustrating for me because now I have to address this thing that I shouldn’t have to.

146

Chapter 5

Part of the challenge for Ali and other improv players is that the “Yes, and” ethos of improv comedy demands that performers support one another and follow one another’s lead to keep the momentum going. If Ali violates this norm and meets this racist remark by rejecting her partner’s statement, she risks not only being stigmatized as an “angry black woman” but also being evaluated as an unskilled performer. Further, performing race in ways that are openly critical of white privilege and white patriarchy is a high-risk career move for black women like Ali. Earlier in the interview, I asked Ali whether she ever felt mistreated, and her reply weaves together the intersectional dimensions of her life as a comedy worker, illustrating just how many barriers she has to navigate to carve out the career she wants. First, she talks about simple typecasting. Improv is mostly white people, and I have tons of people who want to put me into playing, like, the black character. Like in my conservatory class we’ll pitch things for each other. And people will come up with scene ideas, and they’d be like, “All right. You’re just going to play, like, a really ghetto person.”

Ali then described an incident in one of her classes in which she played the mother of a pregnant teen who was disappointed with her daughter for not planning the pregnancy. At the end of the scene, Ali’s teacher gave her notes, suggesting that she was too “rational, and smart, and calm.” He said he would like to see her play a “big momma welfare queen.” These are the classic intersectional racist stereotypes of racist black womanhood, ripped from the pages of black feminist books such as Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought (1990). Ali was incensed, and she explained, I’ve never done that. I don’t know what that is. That’s a fake thing that’s not real. And you know the guy who’s from Oklahoma isn’t getting notes like, “Play a hick” or “Play, like, a redneck.” No one in my family is a welfare queen. I don’t know how to be that. We’re doctors and lawyers. I’m going to be a doctor and a lawyer [in the scene]. I just want to be a doctor and not your doctor that speaks in all-rap lyrics. So don’t pitch that to me when I say I want to do a scene about a doctor.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

147

Patrick Rowland, another accomplished improv performer who has played at both The Second City and iO in Chicago, recounts a similar experience. Being black, they’re like, “Oh, he’s from the hood. So we’re going to put him in a hood scene.” And I am [black and from the hood], but I’m not that type of person by any means. One of my first improv scenes in class, I came out and I had a British accent. I was being a British person. My scene partner was like, “There aren’t any black people in London.” (A), that’s wrong. But (B), it’s like, who says I was playing a black person? I’m playing a character. So that irks me. And sometimes, although it’s crazy, it’ll get the most laughs if I play a stereotypical black person.

The experiences described by Alexis, Ali, and Patrick demonstrate that in the worlds of stand-up and improv, black performers are read as black by white audiences and instructors and are far too frequently expected to play stereotypically black characters. The racist stereotypes that capture observers’ imaginations are intersectional, as black experiences that hold entertainment value are shaped by gender and by misguided notions about poverty and black cultural deviance. Some performers have actual experience living in the hood and others do not, but all black comedy workers have to deal with racial stereotypes and expectations as part of their job. Of course, these expectations and the pressure of managing racial stigma are not unique to black people, as other nonwhite comics also described problems in this vein. New York stand-up Danny Cruz is one of several comics of color who described his distaste for his peers who cater to white audiences and “go up there and just do a bunch of Puerto Rican jokes, or just cliché jokes about race. You know, just, like, Hispanics talking about knives or about getting women pregnant or something like that.” On the other side of the country, UCB Los Angeles instructor and performer Eugene Cordero is Filipino, and he says that, in the improv world, “just the fact that I’m of color—that’s what sets me apart traditionally.” But because Eugene’s physical appearance doesn’t lend itself to easy categorization using American assumptions about race, he often manages the additional challenge of establishing his racial identity because “nobody

148

Chapter 5

knows what the fuck I am.” These considerations are not merely annoyances at the time of a performance, as comedy workers of color understand them as expectations that limit career options. Hasan Minhaj spoke about his realization that he could never be Iron Man, because the majormotion-picture superhero roles are still reserved for white men, and he is Indian. “Look, if I’m the best actor that existed, if I get my IMDB right and if I really play the room,” Hasan says, “I could be [pauses for dramatic effect] . . . the scientist that helps Iron Man.” Importantly, Hasan explains that because comedy and acting are visual media, you cannot simply ignore these perceptions or act as though they do not exist. As a stand-up and comedic actor, he knows that “there’s an initial expectation . . . and within three seconds what comes out of your mouth should probably match up with what they think.” The white comedy workers I spoke with about these visual expectations gave a very different range of answers. It’s not that white performers move through the world under the illusion that appearance does not matter. As we will see later, many of the white women interviewed discussed the pressure of being objectified as soon as they step onstage, and many of them talked about the problems of being tokenized when they are one of few women in a lineup. But none of them talked about representing their racial group, and none of them offered the sort of intersectional analysis that Ali Barthwell did, in which race, gender, and class mix together to produce specific stereotypes and tropes that she has to defend herself from. One of the most difficult aspects of this self-defense for comedians of color is that the social and professional rules are such that coworkers expect insults and microaggressions to go unchallenged because comics are supposed to be able to take a joke. Baratunde Thurston sees this as more than mere insensitivity; he describes it as a form of “testing,” in which white coworkers will push the envelope to see what they can get away with. People just think you’re superhuman, and they can just say anything to you and you have to take it as a joke. And if you’re doing comedy and race, people want to, like, test you, and be like, “Wussup my niggaaaah!” I’m a human being still. I have feelings, I have standards, and I have a sense of self-respect that goes along with it.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

149

Jeffrey Joseph provides even more details about these professional challenges and the strategies available to black comics who are bothered by “casual” racism in the workplace. When something happens that is beyond the pale, such as a white comedian flippantly using the word “nigger,” for example, he makes a point of addressing those comments onstage when it’s time for his set. But, he says, Not everybody does that. Especially a lot of the younger [black] comedians. Some of them were very funny, but they’re trying to be a little bit “beyond race.” But “beyond race” at their expense. And then on the other spectrum there are black people that just don’t want to work around white people because they’re like, “I don’t want to hear that shit.”

Again, the choices that comedians of color must make are not simply a matter of personal comfort. The truth is that tactics and strategies for managing racial attacks and stigma have clear implications for one’s career, especially given what we know about the social elements of the job. Black comedians who affirm their dignity and self-respect in white-dominated spaces have to thread the needle, protecting themselves and calling out racism when they see it but doing so skillfully, such that they are still perceived as “true” comedians and good coworkers. Baratunde closes the loop and sums up the pressure that people of color face in mainstream comedy. He says, “There’s also, within race and comedy, like, an obligation to talk about race if you’re a quote-unquote ‘person of race’ in comedy. There’s the postracial concept of can you just be a comedian, or do you have to be a black comedian?” This is not to say that performers of color are working with a completely different set of beliefs about what constitutes good work in comedy. But although many nonwhite comedy workers echo their white colleagues’ belief in hard work and the meritocratic ethos of comedy, none of them suggest that race doesn’t matter or that comedy is “color-blind.” Contrast this with statements from New York stand-up Tim Warner, who believes, much like Seinfeld, that “it doesn’t matter what race you are or what language you speak. Laughs seem to be pretty universal.” Many of the white respondents I spoke with were thoughtful and forthcoming about racism and the racial politics of the comedy world. But when white performers

150

Chapter 5

talk about the impact that race has had on their careers, they don’t discuss it in terms of limitation and frustration the way performers of color do. Improv teacher and writer Emily Berg reflects, saying, “Obviously I have a race; we all do. And I know that it has affected my life, but I don’t have any tangible stories of how it’s affected my life.” And former Groundling and actor Brian Palermo notes that when people assume things about him and the characters he can play, they’re usually “pretty tame.” When he is typecast, it’s not loaded with insult. He says, “I’m a forty-five-year-old white guy with brown hair; I look like your suburban dad. People are going to glean things off your looks; that’s all they have to go on.  .  .  . My career is basically goofy dad or asshole in suit.” These are textbook examples of white privilege—the privilege to feel as though race has no impact, to be typecast as “tame,” or to be considered unremarkable and familiar.

Sexism and Objectification When I asked comedy workers what comes to mind when they hear the words “comedy” and “gender,” the most common initial response was the “controversy” about whether women are funny, or as funny as men. Comedians can’t stand talking about whether women are funny, because the question is so obviously sexist and stupid. There is no debate at all around the issue. Nobody I spoke with made even the faintest suggestion that women, as a group, are less funny than men. Performers don’t want to talk about this question, and I don’t want to write about it, but I have to, because comedy workers told me it has a massive impact on their career. Stand-up Abigoliah Schamaun insists that the everyday sexism of fans is reflected by people in the entertainment industry. I have had [fans] come up to me and be like, “You’re really funny.” And I’m like, “Thank you.” And they’re like, “Usually I don’t like women. I don’t think women are funny.” And I’m like, “Well, we’re done now because you don’t know what you’re talking about. . . . ” I know there are industry people who think this. I have not had contact with them and don’t wish to.

Despite performers dismissing the idea that women aren’t funny, fans feel comfortable enough to suggest such a thing right to a woman’s face.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

151

More discouraging, Jacqueline Novak suggests that conventional sexism is internalized by some women in the business, such that women evaluate and police themselves in accordance with sexist standards. She explains: I think some women in the business think that unless they agree and say, “I know that men are funnier,” or something like that, . . . they won’t be [accepted]. It’s like the popular opinion is women aren’t funny. If that’s the popular opinion, there’s a little bit of an issue where if you say, “No, women are funny,” to some established guys or females in the industry, they might question whether you know what funny is.

The opening argument of this book is that comedy workers are highly perceptive social animals rather than the hopeless social outcasts they’re made out to be. Jacqueline’s analysis demonstrates the social acuity needed to navigate the hazards of the overlapping social and professional lives of a comedy worker. She feels a different sort of pressure in professional meetings with male gatekeepers versus in meetings with women. She perceives women’s behavior in these meetings differently, suggesting that they are managing men’s expectations through their appraisal and evaluation of Novak as a performer. She understands the danger of insisting that women are funny not merely as a violation of a social norm that can make the conversation awkward but also as a potential misstep that can lead others in the room to question whether she even knows what funny is—whether she knows the most basic facts about her job. Comedy workers who are tired of answering the “Are women funny?” question and angered by the sexism they witness firsthand might be tempted to prescribe gender blindness as a solution. Calvin Evans laments: I think women have it harder because a lot of times people don’t think women are funny. And women have to step outside of themselves from being women. Like, one thing that pisses me off all the time, is, like, whenever there’s a show and the host says, “Are you ready for a lady’s point of view? We got a female right here!” No. She’s a fucking comic.

Calvin objects to the ways that women are marked as exceptional and “other,” as hosts and announcers prime audiences to activate their biases

152

Chapter 5

about women before female comedy workers take the stage. But there is a slippery slope between Calvin’s desire to see women as “just” comics and the call to erase or move beyond gender identity. The pressure that women feel to “step outside of themselves from being a woman” is similar to the pressure many comedians of color feel to be “postracial” in front of white audiences. Jeffrey Joseph took his response to my open-ended question about gender and comedy in a slightly different direction. Comedy and gender? First of all, there are a lot of people that think women aren’t funny. And that’s backwards and inexcusable and based on the fragile egos of a lot of guys. Gender is essential to comedy. Essential. Sexuality, gender—it’s power. It’s part of somebody’s identity and their potency onstage. And the people who erase that from what they do—to me they can be funny for about twenty minutes. And then there’s no tension left.

Performers who are pressured to play to stereotypes or to abdicate the gender identity they are comfortable with risk losing their hold on the audience. We have to meet gender head on and recognize its potency and impact on all performances. But we can’t understand the power of sexism merely by dissecting what happens onstage. We must look at the constraints of the comedy business and at social expectations for women in the world outside of comedy. Again, patriarchal societies are male dominated, male identified, and male centered. Jacqueline and Abigoliah testify about male domination and the power exuded by male decision makers who shape industry conventions. Chicago improv performer and teacher Rebecca Sohn urges us to step back and understand that the battle for women’s identities in comedy is tied to the struggle of all people in marginalized groups who endeavor to find their voice. She explains: The comedy that we mostly see and hear comes from a male-dominated society where we all think in this way. I mean, it’s an enormous thing to talk about. But that is the world that we live in. So, a woman trying to find her own voice, or an Asian, or a black man, or any of those [pauses]. . . . Trying to fi nd your own voice is hard. It’s still under the umbrella of how you’re responding in this white, male-dominated society. It’s hard to break through and find something truthful.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

153

Sohn tells us that white masculinity is the industry standard, and white men’s voices are understood to be normal and deserving of attention; the comedy world is male identified and male centered. Women’s struggle to find their own voices in a patriarchal world is not a feel-good platitude without substantive implications. To the contrary, “coming to voice” is a foundational piece of late-twentieth-century feminist theory, as explained by revolutionary thinkers such as Gloria Anzaldua and bell hooks.20 It is a path from objecthood to subjecthood, and it requires building speech communities safe from the violence of patriarchy and in which women, and specifically women of color, can speak to and for each other. But when those communities do not exist in comedy work, women have proven themselves to be adaptable, as they use the skills they have sharpened by living through patriarchy beyond comedy. Holly Laurent describes the necessity of women’s identification with both genders as one such adaptation. I think females usually ego identify with both genders pretty easily, because for the most part we were all raised on a lot of stories where the protagonist is male. And so we’ve learned to put ourselves in his shoes, and when Tom Cruise, like, leaps across a building or whatever, we’re, like, leaping across that building too. But I don’t think it necessarily goes both ways. I don’t think that men naturally ego identify with females.

This quotation hammers home the truth that patriarchy is not just about men’s authority; it is about male identity and male subjecthood as the standards within comedy work. We cannot separate sexism in comedy and gender expectations from girls’ and women’s experiences growing up, and several interviewees talked about the ways that gender expectations prevent girls from seeing themselves as women in comedy when they grow up. Stand-up and writer Nora Nolan says plainly, “There’s the whole idea that women have to be kind of feminine, and comedy is not necessarily feminine. . . . A lot of people assume comics are lesbians because they’re outgoing and they’re onstage. It’s a stereotype, obviously.” Writer and producer Annie O’Rourke describes femininity as a pressure to be “demure” and “ladylike,” which directly conflict with comedians’ mission to adopt the perspective of the social outsider and discuss social taboos. Like Nora, Annie makes it clear that much of what is at stake here is heterosexist stan-

154

Chapter 5

dards of sexuality and fear and the devaluation of women’s sexuality that does not validate men’s authority. My grandmother probably never farted out loud in her whole life or said the word “fart.” She probably never did. And now we’re only a couple of generations removed from that. Not that farts are the [be-all and end-all] of comedy, but just the openness of letting your insecurities out there or the things you find funny. As a woman, it’s just not as attractive. It does actually make you less attractive to the opposite sex. So I think women are less likely to reveal themselves and be more vulnerable in that sense. And women also have to try to conform to the standards of beauty.

Nora and Annie speak about the ways that comics perform gender, mentioning the language women use and their willingness to stand and deliver in front of total strangers as choices that clash with expectations. But women are judged and stigmatized before they even breathe into the microphone because audiences are so focused on the way they look. Hasan’s comments on comedy as a visual industry and the immediacy of racialized expectations for performers of color were loudly echoed by the women I spoke with. The pressure to be thin was a major theme in my interviews with women, and it was a topic that was almost completely absent from my conversations with men. In June of 2015, Amy Schumer boldly pushed back against the bigotry of fat shaming in the entertainment industry as she accepted Glamour UK’s “Woman of the Year Award” and proclaimed, “I’m probably 160 pounds, and I can catch a dick whenever I want. Like, that’s the truth! It’s not a problem!”21 But Schumer’s insistence that the entertainment industry’s expectations do not dictate her sex life does not mean that performers can simply ignore the premium placed on thinness, which is a trait that validates women not simply as desirable but also as worthy of respect. Jacqueline Novak explains that to get to the twists in your act, you have to understand the audience’s expectations or “very quickly get to what your personal status quo is. And, I think however you tell them, you feel the need to acknowledge your sex, race, your physical size.” Holly Laurent agrees, saying, “Fat or thin, or old or young, or attractive or unattractive. There’s just certain expectations that people place on you.” And Eliza Skinner points out that while all performers are judged

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

155

on their appearance, strategizing around her appearance and disrupting the male audience’s gaze is something she has to prioritize. I’m onstage in front of lights. I know they’re going to judge me. But [for] women, I feel like the judgment isn’t just, “Is she going to be funny or not?” It’s, “Do I want to fuck her or not? . . . ” It is getting better, but right now, when I get onstage, it is something I have to deal with. I have to think about how I want to present myself and how I can break that down right away and prove to them, like any comic does, that I’m funny right away.

These expectations rig the game such that women can’t win no matter which strategy they choose. Sexist and racist white feminine beauty standards privilege women who are thin, with straight hair and light skin, hair, and eyes. Women who break this mold are often assumed to be goofy, angry, radical, or gay, and their deviance is viewed as suspicious and dangerous. But those who approach the standards for sexy and appealing womanhood often find themselves disempowered by different expectations, as their objectification renders them ornamental and voiceless in a world full of male decision makers. As Rebecca Delgado-Smith details: They’re like, “Oh, she’s so cute.” And all of a sudden when you’re angry or you say, “What do you mean?,” then you’re “feisty.” You know? It’s like, “What’s this little girl who is speaking her mind? Why is she doing that?”

Delgado-Smith’s frustration calls up Rebecca Sohn’s comment about the difficulty of marginalized people finding their voices in the whitesupremacist patriarchy. Women who are objectified as “cute” are viewed with disdain when they speak up and refuse cuteness as a compliment, and they are subsequently stigmatized as “feisty” or “bitchy.” In DelgadoSmith’s case, the stigma of being “feisty” or “spicy” intersects with race and ethnicity, as she is of Cuban descent. Scholars have documented a long history of Latinas being stereotyped and sexualized as both “hot” and “hot tempered” (see Sofia Vergara’s role in the hit sitcom Modern Family).22 At other times in her career, Delgado-Smith has simply been ignored, which is another common theme among the women I spoke with, especially when it comes to conversations about business opportunities and professional development. Delgado-Smith performs with a mixed-gender improv and

156

Chapter 5

sketch company called Harvard Sailing Team, which has five women, four men, and nothing to do with Harvard or sailing. She told me about a time after a performance in New York when the people from the theater came backstage and were like, “These producers from this show are here. They want to talk to you afterward.” So we went to the local bar that we always went to after our shows. And these producers rounded up the guys, and they thought all the guys drank, and they didn’t even look at the girls when they were talking. I remember being so mad.

Women in comedy face multiple challenges. They are dogged by the sexist assumption that women are not as funny as men, and a female performer is often made to feel aware of her gender when she is one of only a few women in a comedy setting. There is constant pressure during performances to account for one’s physical appearance, and women’s objectification continues offstage when they are taken less seriously by potential business partners. Through it all, the women I spoke with refused the silence imposed on them and kept fighting to be heard. It is important to note that the impact of stereotypes and stigma is not limited to prejudicial perceptions and the challenges of performance. Racism and sexism shape the opportunity structure of the industry, creating a decidedly uneven playing field.

Racism and Opportunity Structure Describing the playing field of comedy as “uneven” is actually a bit misleading, because it implies that all comedy workers are living in the same environment, and some have a competitive advantage. The trouble with inequality in comedy work, though, isn’t just that some performers have better tools for navigating the jungle. The problem is that performers from marginalized groups must overcome entirely different challenges, traversing a landscape that turns from jungle to desert and back to jungle again. Put differently, the mainstream playing field is certainly uneven, but that’s not the only field that people from marginalized groups have to play on to get paid. American society remains severely segregated by race and class. Chi-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

157

cago, for example, is the seventh most diverse city in the United States; its population is evenly divided between non-Hispanic blacks (33 percent), non-Hispanic whites (32 percent), and Hispanics (29 percent). But it is also the most segregated city in the country, as these racial and ethnic groups live in neighborhoods that are almost entirely separate from one another, both geographically and in terms of socioeconomic status. Black and nonwhite Hispanic households have far less wealth and disposable income than do white households.23 And, of course, the comedy scene does not exist outside or above these patterns of segregation and inequality; it is a product of larger social trends. There are simply fewer opportunities for nonwhite performers to play in front of primarily nonwhite audiences. Google searches for “best comedy club” in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities around the country yield strikingly similar results, in that the most prestigious venues for improv, sketch, and stand-up feature primarily white acts and play to primarily white audiences. The list might feature one historically black comedy club in the top ten suggested venues. In Chicago, that club, until 2016, was Jokes and Notes, founded and operated by Mary Lindsey. As Calvin Evans told me, “It’s the only black club in Chicago. When I first started out that’s the club I always wanted to get into, the only club I heard about.” Mary has other business interests, but she has a sterling reputation in the Chicago comedy scene thanks to her founding role in All Jokes Aside, which was the dominant black club on the scene throughout the 1990s and was the subject of the documentary Phunny Business: A Black Comedy (2010). Mary left All Jokes Aside in 1998, and it closed shortly thereafter. She took a brief break from the business before returning to Chicago to open Jokes and Notes in 2012 in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, because the niche that her first club had fi lled was left empty and the black comedy scene in Chicago was in a lull. She explains: I think it’s little bit more challenging for comics when they go to those [predominantly white] venues because they [club managers] have an audience that is looking for a certain thing. And they want to make sure they please that audience. But at the same time they want to incorporate minorities into their

158

Chapter 5

format. And I get that, because you don’t want to have an audience that can’t relate to your comedy. So if some African American comic goes over to Zanies and he’s got an entirely white audience and his subject matter is only touching on what happens in the hood, it’s like, “Okay, this is not working.”

This part of the story is a tale of supply and demand that is eerily similar to the logic of movie-studio executives who believe predominantly white audiences won’t support fi lms with black leads. The difference is that in comedy, black performers often speak from the heart about personal experiences. An action movie about a middle-aged father who goes on a violent rampage to avenge his daughter’s kidnapping can accommodate either Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson as the lead. But in live stand-up, Jerry Seinfeld can’t perform Chris Rock’s famous bit about the difference between “black people” and “niggas.” Club owners want the room to be rolling with rhythmic waves of laughter, not sputtering along with tentative giggles, empty silences, or isolated laughs coming from the few patrons in the room who share the particular experiences of the performer. Whiteness is viewed as the safe standard, and white audiences spend more money on live comedy, so white people dominate the audiences and the lineups of many of the most prestigious live-comedy venues. Importantly, Mary does not blame the owners and bookers of mainstream clubs for the patterns she sees in the industry, and she does not see them as the enemy; she has a strong relationship with Bert Haas at Zanies, and she was quick to mention that Jokes and Notes occasionally participates in cross promotion with The Second City. Mary also does not think it is wrong to assume that black performers who come from less privileged backgrounds will have a hard time winning over white, middle-class audiences. She simply says, “It’s very difficult to write or act out things that you’ve never come into contact with. And I think for a lot of [black comics], they can only platform and talk about their experiences.” The segregation described in the preceding paragraphs is manifest in the lived experiences of audience members and of the comedians themselves. So, right from the start, the white/nonwhite and mainstream/“urban” divides foreground questions of experience and exposure. What kinds of knowledge do aspiring comedians have about the options in their home

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

159

cities? At which venues do they envision themselves performing? Aspiring white comedians growing up in the Chicago area can probably rattle off a half-dozen majority-white venues that are considered pillars of the Chicago comedy scene. Importantly, those venues include stand-up clubs such as Zanies and improv and sketch theaters such as The Second City and iO, all of which also cater to a mostly white clientele. So not only are there more venues with majority white audiences and performers, but also my interviews suggest that black and brown performers don’t learn about improv and sketch or consider them realistic options until later in their comedy careers. Saturday Night Live is simply not the same kind of cultural touchstone for African Americans, Latino/as, and Asian Americans as it is for white people. South Side Chicago native and proud improv performer Patrick Rowland explains: You grew up and I grew up watching Bill Cosby [and] Richard Pryor. Like, if I’m going to do comedy it’s going to be stand-up. The only improv I was exposed to was Whose Line Is It Anyway? And you see Wayne Brady, and the media and everybody jumps on him like he’s a sellout or something, which is the dumbest thing I ever heard. [They said,] “He’s acting white.” What the hell does that mean? So you kind of get [that] the African American community is thinking, like, “Oh, that’s, that’s a white person’s comedy.” You barely see any black people on any of those shows.

The “acting white” stigma is a tempting way to dismiss the problem, especially for conservatives and others invested in the neutrality of “the mainstream,” because it makes it seem as though the reason blacks and other people of color have been marginalized from these venues is that they self-impose the “sellout” stigma. In politics, the stigma of “acting white” is often injected into the debate about the performance gap between white students and black students. The explanation for inequality in educational attainment is chalked up to pathological and self-defeating “black culture” rather than to institutional racism. Angel Harris and Prudence Carter are two of many researchers who have soundly disproven the “acting white” hypothesis for the performance gap. Their work shows that, as it turns out, racial discrimination and class differences are the driving factors for discrepancies in school performance. Further, any cultural stigma

160

Chapter 5

that exists within black communities around being a nerd or enjoying school is no more damaging than the analogous stigma in white communities, even though it may not be racialized by whites, who deride their scholarly classmates as “geeks,” “band dorks,” or “teacher’s pets.”24 The “acting white” phenomenon also resonates with many blacks such as Patrick because, regardless of what the research says, they have life experiences of being called a “sellout” or being told that they are acting white. But the fact that Patrick and many other blacks who enter majority white spaces are chastised for acting white does not mean that black culture causes inequality. Again, researchers such as Harris and Carter have already spelled out the causes of educational disparities. Although we can’t replicate their methods to figure out the causes of racial divides in comedy, the interviewees recounted a number of experiences and explanations that paint a much more compelling picture of how and why segregation and inequality persist. First, as Ali Barthwell suggested earlier, people of color are often typecast, stereotyped, and made to feel unwelcome in even the most reputable sketch and improv settings. Her analysis demands that we use an intersectional lens to understand what’s happening here. When we do this, we see that the overlay of race and class segregation is a key factor in the segmentation of comedy labor. Hasan Minhaj explains: I don’t know a lot of improvisers of color. And stand-up spoke to me as a medium just because I saw a performer of color, and he was talking about being poor. He was talking about a lot of issues that really spoke to me. My theory behind it is barrier of entry. Stand-up is free. You show up to the open mic. You sign up. [It’s,] “I got next.” It’s that simple. Whereas [with] UCB, the barrier of entry is three hundred dollars to sign up for a class, and you’re not guaranteed to perform, except maybe a graduation show in front of your own peers. . . . I used to work at OfficeMax. Taking that three-hundred-dollar check and putting it to improv and not having a guarantee of being able to perform? I don’t know if I’d have the toughness to do it. But [with] stand-up they were like, “You’re up next, kid.” Every night. That got me to continue. That was enough for me. And I think that barrier has kept a whole group of people out of improv. And I think that’s really sad.

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

161

This is an especially rich reflection from Hasan, who made the transition from stand-up to sketch comedy and television hosting and acting. Hasan felt welcome in stand-up not just because he saw people of color onstage but also because they were “talking about a lot of issues that really spoke to [him],” which echoes Mary’s earlier point about shared experiences between performers and the audience. Although Hasan is Indian rather than black, he, like Patrick Rowland, mentions that stand-up also appealed to him because he saw people of color onstage. The cultural norms of sketch and improv training and performance are established by white men and crafted with white audiences in mind, and assumptions about cultural reference points, from musicians to television shows, often disregard the experiences of performers of color. And, finally, Hasan notes that the cost of improv classes is a major barrier to entry for aspiring comics without much disposable income, and, importantly, the barrier is not an obstacle that is overcome with a simple one-time payment. The three-hundred-dollar payment is just an entry fee. It does not guarantee that you will get better without taking additional classes and paying more money. It does not guarantee that classes you want to take will be offered in time slots that do not conflict with your job or other responsibilities. It does not guarantee a chance to perform in front of anyone other than your classmates, and performing onstage is a form of positive reinforcement that Hasan says he needs to keep going. Stand-up is cheap, but it also encourages risk taking and guarantees stage time, even if you’re still polishing your skills. These problems would be easy to solve if comedy were truly color-blind, as Seinfeld suggests. We could just tell the club owners at the most prestigious majority-white clubs that “funny is funny, making people laugh is a skill that anyone can develop, and the black comics who are successful in urban rooms have skills that will translate easily into mainstream white rooms.” But black and white comedians with experience in both kinds of rooms, majority white and urban, told me that it is not that simple. The interactions between the host, the crowd, and the performers in urban rooms are of a different kind than those in white rooms, and the expectations for white performers and performers of color are different as well. As Hasan suggests, stage time is vital for professional development. But

162

Chapter 5

professional development is divided along race and class lines, and comics who play urban rooms are actually being trained differently than comics who spend most of their time in white-dominated spaces. Mark Normand, a New York stand-up who hosts at Carolines and has played everywhere from Conan to alt rooms, talks about the differences he senses between white and urban rooms. [With] black rooms, a lot of times they don’t applaud when you walk onstage. So it’s already like, “Oh boy. This is going to be tough.” And if they like you, they’re on board immediately. [With] white rooms, they’re easier to make laugh, but they can be inconsistent. [With] black rooms, if they don’t like you, they don’t like you. If they like you, they like you. Like, I’ve gotten some hoot and howls in black rooms and I’ve gotten booed in black rooms. So it’s, like, never a mediocre set.

Mark, who is white, also told me that hosts in urban rooms are often more active and critical than in majority-white rooms. Rather than merely introducing the acts and getting the audience excited for the next set, hosts in urban rooms may play off of the audience’s approval or disapproval and occasionally poke fun at a performer who didn’t win the crowd. This style of performance and the expectation of more active and emphatic participation from the host and audience fall within the black vernacular tradition of signifying, which includes riffing or “playing the dozens” as forms of indirect communication and verbal play. But just because this sort of interaction has a history in black American communities doesn’t mean all black people are comfortable with it as a performance style. Jeffrey Joseph believes that sometimes the audience wants to perform a “black identity that they’ve watched on television when they saw DEF Jam or the BET Showcase. . . . They want to go there and act like those people for the night. They may not be those people, but they want to perform their black identity.” And Alexis Wilkinson laments: The worlds of black and white stand-up are so super separate. And so as a black woman who has this [Harvard] Lampoon background, I read one routine for a black audience and one routine for a white audience. And depending on what kind of mics I was doing, I would have to switch it up, and it felt

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

163

really disingenuous. You know? Because it would be one thing if I was playing a role, but I’m presenting myself as Alexis Wilkinson. I’m not presenting myself as white. I don’t want to feel like I have to pander and cater to audiences.

With all the emphasis, especially among women in comedy, on finding one’s voice, we can see how the intersectional experience of black womanhood and the multiplicity it requires could be exhausting and unsatisfying for Alexis. Although she is more than capable of code-switching between black and white styles of performance and communication, that is not what she is in the business for. Additionally, her statement reveals that she’s actually doing twice the work by developing entirely separate material for the two different kinds of rooms she plays in. New York stand-up Matteo Lane, a white man, describes a similar frustration he experiences at gay shows. I’m gay, but I rarely do gay shows. And I’ve talked about this with a lot of other comics, with a couple of black comics. It’s the same thing. They’re like, “I don’t want to just do urban rooms. Because how am I going to grow if I’m only talking to my minority?” I am the same way. It’s, like, I have jokes where I talk about being gay, but I’m not like some of these gay comics. Like [in exaggerated, effeminate voice], “Hey, girrrl!” You know no one’s going to relate to this unless [they’re] gay.

Of course, the problem is not that Matteo can’t “grow” or develop his act with exclusively gay crowds; it’s that his professional development within gay-performance spaces will not pay dividends in mainstream straight spaces, just as mastering urban rooms does not guarantee mainstream success. So comics from marginalized groups often have additional professional requirements compared to straight, white male comics, thanks to two major problems. First, there are fewer opportunities for performers of color to develop their material with audiences of color. Even the more experimental and performer-friendly alternative scene is not an especially comfortable place. New Yorker Danny Cruz estimates that roughly 85 percent of the time he enters those spaces, he’s “the only minority in the room. Like, thirty or forty people in the room, and I’m the only Hispanic there. And the alternative scene is supposed to be more diverse

164

Chapter 5

than any other scene.” We need more clubs like Jokes and Notes that simply provide the chance for developing comics of color to get up in front of audiences they are comfortable with. Second, comedians from marginalized groups have to come to grips with the fact that the skills and sensibilities they develop in communities of color will not be sufficient in their quest to conquer mainstream comedy and get looks from executives in the entertainment business. Their mastery of urban comedy is a precursor to and prerequisite for crossing over into white comedy. People from marginalized racial and ethnic groups are often required to pay dues in both settings, whereas white comics are not. As Calvin Evans says, “If you’re doing comedy on [the North Side] of town you don’t have to worry about the other side of town. Because [North-Side comedy] is the type of comedy that’s making it to TV.”

Sexism and Opportunity Structure Just as racial politics continue to shape entertainment-industry conventions and artists’ sense of what’s possible and realistic, sexism remains so baked into the landscape that even the most thoughtful comedy workers have to remind themselves about its power. Baratunde observes, “I think about these late-night shows, whether it’s, like, the Jimmys and Letterman or, like, Jon Stewart [and] Colbert. . . . It’s not just white dudes—it’s just dudes. . . . The replacements for these guys are always assumed to be other guys, and that’s the question that’s not being asked.” Baratunde is right on the mark, and his musings bring out a central feature of intersectionality. Although he begins with an intersectional understanding of privilege—it is not just whites or men, but white men, who dominate—he also points out that every woman remains vulnerable to sexism, regardless of how her race intersects with her gender identity. Put differently, racial and economic privileges do not protect women from the ills of patriarchy. When Baratunde frames sexism as “the question that’s not being asked,” he means it’s not being asked in the most visible media spaces. He knows that it is being asked by women who are frequently reminded of their outsider status both in the comedy-club scene and in television and fi lm. Im-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

165

portantly, male dominance and exclusivity is not perceived as a benign tradition or an accident of history wrought by blameless individuals. Rather, several women describe their plight as a result of men’s efforts to put up a united front and act collectively to keep them out. Notice the similarities in how three women describe these group dynamics (emphasis added): In an initial meeting, in those situations I think it can feel like I’m G.I. Jane or whatever. Like I’m trying to convince them to let me, like, join the boys’ team or something. (Jacqueline Novak) They [men who are friends] kind of stick together. They book their own shows, and they only book each other on shows. . . . You can’t get in the door. (Nora Nolan) Because white men don’t necessarily understand your particular point of view, it gets shoved aside as not funny or not understandable or not valuable. It’s hard to get in there. You know you’ve got to make the white guy laugh or he’s not going to want you on his team. There’s plenty of “ethnic” groups or female groups that do their own thing. But if you want to be a part of the larger world, to some degree you have to kind of lean to that [white male] perspective. (Rebecca Sohn)

Rebecca works in sketch and improv comedy, in which there is an emphasis on group cohesion during rehearsal and performance. Still, she connects the team mentality to larger patterns of inequality and to the privileges of white men who can safely assume that their perspective will be valued and accepted as the standard. These women are not arguing that this is a conscious, intentional effort by men. But when it comes to systemic inequality, intent is irrelevant and outcomes are what matter. The outcomes are in some ways natural products of the premium placed on social capital in comedy. Building social capital and community is vital for getting the most out of the job, both emotionally and professionally. But the accumulation of social capital does not impact the careers of all comedy workers equally, and a social scene that privileges connections among men is damaging for women. Ashley Brooke Roberts sees these disparate benefits, and she has no doubt that inequality impacts how women navigate the industry and value their friendships.

166

Chapter 5

I was talking about it with another male comedian, about [a woman in comedy], and I was talking about how she doesn’t have any female friends, and then he said to me, “Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t think women will help her.” And so far, she’s been right. And she has a deal with a major network, and it’s through a dude.

Ashley also suggests that men think of themselves as networkers and pass their privileges on to other men in ways that women do not. I have a friend who’s a stand-up comedian, and her boyfriend is a big club guy. His club guy friends are just constantly recommending each other: “You haven’t seen him? You have to check him out.” To their managers. To their agents. [They’ll say,] “Oh, I’ll give him a call and I’ll get you in there.” And I think so often women just feel that their power is almost, like, accidental. Like, “Yeah, I got passed to the club but I’m in no position to recommend someone. . . . ” I think men, not to generalize things, but men have, like, more of an entitled position or view of themselves in the world.

To be clear, these women are not arguing that men don’t have to be funny or work hard to succeed. They are simply reporting what they have experienced as comedy workers who must do their job differently from men because men have more collective power than women do and because sexism is built into the labor market. Men are aware of the role that friendships play in their careers, and they are critical of the ways networking can trump talent and impact the rewards system. But none of the men I spoke with identified the inequality and entitlement inherent in male privilege, and none of them reported feeling intense pressure to befriend women or “join the girls team” in order to advance their careers. Chris Laker, a New York stand-up who produces a show at The Creek and The Cave, endeavors to interrupt these trends, actively seeking out voices other than those of white men. It’s probably the same percentage of funny [for men and women]. . . . The idea that women have an easier time of it because there’s less of them—maybe so in some regards. But it’s just there’s less people to fi ll that role, and that’s a voice that you need. I have a show that I do. . . . For the sake of [the show] being in-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

167

teresting, I don’t want it to be all white dudes every single time. So I make an effort to make sure that there’s some diversity there.

Many of the earlier contributions refer to instances in which women are denied opportunities to perform. Chris knows that women are disadvantaged, but he also introduces the idea that in some ways they have it easier. How can this be? What exactly is easier for women? The depth and reach of sexism are such that when women do get work, tokenism and perceptions of scarcity skew how women’s opportunities and achievements are perceived. Chris does not have a quota, and he rotates the cast of his show frequently, but some clubs operate under different assumptions. For example, on March 14, 2014, British comic Jenny Collier tweeted out a note that she’d received from a club that had canceled her gig. It read, “I’m really sorry but the venue decided we have too many women on the bill and we need to take you out of this one. We hope this doesn’t cause any inconvenience.”25 The presumption here is that all women are essentially the same, so if you have more than a couple, you’re just duplicating the performance and boring the audience. This is the underlying assumption of tokenism: an individual from a marginalized group is viewed as a suitable representative of the group as a whole. When a token is chosen as a representative, she enters an arena controlled by the dominant group, which has expectations about how the outsider will behave. The trouble with tokenism isn’t just that only a few outsiders are allowed in but that those who are included are expected to play a role that supports those with power and reproduces the dominant culture. If the token violates the expectations of the dominant group and ruffles too many feathers, she is easily replaced by others who crave the same opportunity. So even when well-meaning comedy workers such as Chris prioritize diversity, it is unlikely to impact broader patterns of sexism unless women become a critical mass and attain positions of power. Another dimension of this problem is that tokenism is often combined with beliefs about scarcity. The logic goes something like this: there are fewer women in comedy, which means there are fewer talented women than there are talented men. So if you are a booker, producer, or cast-

168

Chapter 5

ing agent and you find a woman with great comedic promise, you have to snatch her up and give her a shot at a prominent gig before someone else does. Eliza Skinner explains how beliefs about scarcity create a feedback loop and contribute to the perception that women are not as funny as men and are undeserving of the opportunities they seize. Because there are less of us, we get booked on shows more easily at the beginning. If you have a show with seven comics, a lot of times they want to make sure they have at least one woman. They could have three women or four women, [but] they don’t. They try to have one. So if they don’t know that many, they’ll look around and they’ll put you on without you having knocked their door down. . . . And the worst part of all of it is the guys who think it’s so easy for girls, because the girls get to do all these shows because someone wants to fuck them. And then they write off how funny you may or may not be.

These patterns are damaging because they skew men’s perceptions of women as sex objects and undeserving charity cases, and they are damaging for another reason as well. Rojo Perez explains the harm that this sort of thinking inflicts on the professional development of people from marginalized groups. [It’s] the same thing I was saying with Hispanics, where it’s, like, sometimes I think girls will get picked out earlier, before they’re ready to do stuff, just because there are less female comics. You put somebody on the spot before they’re ready, and now they have to develop in front of people when they’re not ready. You just set the expectations so high for this person because you felt you needed to get them before somebody else saw it. So now you’ve made it even more difficult than comedy is just in general.

Rojo’s explanation is the most succinct and articulate, but I want to emphasize that both women and men expressed these concerns. Performers across all genres of comedy talked about how important it is for comics to find their voice and how long it takes comics to stop emulating their idols and start acting like themselves. This is a natural part of performers’ development, and they must learn it in addition to the other skills that they have to sharpen, such as joke writing, timing, learning site-specific

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

169

audience expectations, and gaining stage presence. These things can’t be rushed. When women are picked up too early and placed onstage with men who have more experience, the results can be disastrous, especially because when women get their big breaks, it seems as though men relish the chance to criticize them or say the breaks they got were unearned. The margin for error is smaller for women because the logic of tokenism effaces their individuality and suggests they are easily replaced and because research across a range of fields confirms that women have to constantly prove themselves to gain the trust and faith of male coworkers. Men, however, are assumed to be competent from the start.26 Dina Facklis has firsthand experience with “prove-it-again” bias. As a woman, yeah, I will say this, and you can quote me: I felt like Second City mistreated me as a woman director. I felt like they didn’t trust me as much as the men. And even though I’d proven myself over and over again I was asked to show more than [men] were, essentially. I was asked to go further for the same job that they didn’t go as far for.

Women have to fight against objectification and the assumption that they’re not funny, but the opportunity structure they work within makes this especially difficult. They have to develop friendships with both sexes and gain the approval of groups of men, and as Dina argues, they have to do it repeatedly to be trusted. Once women secure work they have to remain true to themselves and develop their voices in a context in which they are often treated as tokens of diversity with little regard for the range of experiences they bring to the stage. They are keenly aware of their own objectification and use all sorts of strategies to negotiate gender and sexuality while onstage. Straight men discuss their sexuality onstage, and they certainly use it as part of their creative repertoire. But men engage these topics from a position of power, unlike women, who, as part of their social and professional lives, must navigate objectification and sexual advances from a disempowered position. Women across genres and racial backgrounds discussed the differential treatment they receive based on their real and perceived sexual behavior. When I asked Mary Lindsey about the challenges women face, she rat-

170

Chapter 5

tled off three major problems. She said, “They deal with that same kind of issue of them not being [considered] funny, not being taken serious[ly], or the comics trying to get with them.” In linking these three issues together, Mary helps us understand that these problems reinforce each other. In other words, the reason women are not taken seriously is that too frequently they are viewed as objects of romantic interest first and professionals second. Women have to think about not only how to fend off unwanted sexual advances but also how to negotiate these interactions in settings that are male dominated. Danny Cruz’s response to the open-ended question about gender and comedy emphasizes these difficulties. He offered: I think women definitely have it rougher than men. Definitely. If I was a woman I would not feel comfortable being the only woman among twentyfive guys. Some of them are going to be great dudes, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable there. Like, I don’t feel comfortable as a Hispanic male. I can’t imagine being an attractive woman.

Few people enjoy being hit on by someone they’re not interested in. But managing these interactions is especially challenging for young women in the business who understand the necessary overlap of their social and professional lives. Informal mentorship, collaboration, and networking are huge aspects of young comics’ professional development. The opportunity structure enables predatory relationships, but there are real costs to misreading the intentions of an older male comic who offers his counsel. Does he want to be just a mentor, or a mentor with benefits? Alexis Wilkinson reports: I had a couple of weird experiences [with] the comedians I admire. I [might] come up to you after a show or whatever, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah. Let’s go get drinks.” But then it’s like, I’m trying to be professional and you’re trying to get into my pants. You know? And this is not something men have to deal with.

It’s worth pausing here to emphasize the last sentence in this passage, because, again, the problem is not simply that women are inconvenienced by unwanted attention. This is about inequality. As Alexis says, this is part of the job that men don’t have to deal with. She continues:

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

171

And I felt weird because I remember one of the comedians was like, “You know, the only reason that, like, he wants to go hang out with you and read your spec script or whatever is because he wants . . . you know.” And I’m like, “Yes. You’re totally right.” So trying to use opportunities but not use opportunities like that. And not that all people are like that. But I think in the standup scene, especially [for] me sort of as an up-and-comer, it’s hard to read those vibes from people. Sometimes you don’t want to mess up and burn bridges.

It’s awkward, and not just because it’s always awkward when there is flirting and when romantic signals get crossed. It’s uncomfortable because comics yearn for these mentorships early in their careers. They need to get their first break from someone who likes them in both a personal and professional sense, someone who likes them enough to take them on the road and trusts them enough to be an opening act. Ashley Brooke Roberts explains how this can change at the drop of a hat. You do hope that you get this older comedian who’s going to mentor you and take you on the road. And that was something that I did have open to me in the beginning when I didn’t have a boyfriend. I did have people taking me on the road to open for them. And then when I got a boyfriend, it sucked. No one was doing that any longer. . . . It’s not that they’re necessarily trying to date me, but it’s just, you know, who wants to bring someone’s girlfriend on the road?

This is a book about the culture of comedy labor, but the descriptions just given are not solely about how comedy workers understand their profession. These testimonies reveal real structural barriers. Sexism impacts not only what comedy workers think but also what they can and cannot do as a result of gender conventions and stigma. This brings us to the question of how comedy workers from marginalized groups interpret and react to the inequality they describe.

Changing the Game One of the strongest themes that emerges when women and people of color describe their experiences dealing with sexism and racism is that comedy

172

Chapter 5

workers from marginalized groups come to see themselves as trailblazers and mentors. Comedians of color are keenly aware that, especially when they perform for white onlookers, they are often representing their race. Rojo Perez explains: If they see Joe DeRosa, nobody’s going to go, “Th is is a [white] comic.” They’re just, “This is a comic.” For him, nothing carries over [to the group]. If you do poorly or do well, it’s not necessarily, “Oh, white comics are funny because Joe DeRosa is funny.” But I think for me sometimes, I think it could help if I do well—it could overall help other Hispanic comics. . . . You want to be successful [for] yourself, but in the big picture you want it to be like you helped out other Hispanic comics years from now.

This sort of pressure isn’t always a burden for comics of color. There is a great sense of pride associated with breaking through glass ceilings and being an example or role model for other group members to emulate. Patrick Rowland describes this pride and his own commitment to mentoring and networking in the following way. Every time I see it’s somebody [black in improv], it’s like I have radar. I just go up to them, try to get to know them, like, “Oh, hey. Are you taking classes? Do you perform here?” Because when I was growing up, there was nobody to do that. I mean, there [were] not that many for me to see. So I’m like, “Hey. You got a friend in me.”

These comments revolve around what it means for comedians of color to be visible. There is a heightened awareness of their hypervisibility in the eyes of white audiences, as Rojo and Patrick are exceptions to the rule in the venues and circles they occupy. The trick is to take that visibility, which comes with the possibility of stigma, and turn it into a positive opportunity to recruit more outsiders into the fold. Rojo emphasizes that his individual performances are an important tool for recruitment and a way to open up doors for other Hispanic comics. Patrick, though, emphasizes what he does offstage as an experienced improv player who can help other black players feel comfortable and can provide them with much-needed information about the comedy landscape in Chicago. Increasing the number of people in marginalized groups is vital for changing the politics of

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

173

comedy work because it gives performers a greater chance to share common experiences and develop social and professional resources that are tailored to their needs. Improv and sketch theaters do not run work groups or classes specifically for the purpose of addressing backbiting competition and self-policing among women. But as an established instructor and performer, Rebecca Sohn has come to view this sort of training as part of her job, and it couldn’t be done without the recent increase in women’s enrollment in her classes. The number of women coming through has grown, too. And sometimes I teach a class that’s all men and one woman. Sometimes there’s mostly women. It’s amazing. So you just never know. There will always be women and men who are competitive and not nice people. But fostering the female relationships and trying to get us to understand that we’re not all in competition with one another to some degree—that’s important to me. Helping that and the whole body-image thing. Trying to almost ignore it or make fun of it.

The industry is competitive across genders. But this particular form of competition, one loaded with sexualization and women’s objectification, is a unique challenge that female performers have to face. This form of competition is aggravated when women are treated as tokens, because they may come to believe that they’re fighting over a limited number of slots specifically designated for women. Instead of recognizing patriarchy as the problem, the system that institutionalizes this logic of competition leads women to see one another as obstacles to professional success. Working with cohorts of female performers allows Rebecca and her colleagues not only to call sexism out by name without fear of punishment but also to open themselves up to the creative process and to the validity of ideas and performances that do not fall in line with men’s standards. Writer and improv teacher Emily Berg credits her mentor for helping her find her voice. I was explicitly told to “use what you have, and don’t downplay that you are a woman.” So why would you not write about it? You’re trying to write about who you are. Write about it. Be real about it. You can’t deny it. And every girl wants to be the girl that’s like, “Oh, I love sports, and I hate chick flicks.” Well, I don’t. And you can have those feminine chick things and still be funny.

174

Chapter 5

When Emily reports that every girl wants to be the girl that loves sports and hates chick flicks, she echoes earlier comments from Jacqueline and Rebecca about the pressure women feel to “join the boys’ team.” Without the mentorship and friendship of other outsiders, marginalized comedy workers would never get the feedback and professional tools they need to work through these race- and gender-specific problems. Mentoring and taking pride in a trailblazing identity are strategies that comedy workers adopt from the ground up, but they also need institutional change from the top down, from the theaters and studios that invest in and develop comedic talent. Nancy Perkins has been in the business long enough to evaluate its trajectory, and she believes things are improving. There was a similarity [years ago in the people who were in positions of power in the entertainment industry], and I think that it probably showed in the product. I mean, if everyone in a decision-making position is a, let’s say, at that time, I don’t know, a thirty-eight-year-old, Ivy League–educated white male, they’re probably going to find a lot of the same things funny and not find some other things funny. But you know, I do think it’s getting better. And what’s really helped is technology and the expansion of the universe of platforms. Nowadays we can find it. There’s a niche to be found for yourself. Where when it was ABC, NBC, and CBS alone, that was kind of the only game in town.

Nancy talks about cultivating diversity through the use of digital technology and a willingness to look beyond the major networks. Platforms like YouTube and Twitter have made serious inroads in changing patterns of collaboration among performers and of fi ltering, segregating, and discovering new talent by studios. Discouragingly, however, recent data suggests that media ownership is increasingly dominated by whites, who own roughly 70 percent of over 13,000 television stations in the United States. Women own less than 7 percent, the percentage of nonwhite ownership is stagnant, and each step the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) takes toward deregulation increases the power of massive media corporations to capture more of the market, which places decision-making power in the hands of a very small group of top executives.27 Darnell Hunt laments that under these circumstances, “The FCC has been a booster for

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

175

large corporations as opposed to an agency that operates in the public interest.  .  .  . Allowing these mergers and meganational corporations, giving them such market power, is an abomination. It freezes out alternative points of view to the American public.”28 Another front in the war against institutional racism and sexism is the writers’ room. Saturday Night Live faced serious public-relations problems thanks to the prolonged absence of nonwhite writers and women writers (and nonwhite women writers) and to testimony about the ways sexism and racism have polluted the work environment at SNL since the 1980s.29 The late-night institution responded by putting out an explicit casting call for black women and by hiring their first black woman cast member, Sasheer Zamata, as well as two black women writers, Leslie Jones and LaKendra Tookes, in 2014. Alexis Wilkinson emphasizes this point: it’s not just about who is being cast but also about who is writing and what roles are being written for traditionally underrepresented groups in comedic fi lm and television. I appreciate good shows [that] use those opportunities to undercut stereotypes in a lot of ways. . . . The quicker that Hollywood realizes that people want to see characters that don’t act like the stereotypical way you think they should act, the better. Better TV will be coming, and more writers’ rooms will open up to people who don’t usually get those jobs. . . . You can’t see yourself doing that and stuff if no one who looks like you has ever done it.

Despite Alexis’s personal success, recent data suggest that writers’ rooms have not seen a transformation that has kept pace with the increasing diversity of television casting. According to the Writers Guild, BET is the only major network for which a majority of writers are people of color. Overall, women account for roughly 30 percent of all television writers, and nonwhites account for roughly 15 percent. Comedy Central lags far behind its peers, as only 3 percent of its writers are women and 9 percent are people of color. When writers of color do get jobs in television, they are often paid less than are whites, as the median salaries of Latino, Native American, and black television writers lag behind their white counterparts. And the problems of tokenism and of the conceptualization of projects about nonwhites as “niche” shows without mass appeal remain major

176

Chapter 5

barriers. Television writer Lisa Takeuchi Cullen told an interviewer that an executive rejected her pitch about another show focused on Asian American experiences because his company was waiting to see how ABC’s sitcom Fresh Off the Boat would fare.30 Networks, studios, and writing teams should not only redouble their efforts to recruit members of historically marginalized groups but also make it a point to have direct conversations about race, gender, and class in the workplace and to create mechanisms that empower outsiders to be more than tokens. Alexis’s description of her initiation into the Harvard Lampoon, an elitist and acclaimed humor institution dominated by white men, holds some promise for the future. Her colleagues, who were mostly white men, approached her and said, “We want more women and more people of color [in] this organization. What do you think? What were the things that made you, [even if it was] unintentional on our part, made you feel uncomfortable?” And that meant a lot to me. That meant a lot. It showed that they cared. You know? And it showed that they understood that I was uncomfortable for a long time. . . . I think full visibility is really important. You don’t want to tokenize anybody, but I know for me, I told my members to please encourage the girl writers to come to office hours [in which veteran Lampoon writers work with newcomers]. That way, when a girl walks in, it’s not just all white guys in the room.

In some ways, this anecdote exemplifies tokenism, because Alexis’s colleagues were treating her as a representative with the power to speak for her entire group. This is also one of those all-too-common situations in which people from marginalized groups are expected to educate dominant group members about oppression and guide them toward reform. But Alexis didn’t see it this way, and she valued her coworkers’ effort because they were actually asking her to change the culture of the Lampoon rather than to reaffirm it. Institutions dominated by whites, men, and white men need to empower people from marginalized groups to produce and perform content and to make decisions about the culture of the theater, club, or organization. Dominant groups need to understand how stereotyping and stigma can suffocate performers who might otherwise develop into stars, and they need to be the ones to police themselves rather than waiting for the lone person of color in the room to call someone out for rac-

Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

177

ism or sexism. Perhaps most importantly, they need to be willing to cede the spotlight and embrace new expectations about performance and audience engagement. Executives, talent managers, theater directors, and club bookers must turn their attention to nontraditional sites of performance to find and develop talent, and they must be willing to pursue alternative models of success.

This page intentionally left blank

Curtains

I ASKED ADAM COLE-KELLY how he deals with the disappointment and unfairness

of the comedy industry, and his answer was dispiriting. One thing I think everyone agrees with is that this industry is far from a meritocracy. You know? And I’d like to think that I would be better served if it was. Maybe I wouldn’t, but that’s what I’d like to think. I haven’t thought about it as much as maybe I should have. I just have sort of resigned myself to it, or [I’m] numb to the fact that it is the way that it is.

Adam is passionate about comedy, loves his job and his colleagues, and counts his social aptitude among his most important work skills. He is a straight white man from a privileged background who has seen considerable success in the early stages of his career as a screenwriter and is better off than most of the people I interviewed for this book. Calvin Evans is a stand-up from the South Side of Chicago with vastly different experiences but similarly impressive accomplishments as an early-career comic. He works in a different genre, but the language he used to describe how he copes with the inequity of comedy work was identical. “Just kind of learn to be numb,” he told me. “To not necessarily be too disappointed, but just . . . it’s the business.” Calvin and Adam are successful, by their own standards and by those of their peers, but they are also discouraged. There is a sense that many of the problems that arise at the intersection of com179

180

Curtains

munity and inequality are beyond the control of comedy creators and performers. Any change that comes to the comedy business must be accompanied by broader changes in the entire entertainment establishment. “Part of the problem is it’s an incredibly insular industry,” says sociologist and entertainment-industry expert Darnell Hunt. “The people who make decisions, who green-light projects, tend to surround themselves with people pretty much like themselves.” Historically, there has been little class, ethnic, and gender diversity among the ranks of television and fi lm executives, and the industry is still run mostly by straight white men who hire others like them. The pool of candidates and pipeline of people who become decision makers are shaped by race, class, and gender prejudice and inequality. Everyone wants to get their foot in the door, but those fortunate enough to get entry-level unpaid internships usually belong to privileged social networks that include acquaintances that are in the business. Young people on the bottom rungs of the industry ladder end up meeting and working with others like them, and they move through the ranks together and come to trust and hire one another as their careers develop. In addition to the broad impact of cultural capital in social networks and hiring, inequality is more acutely maintained over and over again at crucial moments decisions are made about a comedy creator or her product. So when we do get representations of nondominant groups on prominent entertainment platforms, those productions frequently reflect the imagination and sensibility of the white-male-dominated studios that make them. Eliza Skinner describes the gatekeepers as “a swarm of network people and management people deciding who is talked about and who is important enough. Some of that is because [of] the skills [that performers] have, and some of it is just they’ve got the right alchemy of a human: they’re the right shape, they’re the right age, [and] they’re talking about the right stuff in the right way.” Like Adam and Calvin, Eliza persists in walking this narrow road paved with the expectations and prejudices of others, and she keeps the faith. But unlike her male counterparts, Eliza describes encountering a ceiling constructed and maintained by the patriarchy and by objectification of women.

Curtains

181

If you keep punching your clock, you’re going to move forward. If audiences love you, love you, love you, you’re going to move forward. Whether you’re going to be attractive enough to be on camera [pauses dubiously]. . . . I look at people like Jane Lynch—not conventionally attractive, not conventionally sexy, older than people usually are when they get successful—and I feel much better. Because that says to me an audience asked for that, more than networks felt safe choosing that. . . . Your job as a comic is to be funny. Your job as a performer is to give them reasons to think you’re a good bet. Which means a lot of salad [to stay skinny].

The burden of eradicating sexism, racism, and other forms of oppression should rest squarely on the shoulders of those with power. But historically, the pursuit of social justice and decency has fallen to those who are most visibly and severely mistreated. And right now, there are too few people from marginalized groups among the gatekeepers to green-light a new era of representation for women and people of color. The most obvious explanation for this is that prejudice, bias, and stereotyping stand in the way; these problems corrupt hiring and retention practices across all industries. But we already know how to solve them: build deep candidate pools rather than leaning heavily on shallow and informal social networks; discuss hiring criteria at the outset of the process before discussing individual candidates; do not discuss the applicants as though they are representatives of an entire group; and avoid using ambiguous phrases that mask unspoken prejudice, such as “good fit,” when evaluating candidates. Another explanation for the deep inequality in fi lm and television is that the reward system is such that executives have no way to measure the money they would have made by funding a more imaginative project that is never approved. Instead, they just keep making choices that they deem to be safe but that also reaffirm the status quo. The story of Eddie Huang’s wildly successful sitcom, Fresh Off the Boat, is instructive. Huang’s television show is based on his memoir of the same name, and it is no small accomplishment that the show was green-lit by ABC. But according to Huang, the television show barely resembles the book, because his distinctive voice and the characters he describes were flattened and whitewashed for mass consumption. He explains:

182

Curtains

I didn’t understand how network television, the one-size-fits-all antithesis to Fresh Off the Boat, was going to house the voice of a futuristic chinkstronaut. I began to regret ever selling the book, because Fresh Off the Boat was a very specific narrative about SPECIFIC moments in my life, such as kneeling in a driveway holding buckets of rice overhead or seeing pink nipples for the first time. The network’s approach was to tell a universal, ambiguous, cornstarch story about Asian Americans resembling moo goo gai pan, written by a Persian American who cut her teeth on race relations writing for Seth MacFarlane. But who is that show written for?1

Huang’s experiences as a “futuristic chinkstronaut” are desperately needed snapshots of Asian American life not because they are representative but because they are distinctive. He notes that the network has no track record of actually bringing such unique experiences to life, and when they do develop projects like his, they entrust them to other “ethnic” writers with impressive resumes rather than to people carefully chosen by the show’s creators to preserve the specificity and weirdness of the stories. When Huang’s show has its breakthroughs, they often come at a cost. The only way they could even mention some of the stories in the book was by building a Trojan horse and feeding the pathogenic stereotypes that still define us to a lot of American cyclope. Randall was neutered, Constance was eroticized, and Young Eddie was urbanized so that the viewers got their miseen-place. People watching these channels have never seen us, and the network’s approach to pacifying them is to say we’re all the same.2

The executives’ assumption, according to Huang, is that white audiences are going to drive the show’s success and failure, and these viewers need to be presented with characters and tropes they recognize—even if those tropes come from their own racist imaginations—in order to stomach the more transgressive moments of the show. Huang’s solution is bold. He says, “We’ve been fi xated way too long on universality and the matrix’s pursuit of monoculture. It’s time to embrace difference and speak about it with singularity, idiosyncrasy, and infinite density. No more drone strikes, no more Nielsen boxes, no more ‘we are the world.’”3 Diversity and multiculturalism are poor antidotes to racism and should never be mistaken for

Curtains

183

the empowerment of marginalized groups. Empowerment is when a creator is able to tell an unsanitary, unapologetic, and unrecognizable story in a voice that sounds like hers rather than in a voice that supposedly appeals to focus groups and target demographics. The comic content of these performances can and should be critical of white supremacy and patriarchy, because such critiques are social truths, and “truth in comedy” is supposed to be a guiding maxim. We already have evidence that such critiques resonate with audiences and build attachments between stars and their fans, thanks to game-changing comedy shows such as Chappelle’s Show, Key and Peele, Broad City, and Aziz Ansari’s Master of None. Ansari, in fact, doubled down on his critique of white supremacy and the significance of the show by talking about racism and the normalization of white masculinity during his promotional appearances on late-night television shows.4 The notion that audiences, even white audiences, are not ready for the truth or that they won’t identify with characters that actively attack white supremacy and stereotypes has already been disproven. Executives have to see this truth for what it is and act on it. People at the top of the industry pyramid have tremendous influence and can model behaviors that others will copy. If training programs, theaters, and comedy clubs are just preparing performers for life in the industry, it is easy for them to pass the buck and say, “We don’t endorse these patterns of marginalization and stereotyping, but we’re giving you practical tools for working in an industry that is unfair.” But many comedy clubs, and especially sketch and improv theaters, have become massive businesses that operate with significant autonomy. Although they may take cues from fi lm and television, they do not view themselves solely as training grounds for the studios themselves. They want to produce and sustain live comedy at their own venues, and sending their best talent off to audition in Los Angeles can harm the product. This means they can and should act on their own behalf when it comes to increasing opportunity and equity for historically marginalized groups in comedy. The recent trend of housing different forms of comedy under one roof should continue, because everyone should have a sense of how stand-up relates to other forms of comedy labor. (Historically, Asians and American Indians have been ignored altogether, and blacks and Latinos in American

184

Curtains

comedy have always seen stand-up as the model.) This trend, however, is just a drop in a bucket-sized problem that requires far more courage; persistent residential segregation and the logic of urban development suggest that the only “safe” urban neighborhoods in which to open a business are those with plenty of young, white, urban professionals. Absent a more revolutionary commitment to desegregation by the profiteers and real-estate tycoons who orchestrate urban development, reaching out and appealing to customers and potential performers on the other side of the tracks is little more than a token gesture. Additionally, theaters and training schools need to bolster their investment in recruiting and fellowship programs for people who cannot afford to pay for classes and do not have exposure to sketch and improv comedy. The pipeline should be built such that these performers are groomed to excel onstage and become expert instructors and directors. Those who already hold positions of authority must be taught to recognize when stereotypes and prejudice are at play and be unafraid to disrupt the short-term agreement and cohesion of the performance (especially in improv) for the sake of a more just and equitable long-term comedy community. When it comes to putting members of traditionally excluded groups onstage, there can be pushback and frustration when it comes to booking a ladies’ night or ethnic night at clubs and theaters. Performers from these groups can feel as though they are being ghettoized and treated as charity cases and second-class citizens, and club owners and bookers may feel that advertising these events will alienate audiences who do not share the performers’ identity. But these shows remain necessary because they provide opportunities for people from marginalized groups to serve in leadership roles, they serve as showcases for agents and scouts interested in diversifying their talent pools, and they offer a respite from the persistent tokenism of being the sole woman, person of color, or woman of color in a mostly straight-white-male environment. Such showcases are especially beneficial for sketch and improv performers from disparaged groups, because they often play characters who are expected, and sometimes forced by the rules of improv, to address the latest trend, insult, or attack from the world of the white-supremacist patriarchy. Chances to develop idio-

Curtains

185

syncratic characters with interests besides interpreting the pain of oppression and providing humorous redemption for audiences of privilege are much appreciated. Finally, it is vital for comedy clubs, especially stand-up clubs that rely on live performances (rather than comedy-training classes) as their main source of revenue, to keep the focus of their business on comedy and prioritize respect between club representatives, performers, and the audience. Although comedy as a business is growing, the small-room standup boom of the 1980s is not likely to return. These spaces will never be able to pay big-name comics as much as theaters with thousands of seats can, so they have to focus on the professional development of early-career comics. If club owners are not especially interested or invested in comedy, they should hire bookers and managers with a deep and abiding passion for the art form and with enough knowledge about the comedy business to serve as informal mentors that young performers can look to for guidance. Club administrators should model respect for all the hosts and MCs by making it clear that they do not treat women, LGBT people, and nonwhites as tokens, and they should be unafraid to regularly put more than one person from these marginalized groups in their lineup. In addition, those in charge of the marketing and promotion strategies of comedy clubs must be willing to risk enduring short-term attendance and revenue lulls for the sake of creating long-term value. Customers should always be charged for admission rather than given complimentary tickets, and the two-drink minimum, which is common practice in the stand-up scene, should be eliminated. The two-drink minimum almost always seems like a burden or surprise for customers, even when it is communicated in advance, and it makes patrons feel as though the club’s raison d’etre is profit rather than the magic of comedy. Another side effect of this minimum is that once customers fulfi ll this purchasing requirement, they may feel entitled to behave in any manner they please because they think they have paid for the right to heckle the performers and to act up with their friends. Eliminating the minimum makes the audience feel as though they are part of something important, a collective experience that cannot work without their cooperation. Collective identity emerges not

186

Curtains

simply because only certain types of people are attracted to comedy but also because the values that the artists attach to performance are taught and reinforced by the formal and informal comedy institutions. Comedy performers have to embrace reform just as surely as do theater owners and networks executives. The idealized cure for what ails comedy workers is to fight back against industry tyranny in the name of meritocracy. But sustained meritocracy in comedy will never exist; it is a cultural industry based on taste and subject to wild changes spurred by exogenous economic shocks and technological advancements. There are, however, steps that comedy workers can take to build a healthier and more equitable working culture, even in the face of industry mistreatment. First, from the very first stages of comedy workers’ careers, instructors and informal mentors need to discuss and prioritize the economic aspects of comedy work with the same emphasis they place on developing material and comedic skills. Comedy training centers generally have more success on this front than informal spaces such as alt rooms and stand-up clubs. But regardless of setting or genre, too many people I spoke with were ambivalent about the relationships between different parts of the industry, the benefits of collective bargaining, the roles that figures such as managers and agents do and should play, and career strategies that account for volatility and include exit plans. These blind spots are in part products of a value system that pits comedy creators against “the suits,” and there are plenty of legitimate reasons for this adversarial attitude. But the conflict of interest between suits who extract profit from talent and the performers themselves should not result in a wholesale rejection by comedy creators of careful critical thinking and teaching about the business side of the comedy world. Second, and this is especially true in the improv world, the patriarchal and racist side effects of the “Yes, and” axiom of social and professional comedy life need to be critically examined. When the patterns of agreement in comedic performance become tyrannical and when people of color are repeatedly forced to play off of and deflect stereotypes, the results are not merely momentary discomfort but also patterned typecasting and exclusion from comedy communities at every level. Although this applies most directly to improv performance, the “Yes, and” spirit lies at the

Curtains

187

core of much of the informal socializing and networking so essential to comedy work. When interviewees describe their time in the writers’ room, at the bar, or at parties as extended riffing sessions in which they build off of each other’s banter, they are describing a form of socialization and joke making that has snowball-like qualities. Once the ball gets rolling downhill, it can be daunting to try to change its course or halt it altogether, even if it is exclusionary or insensitive to people from marginalized groups. Taboo topics are foundational for comedy, and I’m not suggesting censorship as a reaction to these incidents. But it is telling that the interviews did not yield any stories in which a white male stepped in and stopped a joke or bit that went too far or stopped a pattern of insult was clearly too burdensome for people whose bodies were marked as “other.” Offstage, the impact of patriarchy and racism is felt in other ways. Dating in the industry is a problem for women, who are often viewed as fans who use the men they partner with to break into comedy. Many women talked about the uncertainty and discomfort that arises when men offer to serve as mentors, as it can be difficult to tell whether men aspire to be friends, or friends with benefits. As a result, women experience pressure to keep their work and romantic lives separate in order to avoid being “slut shamed” or objectified. Socializing is part of the job, but this kind of socializing is especially fraught, and men do not report the same pressure that stand-up Kellye Howard spoke of when I asked her why she never dates within the industry. It’s a couple of things, dating in the industry. One, that respect factor. If you want male comedians to respect you, you have to earn it. You have to show them that you deserve to be respected. If you’re around here dating miscellaneous comedians, they’re not going to respect you; they’re going to treat you like a piece of ass. No matter how funny you are, no matter how creative you are, you’re still going to be the ho of the industry.

Kellye is not calling out “the suits” or club owners; she is describing the way she is treated by men who are her peers and have the power to change their behavior regardless of industry context. These problems are more than mere inconveniences for women who work in comedy, as they are tied to foundational beliefs about motivation and talent. Success is largely

188

Curtains

defined by the respect of one’s peers, but for Kellye and other women, respectability is shaped by sexist double standards that have nothing to do with work ethic or comedic talent. If they reject men’s advances, they are at risk of being labeled prudish and bitchy by the “boys’ club.” If women are receptive, or if they actively seek out romantic relationships within the comedy community, they may be cast as manipulative and insincere, as men advance suspicions that women use intimate relationships to gain power in social and professional networks. This second stereotype is especially pernicious because it complements the notion that, thanks to either nature or nurture, women simply are not funny enough to make it in comedy on their own and need to cheat the system through flirting and dating to get ahead. All these problems are symptoms of a fragile and selfdestructive conception of masculinity shaped by anxiety about women’s sexuality, embarrassment at the possibility of romantic rejection, and fear of increased competition in the workplace. But like it or not, new competitors and coworkers from all walks of life are entering the comedy workplace at a breakneck pace. Despite the financial challenges faced by traditional comedy clubs and television and movie studios, the comedy business as a whole is more vibrant than it has been in decades. Comedy workers should be especially buoyed by the brave new world of social media and digital broadcasting. There is no question that the new tools and platforms make it easier for fans and executives to support and invest in comedy creators. But the greater revolution swelling on these waves may lie in the vessel of comedy production—at the moment of creation rather than in dissemination. As Mickey Meyer emphasized, social media and digital distribution incentivize collaboration in ways we have not quite seen before in comedy work. This cross-pollination reaches across genres of entertainment, leading to new communal spaces and an increased willingness to learn and experiment with characters and art forms. The result is comedy acts that are diverse enough to support themselves by mining many different corners of the entertainment industry. Gone are the days of pining and praying for a steady job in late-night television. The revolution will not be televised. The revolution is behind the laughs.

Appendix

List of Interviews . Estee Adoram is the booker at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. . Richard Barrett is the booker at Comedy and Magic Club in Hermosa Beach, California. . Ali Barthwell is an ensemble member of The Second City’s Touring Company. She performs all over the United States and teaches improv classes in Chicago. She is also a contributor to New York magazine and XO Jane. . Alex Berg is a performer, teacher, and artistic director at Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. . Emily Berg is a writer, improv performer, and teacher in Key West, Florida, by way of Chicago, where she sends much of her written work to be performed. . Ben Bergman is a stand-up comic who has lived in Chicago and New York. He has performed at the Laugh Factory, Zanies, and other clubs across the country. . Jason Brett is a comedy and dramatic theater producer in Chicago. . Chesley C. Calloway is a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. He cofounded, produced, and hosted Comedy as a Second Language, the preeminent weekly independent stand-up comedy showcase in New York City. . Jennie Church-Cooper is a talent manager at Haven Entertainment in Los Angeles. . Brandall Cole (“B Cole”) is stand-up comic in Chicago. He performs all over the city and has appeared on BET’s Comic View and HBO’s Def Comedy Jam. . Adam Cole-Kelly is a screenwriter in Los Angeles. He and his writing partner, Sam Pitman, are currently working on features with New Line Cinema, Universal Pictures, and Sony, among others. Cole-Kelly has also written for shows on Comedy Central and for VH1’s Best Week Ever. . Eugene Cordero is an actor and comedian in Los Angeles. He teaches and performs regularly at Upright Citizens Brigade and has appeared in several television shows and fi lms, including Parks and Recreation and Key and Peele. 189

190

Appendix

. Danny Cruz is a writer and comedian living in Washington, DC, by way of New York City. He is the writer and star of Simon’s Movers, a web series about the awful life of a mover in New York City. . Heather de Michele is managing director at The Groundlings Theatre & School. . Pat Dixon is a comedian and journalist living and working in New York City. He is the host and creator of The New York City Crime Report with Pat Dixon, a comedy podcast dedicated to the discussion of crime and court activity in New York. . Lee Eisenberg is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. He and his writing partner, Gene Stupnitsky, wrote for and produced The Office for five seasons and created Hello Ladies for HBO. On the feature side, they wrote and produced Bad Teacher (2013). . Calvin Evans is a comedian and actor from Chicago. He performs all over the city and has appeared on MTV, Comedy Central, and Showtime. . Dina Facklis is the owner and creative director at The Chicago Improv Den. She has toured with and directed for The Second City’s Touring Company. She performs regularly at iO Chicago as part of Virgin Daiquiri. . Jamie Flam is the booker at the Hollywood Improv in Los Angeles. . Todd Glass is a stand-up comedian and host of the Todd Glass Show podcast. He performs and headlines all over the United States and frequently appears on Comedy Central and the late-night circuit. His memoir is The Todd Glass Situation (2015). . Bert Haas is executive vice president of Zanies Comedy Clubs Inc. in Chicago. He has been managing comedy clubs and booking talent since 1980. . Charna Halpern is the founder of the iO theater in Chicago and iO West in Los Angeles. She is also the author of Truth in Comedy: A Manual of Improvisation (1994) with Del Close and Kim “Howard” Johnson. . Kellye Howard is a comedian and actor based in Chicago. She performs across the United States and has been featured on Comedy Central, NBC, Fox, TBS, and other television outlets. . Kate James is a writer and sketch and improv performer in Chicago. Her group, Schadenfreude, performs across the United States. Kate also teaches, performs, and runs workshops at The Second City. . Jeff rey Joseph is a comedian and actor based in New York. He performs all over the country and has appeared on In Living Color and Rosanne among other fi lms and television shows. . Jason Kanter is a stand-up comic, writer, and actor living in New York. He has appeared on Gotham Comedy LIVE and the Travel Channel and is a regular contributor on SiriusXM Satellite Radio.

Appendix

191

. Myq Kaplan is a comedian in New York. He has appeared on the Tonight Show, the Late Show, Comedy Central Presents, and his own one-hour special on Netflix, Small, Dork, and Handsome. . Daniel Kellison is the founder and producer of JASH and the cofounder of the entertainment group Jackhole Productions with Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla. He previously worked in television and fi lm, including a stint as producer on Late Night with David Letterman. . Langan Kingsley performs at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York. Her work as a writer and a performer can be found at IFC, Adult Swim, Above Average, UCB Comedy, College Humor, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Rumpus, and The Hairpin. She currently writes for Funny or Die. . Chris Laker is a comedian in New York. He hosts a weekly show at The Creek and The Cave and is a regular guest on SiriusXM Cosmo Radio. . Matteo Lane is a comedian in New York. He has appeared on Comedy Central and MTV and performs throughout New York City and elsewhere. . Holly Laurent is a writer, actor, and improviser living in Los Angeles. She was a cast member of The Second City Mainstage in Chicago and is member of the longstanding improv group The Reckoning. . Mike Lawrence is a comedian and staff writer on Inside Amy Schumer and was a writer on the 2015 MTV Movie Awards, the 2015 Webby Awards, and We Have Issues on E! He lives in New York. . Mary Lindsey is the owner and founder of Jokes and Notes, the only blackowned comedy club in Chicago. Prior to Jokes and Notes, she was the coowner of All Jokes Aside. . Nick Maritato is a comedian and writer living in Brooklyn. He is the host of the podcast Junk Food. You can see him perform any night of the week in New York. . Jamie Masada is the owner and founder of Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. . Dobie Maxwell has performed and taught stand-up comedy since 1985 and has also had stints on morning radio all over America. He is also the author of Monkey in the Middle (2016), about wearing a wire and testifying in court against his childhood best friend. . Mickey Meyer is a producer at JASH in Los Angeles. . Hasan Minhaj is a senior correspondent at The Daily Show. He has performed stand-up, improv, and sketch comedy across the country and has appeared on several television platforms. . Jessica Munks is a casting associate and director at CFB Casting in Los Angeles. . Nora Nolan is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles. She has written several digital comedy series for the production company Whalerock Indus-

192

.

.

. .

.

.

.

.

.

.

Appendix

tries, including Mandatory Viewing, which ran for thirty-two weeks. In 2015, Nora cowrote a sitcom pilot, Written Off, which appeared on Amazon Prime. Mark Normand is a comedian living and working in New York. Mark performs all over the country and has done a Comedy Central half-hour special. He has also appeared on Conan, Inside Amy Schumer, TruTV, Best Week Ever, and Last Comic Standing. Jacqueline Novak is a New York–based comedian and the author of the nonfiction memoir How to Weep in Public: Feeble Offerings on Depression from One Who Knows (2016). Her comedy album is called Quality Notions. Annie O’Rourke is a producer and writer in Los Angeles. Brian Palermo is an improv comedian and actor in Los Angeles. He has worked professionally in television, fi lm, and stage for twenty years. He is mostly identified with The Groundlings theater, a big sketch and improv hub in Hollywood. Rojo Perez is a comedian living and working in New York. He is the current host of Comedy as a Second Language and performs throughout the city and at other clubs nationwide. Nancy Perkins has worked in casting for thirty years, fifteen of those years as head of casting at Universal Television. She also partnered with Allison Jones to cast the pilot of Parks and Recreation and did the episodic casting for Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. She is currently an independent casting consultant in Los Angeles. Henry Phillips is a stand-up comedian, actor, and musician living in Los Angeles. He has appeared on Comedy Central, ABC, and numerous other television and radio platforms. His semibiographical fi lm, Punching the Clown, received the Audience Award at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2009. John M. Phillips is a writer, producer, and actor living in Los Angeles. He was a member of The Fift h Humour at Yale University and studied and performed at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City. As an actor, he has appeared on The Office, New Girl, and Arrested Development. He also wrote the screenplay for Dirty Grandpa (2016). Ashley Brooke Roberts is a Brooklyn-based comedian. She is a member of the sketch team Bullshit Women, which has been invited to perform all over the country. She hosts the popular weekly stand-up show “Fresh Out!” at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and regularly performs stand-up all over the city. Zach Rosenfeld is a comedian and actor living in New York. He started his career through the Kids N’ Comedy program as its youngest member ever (at nine years old) and was one of the youngest comedians to ever perform at the renowned Gotham Comedy Club.

Appendix

193

. Patrick Rowland is an improv performer, actor, and writer in Chicago. He performs at iO, The Second City, and other venues across the country. . Abigoliah Schamaun started her comedy career in New York and now lives in London, England. She has appeared on Comedy Central in the United Kingdom and gave critically acclaimed performances at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Glasgow Comedy Festival. . Matt Selman is a writer and executive producer for The Simpsons. . Ken Severa is a Chicago-based comedian who hosts the Fly by Night radio show on WIND Chicago and performs across the country. . Andrew Short is a stand-up comedian in New York City. . Eliza Skinner is a stand-up comedian and writer for the Late Show with James Corden. She has appeared on E!, MTV, Showtime, AMC, and the BBC. She has performed at festivals all over the world including RiotLA, South by Southwest, Bridgetown, the NY Comedy Festival, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. . Rebecca Delgado Smith is a comedic actor and writer based in Los Angeles. Her sketch group, Harvard Sailing Team, performs across the country, and she has appeared in several television shows and fi lms. . Rebecca Sohn is an improv performer and instructor based at the Annoyance Theater in Chicago. She is a frequent performer at The Second City as well as at other venues around Chicago. . Gene Stupnitsky is a writer and producer living in Los Angeles. He and his partner, Lee Eisenberg, wrote for and produced The Office for five seasons and created Hello Ladies for HBO. On the feature side, they wrote and produced Bad Teacher (2013). . Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer, and producer living in New York City. He is the author of How to Be Black (2012), former supervisor of digital expansion at The Daily Show, and former editor and director of digital content at The Onion. . Rebecca Trent is the founder and managing director of The Creek and The Cave, one of the premier independent comedy venues in New York City. . Tim Walkoe is a comedian, musician, and actor from Chicago. He has been a radio host on WRXR in Chicago and KDWB in Minneapolis, and he has been heard on National Public Radio. Walkoe is a veteran headliner at over two hundred comedy venues nationwide and has appeared on HBO, Showtime, ABC, Comedy Central, Fox, and ESPN. . Joel Walkowski is a stand-up comedian and writer in New York. . Steve Waltien has studied, taught, and performed improv all over the world for over fi fteen years with groups such as The Improvised Shakespeare Company and Whirled News Tonight. He is an alum of The Second City Mainstage and writes for and occasionally appears on television.

194

Appendix

. Tim Warner is a stand-up comedian in New York. . Alexis Wilkinson was the first black woman president of the Harvard Lampoon. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, and the New York Times. She has written for HBO’s Veep and FOX’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine. She lives in Los Angeles. Demographic Breakdown Gender (total) Men 42

Women 25

Racial/ethnic identification White Black 50

9

Latino/a

Asian

Middle Eastern

3

3

2

Family socioeconomic class background Middle class or higher (two guardians with bachelor of Working class arts degrees (no more than or at least one Experienced one guardian guardian with poverty during with bachelor of postgraduate upbringing arts degree) degree) 5

23

33

Education (highest degree achieved) High school Bachelor of arts Postgraduate 12

51

2

No reply 6 No reply 2

Notes

Lights . Jason Zinoman, “Laughs Can Be Cheap at a Comedy Theater,” New York Times, February 19, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/theater/upright -citizens-brigade-grows-by-not-paying-performers.html?pagewanted=all. . Michele Lamont, The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 2. . Richard A. Peterson and Narasimhan Anand, “The Production of Culture Perspective,” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 311. For more, please see Richard A. Peterson, “The Production of Culture: A Prolegomenon,” in The Production of Culture (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1976), 7–22; and Peterson, “Revitalizing the Culture Concept,” Annual Review of Sociology 5 (1979): 137–166. . Betsy Borns, Comic Lives: Inside the World of American Stand-Up Comedy (New York: Touchstone, 1987), 43. . Ibid, 30–56. . Judy Carter, The Comedy Bible: From Stand-Up to Sitcom—The Writer’s Ultimate How-to Guide (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 277. . Seth Kelley, “The Standup Comedy Boom Thrives in Houses Large and Small,” Variety, July 14, 2015, http://variety.com/2015/biz/features/the-standup -comedy-boom-thrives-in-houses-large-and-small-1201539189/. . Jason Zinoman and Megan Angelo, “Clever, How They Earn That Laugh,” New York Times, November 2, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/arts/stand -ups-and-their-salaries.html?pagewanted=all. . Ibid. . Dylan Gadino, “Controversy Over Upright Citizens Brigade Flares, But Is It Much Ado about Nothing?” Huffington Post, February 1, 2013, http://www .huffingtonpost.com/dylan-gadino/upright-citizens-brigade_b_2583975.html. . As reported by Sean L. McCarthy, “UCB Stand-Ups, UCB Theaters Try to

195

196

Notes to Lights

Find a Compromise,” The Comic’s Comic, February 2, 2013, http://thecomicscomic .com/2013/02/12/nyc-stand-ups-ucb-theaters-find-a-compromise/. . Gadino, “Controversy Flares.” . See http://newyork.ucbtrainingcenter.com/faq. . Jennifer C. Lena, “Relational Approaches to the Sociology of Music,” in Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture, eds. Laurie Hanquinet and Mike Savage (New York: Routledge, 2015), 150. . For more on this, see Andrew Clark, “How the Comedy Nerds Took Over,” New York Times, April 20, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine /how-the-comedy-nerds-took-over.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. . This is according to comedian Todd Glass, as reported by John Wenzel, “Comedy Is Bigger Than Ever. But Are the Profits?” Denver Post, July 1, 2012, http://www.denverpost.com/ci_20965650/funny-money-comedy-is-bigger-than -ever-but. Additional pay estimates for stand-ups, late-night writers, sitcom writers, comedic actors, directors, and screenwriters can be found at Priyanka Mattoo, “What Comedy Pays,” Splitsider, September 22, 2015, http://splitsider.com/2015/09 /what-comedy-pays/. . Wenzel, “Comedy Is Bigger Than Ever.” . The Writers Guild is actually two organizations: the Writers Guild East and the Writers Guild West. . These figures are available on the Writers Guild website; see http://www .wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/min2014.pdf. For a fantastic history of the screenwriting business and a snapshot of the industry today, see Margaret Heidenry, “When the Spec Script Was King,” Vanity Fair, March 2013, http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/03/will-spec-script-screenwriters-rise -again. . The Second City rule book, negotiated by the AEA, is available at https:// www.actorsequity.org/docs/rulebooks/Second_City_Rulebook_14-18.pdf. . The salary estimation is drawn from the AEA rule book, but the estimated annual revenue for the theater and the comparison to Broadway are drawn from Anthony D’Alessandro, “Greats Go through Second City Mainstage,” Variety, October 15, 2009, http://variety.com/2009/scene/markets-festivals/greats-go -through-second-city-mainstage-1118010003/. . Warren St. John, “Seinfeld It Ain’t,” New York Times, January 29, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/fashion/sundaystyles/29Comedy.html?page wanted=all. . Chris Rock raised this point quite forcefully when he asked, “If Kevin Hart is playing 40,000 seats in a night and Jon Stewart is playing 3,000, the fact that Jon Stewart’s 3,000 are white means Kevin has to cross over? That makes no sense. If anybody needs to cross over, it’s the guy who’s selling 3,000 seats.” See Chris Rock, “Chris Rock Pens Blistering Essay on Hollywood’s Race Problem: ‘It’s

Notes to Chapter 1

197

a White Industry,’” The Hollywood Reporter, December 3, 2014, http://www.holly woodreporter.com/news/top-five-fi lmmaker-chris-rock-753223. . Meredith Rodriguez, “Improv Diversity Starts at the Roots,” Chicago Tribune, December 12, 2013, http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ott -1213-diversity-comedy-20131212-story.html. . Kelly Leonard and Tom Yorton, Yes, And: Lessons from The Second City (New York: Harper Business, 2015), 63–64. Information about the Bob Curry Fellowship can be found at http://www.secondcity.com/diversity-outreach/. . Rebecca Keegan, “USC Study: Minorities Still Under-Represented in Popular Films,” Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2013 /oct/30/entertainment/la-et-mn-race-and-movies-20131030. . This is according to a study by the New York Film Academy, cited in Julia Henderson, “How Jennifer Lawrence Got American Hustled by Hollywood,” Public Radio International, January 25, 2015, http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-01-25 /how-jennifer-lawrence-got-american-hustled-hollywood. . Dean Obeidallah, “‘SNL’ Gets What the Rest of TV Should: Racial Diversity Means Quality,” The Daily Beast, January 7, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast .com/articles/2014/01/07/snl-gets-what-the-rest-of-tv-should-racial-diversity -means-quality.html. . Vanna Le, “Jerry Seinfeld Tops Highest-Earning List of 2013 Comedians,” Forbes, July 11, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/vannale/2013/07/11/jerry-seinfeld -tops-list-of-the-highest-earning-comedians/. . Diana Wright, “Cross Post: Some Depressing Stats about Female Comedy Directors,” Indiewire, April 17, 2013, http://blogs.indiewire.com/womenandholly wood/cross-post-some-depressing-stats-about-female-comedy-directors. . Rock, “Blistering Essay.” . Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (New York: Routledge, 1984). . John L. Jackson, Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 15. . Ashley Mears, Pricing Beauty: The Making of a Fashion Model (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 12.

Chapter 1 . Victoria Ando, Gordon Claridge, and Ken Clark, “Psychotic Traits in Comedians,” British Journal of Psychiatry 113, published electronically January 16, 2014, http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/early/2014/01/02/bjp.bp.113.134569.abstract. Statement from Ando as reported in David Cox, “The Psychology of Comedy: Where Humour and Psychosis Overlap,” The Guardian, August 20, 2014, http:// www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/20/psychology-of-comedy-humour-psy chosis-overlap.

198

Notes to Chapter 2

. Ibid. . Sam Friedman, “The Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Sense of Humour: British Comedy and New Forms of Distinction,” British Journal of Sociology 62 (2011): 347–370. . Philippe Coulangeon, “Social Stratification of Musical Tastes: Questioning the Cultural Legitimacy Model,” Revue Francais de Sociologie 46 (2005): 123–154. . These three theories are widely accepted in the literature. See Arthur Berger, “What’s So Funny About That?,” Society 47, no. 6 (2010): 6–10; Christie Davies, Ethnic Humor Around the World: A Comparative Analysis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 7–8; Andrew Stott, Comedy (New York: Routledge, 2005), 131–140; and Eric Weitz, The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 67. . Stott, Comedy, 140. . Davies, Ethnic Humor, 7. . Joanne R. Gilbert, Performing Marginality: Humor, Gender, and Social Critique (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2004), 3. . Lawrence Mintz, “Stand-Up Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation,” American Quarterly 37 (1987): 74. . Luigi Pirandello, On Humor (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1974), 132. . Borns, Comic Lives, 19. . Charna Halpern, Del Close, and Kim “Howard” Johnson, Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation (Colorado Springs: Meriwether, 1994), 45–56. . The Comedy Studio could hardly be called a proper comedy club at the time Kaplan first visited in the late 1990s. It was an unused function room atop a Chinese restaurant called Hong Kong in Harvard Square, and it had only one real employee, who owned, managed, and frequently hosted shows at the venue. It grew into one of the staples of the Boston comedy scene, especially among the Cambridge-based comedians who were undergraduate or graduate students by day. . Leonard and Yorton, Yes, And, 12. . Ibid, 19. . Ibid, 9. . For a list of courses and fees, please visit http://www.groundlings.com /school/getting-started.aspx. . The training program described here is based on the account provided by managing director Heather de Michele during an interview with the author.

Chapter 2 . Claude Fischer, “Inventing the Social Network,” Boston Review, December 19, 2013, http://bostonreview.net/us-made-america/inventing-social-network.

Notes to Chapter 3

199

. Peter V. Marsden and Elizabeth H. Gorman, “Social Networks, Job Change, and Recruitment,” in Sourcebook of Labor Markets, ed. Ivar Berg and Arne L. Kalleberg (New York: Plenum Publishers, 2001), pp. 447–502. . See Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties,” American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360–1380; Mark Granovetter, Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974); Nan Lin, “Social Networks and Status Attainment,” Annual Review of Sociology 25 (1999): 467– 487; Nan Lin, Social Capital: A Theory of Structure and Action (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Sarah Damaske, “Brown Suits Need Not Apply: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class in Institutional Network Building,” Sociological Forum 24 (2009): 402–425. . Rodney Hero, “Social Capital and Racial Inequality,” Perspectives on Politics 1 (2003): 113–122. . Ibid. . Robert Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century: The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2007): 137–174; Damaske, “Brown Suits,” 419. . For a review of these ideas and the research on relationships between social-support systems and health and wellness, see Bert N. Uchino, “Understanding the Links between Social Support and Physical Health,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 4, no. 3 (2009): 436–455. . Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 1–24; Marcel Fafchamps and Bart Minten, “Relationships and Traders in Madagascar,” Journal of Development Studies 35 (1999): 1–35; Fergus Lyon, “Trust, Networks and Norms: The Creation of Social Capital in Agricultural Economies in Ghana,” World Development 28 (2000): 663–681. . Rock, “Blistering Essay.”

Chapter 3 . “Marc Maron: A Life Fueled by ‘Panic and Dread,’” NPR, April 29, 2013, http://www.npr.org/2013/04/29/179014321/marc-maron-a-life-fueled-by-panic-and -dread. . Kristina Monllos, “How Marc Maron Built a Brand That Helped Him Land the President,” Adweek, June 24, 2015, http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising -branding/how-marc-maron-built-brand-helped-him-land-president-165506. . “Marc Maron: A Life,” NPR. . For a brief summary of these traditions, see Charles Chen, “Career Projection: Narrative in Context,” Journal of Vocational Education and Training 49, no. 2 (1997): 314.

200

Notes to Chapter 3

. Mark Granovetter’s “strength of weak ties” theory is the dominant paradigm for engaging these questions. Granovetter’s original article was published in 1973, but his 1983 rejoinder, “The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited,” Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 201–233, is a more useful resource for demonstrating his impact on the field. . Peter Heslin, “Self- and Other-Referent Criteria of Career Success,” Journal of Career Assessment 11, no. 3 (2003): 262–286. . Nicky Dries, Roland Pepermans, and Evelien De Kerpel, “Exploring Four Generations’ Beliefs about Career: Is ‘Satisfied’ the New ‘Successful’?” Journal of Managerial Psychology 23, no. 8 (2008): 921. . See Dries, Pepermans, and De Kerpel, “Exploring Four Generations’ Beliefs,” 907–908; and Lillian Eby, Marcus Butts, and Angie Lockwood, “Predictors of Success in the Age of the Boundaryless Career,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 24, no. 6 (2003): 689. . Eby, Butts, and Lockwood, “Predictors of Success,” 689. . Marc Maron, “Marc Maron’s Advice for Would-Be Comedians: Don’t Kid Yourself,” Vanity Fair, June 24, 2014, http://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged /2014/06/marc-maron-comedy-advice. . Chris Hayes, Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (New York: Broadway Books, 2013), 56–57. . This is especially true for poor people of color, who have even less social mobility than whites, as Patrick Sharkey notes in Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Equality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). More broadly, research has repeatedly shown that impoverished people cannot simply work their way out of destitution, as the types of jobs available, wages paid, and cost of living result in circumstances in which poor people have to work tirelessly merely to survive rather than to advance. Two of the most compelling texts on this point are Jay McLeod’s Ain’t No Makin’ It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood (New York: Westview Press, 1987); and Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2001). . Kim Parker, “Women More Than Men Adjust Their Careers for Family Life,” Pew Research Center, October 1, 2015, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact -tank/2015/10/01/women-more-than-men-adjust-their-careers-for-family-life/. . Priyanka Mattoo, “What Comedy Pays,” Splitsider, September 22, 2015, http://splitsider.com/2015/09/what-comedy-pays/. . “FX Landed Louis CK with Creative Freedom and by Wiring $200,000,” New York Times, March 26, 2012, http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/26 /fx-landed-louis-c-k-with-creative-freedom-and-by-wiring-200000/. . As Louis said in The Hollywood Reporter, “If I had to go through the

Notes to Chapter 4

201

broadcast network approval process, I’d have to congeal every idea I have into an episode script! I’d have to know exactly what is going to happen throughout the season and then rewrite it over and over before shooting.” Louis CK, “Louis CK Reveals How to Write, Direct, Edit, and Star in Every Episode of a Hit Show (and Not Go Crazy),” The Hollywood Reporter, May 13, 2014, http://www.hollywood reporter.com/news/louis-ck-reveals-how-write-703433. . Retrieved September 1, 2015, from Louis CK’s website, at https://louisck .net/news/another-statement-from-louis-c-k. . David Carr, “A Comic Distributes Himself,” New York Times, December  19, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/business/media/louis-ck-plays-a -serious-joke-on-tv-the-media-equation.html. . Ibid. . Video and transcription are widely available on the Internet. This transcription can be found at http://thecomicscomic.com/2012/07/27/patton-oswalts -letters-to-both-sides-his-keynote-address-at-montreals-just-for-laughs-2012/. . Gray Gannaway and Chris Robley, “The Breakdown of Monetization on YouTube,” Hypebot, April 27, 2015, http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2015/04/the -breakdown-of-monetization-on-youtube.html. YouTube provides instructions for monetization at https://www.youtube.com/account_monetization. . Jack Marshall, “Twitter Opens Pre-Roll Video Ad-Marketplace,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2015, http://www.wsj.com/articles/twitter-opens-pre -roll-video-ad-marketplace-1444338084. . For more details about the costs and benefits of such YouTube careers, see “Yes, You Can Make Six Figures as a YouTube Star .  .  . and Still End Up Poor,” Business Insider, February 10, 2014, http://www.businessinsider.com /how-much-money-youtube-stars-actually-make-2014-2. . Maron, “Marc Maron’s Advice.”

Chapter 4 . Tom Scocca, “Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby’s Multiple SexAssault Accusation?” Gawker, February 4, 2014, http://gawker.com/who-wants-to -remember-bill-cosbys-multiple-sex-assaul-1515923178. . The timeline presented here is largely drawn from Scott Porch, “How the World Turned Against Bill Cosby: A Day-by-Day Account,” The Daily Beast, December 1, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/01/how-the-world -turned-on-bill-cosby-a-day-by-day-account.html. . Darian Lusk, “Who Is Hannibal Buress, and Why Did He Call Bill Cosby a ‘Rapist’?” CBS News, November 18, 2014, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is -hannibal-buress-and-why-did-he-call-bill-cosby-a-rapist/. . These statistics are documented in Porch, “How the World Turned.”

202

Notes to Chapter 4

. One in five American women is a victim of sexual assault, and over 95 percent of rapists never spend a day in jail. See Zerlina Maxwell, “Rape Culture Is Real,” Time, March 27, 2014, http://time.com/40110/rape-culture-is-real/. . Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 41. . The emphasis on “familiarity without responsibility” is adapted from Michele Lamont’s review of Gamson’s book, “Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America, by Joshua Gamson,” American Journal of Sociology, 100, no. 4 (1995): 1070. . Chris Rojek, Celebrity (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), 149. . Ibid. . Chris Rojek, Fame Attack: The Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012), 4. . Dara Greenwood, “Fame, Facebook, and Twitter: How Attitudes about Fame Predict Frequency and Nature of Social Media Use,” Psychology of Popular Media 2, no. 4 (2013): 223. . Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt, “The Tweet Smell of Celebrity Success: Explaining Variation in Twitter Adoption among a Diverse Group of Young Adults,” New Media & Society, published online May 10, 2011, http://journals.sagepub.com /doi/abs/10.1177/1461444811405805. . Anna Marwick and danah boyd, “To See and Be Seen: Celebrity Practice on Twitter,” Convergence 17, no. 2 (May 2011): 145. . Ibid, 144. . Greenwood, “Fame, Facebook, and Twitter,” 225. Greenwood cites Anna Marwick and danah boyd for developing the concept of “microcelebrity” in Marwick and boyd, “To See and Be Seen.” Marwick and boyd, however, trace the term to Teresa Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity & Community in the Age of Social Networks (New York: Peter Lang, 2008). . Will Oremus, “No, Instagram Is Not Bigger than Twitter,” Slate, December 20, 2014, http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/12/10/instagram_hits _300_million_users_bigger_than_twitter_not_really.html. . Karine Nahon, Jeff Hemsley, Shawn Walker, Muzammil Hussain, “Fifteen Minutes of Fame: The Power of Blogs in the Lifecycle of Viral Political Information,” Policy and Internet 3, no. 1 (2011): 1. . This definition is given by computational scientist Sharad Goel, quoted in David Castelvecchi, “The Mathematics Behind Internet Virality,” Nature, March  5, 2015, http://www.nature.com/news/the-mathematics-behind-internet -virality-1.17046. . Greenwood, “Fame, Facebook, and Twitter,” 223. . Sara Konrath, Brian Meier, and Brad Bushman, “Development and Vali-

Notes to Chapter 4

203

dation of the Single Item Narcissism Scale (SINS),” PLoS ONE 9, no. 8, published online August 5, 2014, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal .pone.0103469. . Dara Greenwood, Christopher Long, and Sonya Dal Cin, “Fame and the Social Self: The Need to Belong, Narcissism, and Relatedness Predict the Appeal of Fame,” Personality and Individual Differences 55, no. 5 (2013): 490–495. . Ibid. . Elaine Replogie, “Fame, Social Media Use, and Ethics,” Sociological Forum 29, no. 3 (September 2014): 736–742. . Ibid. . Graeme Turner, Understanding Celebrity (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2004), 9. . Zayda Rivera, “Dave Chappelle on Leaving ‘Chappelle’s Show’: ‘Technically, I never quit,’” New York Daily News, June 11, 2014, http://www.nydailynews .com/entertainment/tv/dave-chappelle-years-late-work-chappelle-show-article -1.1825879. . Gil Kaufman, “Dave Chappelle Speaks: ‘I’m Not Crazy, I’m Not Smoking Crack,’” MTV News, May 16, 2005, http://www.mtv.com/news/1502355/dave -chappelle-speaks-im-not-crazy-im-not-smoking-crack/. . Christopher John Farley, “On the Beach with Dave Chappelle,” Time, May 15, 2015, http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1061415,00.html. . Cord Jefferson, “The Django Moment; or, When Should White People Laugh in Django: Unchained?,” Gawker, December 27, 2012, http://gawker.com/5971346 /the-django-moment-or-when-should-white-people-laugh-in-django-unchained. . For more on racism and public secrecy, see Michael Jeff ries, Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014), 4–7. . See Dave Chappelle’s interview with Maya Angelou at http://www .comedyhype.com/social-comedy/comedy-moment-dave-chappelle-explained -maya-angelou-left-chappelle-show/. . Emma Silvers, “Dave Chappelle Kept Me Up until 5am Th is Morning and I’m Still Trying to Process What Happened,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 18, 2014, http://www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision/2014/09/18/dave-chappelle -kept-me-until-5am-morning-and-im-still-trying-process-what-ju. . Jessica Todd, “Dave Chappelle Explains Why He Chose Family Over Fame,” Vlad TV, July 10, 2014, http://www.vladtv.com/article/194015/dave -chappelle-explains-why-he-chose-family-over-fame. . Kris Holt, “Rob Delaney to the Daily Dot: ‘I Had to Be Good at Twitter,’” July 4, 2012, http://www.dailydot.com/interviews/rob-delaney-twitter-exclusive -interview/.

204

Notes to Chapter 5

. Ibid. . Jordan Zakarin, “Rob Delaney: Twitter Star, Making You Laugh and Cry,” The Hollywood Reporter, August 14, 2012, http://www.hollywoodreporter.com /news/rob-delaney-twitter-comedy-mitt-romney-361800. . Patton Oswalt, “A Closed Letter to Myself about Thievery, Heckling and Rape Jokes,” http://www.pattonoswalt.com/index.cfm?id=167&page=spew. Accessed September 3, 2015. . NPR staff, “Caught in the Act: Joke-Stealing in the Age of Twitter,” NPR, August 2, 2015, http://www.npr.org/2015/08/02/428643378/caught-in-the-act-a-joke -told-twice. . Gabriel Snyder, “How Movie Stars Get Paid,” Gawker, April 2, 2009, http:// gawker.com/5196154/how-movie-stars-get-paid. . As quoted in Seth Kelley, “The Standup Comedy Boom Thrives in Houses Large and Small,” Variety, July 14, 2015, http://variety.com/2015/biz/features/the -standup-comedy-boom-thrives-in-houses-large-and-small-1201539189/.

Chapter 5 . Jarett Wieselman, “Jerry Seinfeld On Diversity in Comedy: “Who Cares? Are You Making Us Laugh or Not?,” Buzzfeed. February 3, 2014, https://www .buzzfeed.com/jarettwieselman/jerry-seinfeld-on-diversity-in-comedy-who-cares -are-you-maki?utm. . Ibid. . Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Wellesley Centers for Women, 1990, http://www.wcwonline.org/Active-Researchers /peggy-mcintosh-phd. . For further reference on group-position theory, see Lawrence Bobo and Mia Tuan, Prejudice and Politics: Group Position, Public Opinion, and the Wisconsin Treaty Rights Dispute (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). For findings on social psychology and bias, see Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (New York: Delacorte Press, 2013); and Jennifer Eberhart, “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 87, no. 6 (2006): 876–893. . This succinct definition comes from Allan Johnson, The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005), 5–6. . Banaji and Greenwald, Blindspot. . For more on stereotype threat, see Claude Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (New York: Norton, 2011). Derald Wing Sue is most often credited with establishing the definition and theory of microaggressions, and his most influential article is “Racial Microaggressions in

Notes to Chapter 5

205

Everyday Life: Implications for Clinical Practice,” American Psychologist 62, no. 4 (May–June 2007): 271–286. . Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female Musicians,” American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 715–741; Kenneth Chang, “Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds,” New York Times, September 24, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25 /science/bias-persists-against-women-of-science-a-study-says.html?_r=0. . For a thorough discussion of theories of objectification (including Dworkin’s), please see Martha Nussbaum, “Objectification,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 24, no. 4 (1995): 249–291. . Julia Henderson, “How Jennifer Lawrence Got American Hustled by Hollywood,” Public Radio International, January 25, 2015, http://www.pri.org /stories/2015-01-25/how-jennifer-lawrence-got-american-hustled-hollywood. . Vanna Le, “Jerry Seinfeld Tops Highest-Earning List of 2013 Comedians,” Forbes, July 11, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/vannale/2013/07/11/jerry -seinfeld-tops-list-of-the-highest-earning-comedians/. . Yesha Callahan, “Leaked E-Mails Show that Sony Executive Called Kevin Hart a ‘Whore,’” The Root, December 11, 2014, http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the _grapevine/2014/12/leaked_emails_show_that_a_sony_executive_called_kevin _hart_a_whore.html. . Yesha Callahan, “Sony Exec Issues Apology for Obama Race Jokes in Leaked E-Mail,” The Root, December 11, 2014, http://www.theroot.com/blogs /the_grapevine/2014/12/sony_exec_issues_apology_for_obama_race_jokes_in _leaked_email.html. . For more on the difference between intent and impact, please see Michael P. Jeff ries, Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013); and Imani Perry, More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 2011). . David Itzkoff, “Life Sends Lemons? Make Comedy,” New York Times, August 30, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/arts/television/kevin-hart -learns-to-tell-the-truth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. . Cecilia Kang, Karissah Thompson, and Drew Harwell, “Hollywood’s Race Problem: An Insular Industry Struggles to Change,” Washington Post, December 23, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/hollywoods -race-problem-an-insular-industry-struggles-to-change/2014/12/19.html. . Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, and Katherine Pieper, “Inequality in 700 Popular Films: Examining Portrayals of Gender, Race, & LGBT Status from 2007 to 2014,” Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at USC Annenberg,

206

Notes to Chapter 5

http://annenberg.usc.edu/pages/~/media/MDSCI/Inequality in 700 Popular Films 8215 Final for Posting.ashx. Accessed August 5, 2015. . Yesha Callahan, “Sony Execs Were Warned Not to Cast Denzel Washington Because Black Leads Flop Overseas,” The Root, December 18, 2014, http:// www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2014/12/sony_execs_were_warned_not _to_cast_denzel_washington_because_black_leads.html. . Patt Morrison, “Darnell Hunt: Hollywood’s Dismal Diversity Data Explained,” Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2015, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op -ed/la-oe-morrison-hunt-20150318-column.html#page=1. . See Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Meztiza (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987), 75–81; and bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 10–18. . Ellie Schechet, “Amy Schumer: ‘I’m 160 Pounds, and I Can Catch a Dick Whenever I Want,’” Jezebel, June 4, 2015, http://jezebel.com/amy-schumer-im-160 -pounds-and-i-can-catch-a-dick-when-1708966494. . Although he does not use Vergara as a case study, Leo Chavez provides a thorough account of this history in The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). . Nate Silver, “The Most Diverse Cities Are Often the Most Segregated,” FiveThirtyEight, May 1, 2015, http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse -cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/. . Angel Harris, Kids Don’t Want to Fail: Oppositional Culture and the BlackWhite Achievement Gap (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Prudence Carter, Keepin’ It Real: School Success Beyond Black and White (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007). . From Collier’s Twitter account at https://twitter.com/Jenjencollier/status /441998601020248065/photo/1. . Joan C. Williams and Rachel Dempsey, What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know (New York: NYU Press, 2014). . Joe Flint, “FCC Media Ownership Survey Reveals Lack of Diversity,” Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/nov/14 /entertainment/la-et-ct-fcc-diversity-20121114. . Morrison, “Hollywood’s Dismal Diversity.” . Ellen Killoran, “‘Live, from New York!’ Tackles SNL’s Racist, Sexist History,” Forbes, April 20, 2015, http://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenkilloran/2015/04/20 /live-from-new-york-tackles-snls-racist-sexist-history/. . The 2012 study by the Writers Guild of America, West, was cited by Sonali Kohli in her piece, “American TV Shows Might Look More Diverse, but Their Writers Aren’t,” Quartz, July 24, 2014, http://qz.com/238696/tv-shows-might-look -more-diverse-but-their-writers-arent/.

Notes to Curtains

207

Curtains . Eddie Huang, “Bamboo-Ceiling TV,” Vulture, January 4, 2015, http://www .vulture.com/2015/01/eddie-huang-fresh-off-the-boat-abc.html#. . Ibid. . Ibid. . See Jesse David Fox, “Aziz Ansari Calls Out CBS’s Lack of Diversity; Stephen Colbert Is Speechless,” Vulture, November 11, 2015, http://www.vulture .com/2015/11/aziz-ansari-stephen-colbert-talk-tv-diversity.html. Ansari, it should be noted, has been criticized for the notable absence of black and Latino characters on his show, which is set in New York City.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

acting skills in improv, 51 active listening, 48 Addams, Amy, 142 Adoram, Estee, 43, 49, 64, 71, 189n1 AEA (Actors’ Equity Association), 14 Ain’t No Makin’ It (McLeod), 200n12 All Jokes Aside club, 157 alt scene, 12, 15–16 amateurs showcases, 1, 5 American Indians in comedy, 183 analytic approach to improv, 52 Ando, Victoria, 23 Annoyance Theater, 33, 73 Ansari, Aziz, 15, 183, 207n4 Anzaldua, Gloria, 153 Aristotle, 29 Armando Diaz Experience, 126–127 “arranged marriages” between comics, 63–64 arrogance, guarding against, 43 “artificial” fame, 115 Asian Americans in comedy, 182, 183 attention-seeking, 123–124 audience(s): different routines for black/white, 16, 162–164; keeping the attention of, 54; majority-

white, 123, 164; performing a black identity, 162; reading and adjusting to, 28, 42; relationship with, 123; respecting, 43, 49; in segregated cities, 157–158; shared experiences with, 26, 161 authenticity versus sincerity, 18 backbiting, 173 Bale, Christian, 142 Banaji, Mahzarin, 139, 141 banking your money, 108–109 Barrett, Richard, 61, 68–70, 81, 103– 104, 189n2 barriers of entry, 160 Barry, Todd, 127 Barthwell, Ali, 46–47, 137, 145–148, 160, 189n3 Berg, Alex, 189n4; on arbitrary goalposts, 106–107; on comedians as a group, 61–62, 75–76, 79; on emotional intelligence, 52–54; evaluating talent, 51–52; never laughs while teaching, 52 Berg, Emily, 76, 80, 173–174, 189n5 Bergman, Ben, 189n6 Berkowitz, Mike, 136 Besser, Matt, 1, 8, 44

209

210

best job in the world, comedy as, 3–4 Best Week Ever (VH1), 75 BET, 162, 175 “beyond race” attempts, 149 Biggums, Tyrone, 121 Bill Cosby: His Life and Times (Whitaker), 111 black-box theater, 52–53 black comics: ability to talk to whites, 67, 70; “acting white” accusations, 159–160; assumed ineptitude at joke-writing, 144–145; favoring stand-up, 183–184; white audiences not relating to, 158. See also race Black Feminist Thought (Collins), 146 Bob Curry Fellowship, 16 body image, 141, 173. See also woman comics bookers, 12–14 Borns, Betsy, 5–6, 31 “boundaryless” careers, 84–92 Bourdieu, Pierre, 18 Bowman, Barbara, 111–112 boyd, danah, 202n15 Brady, Wayne, 159 brand(s): and advertising, 102, 115; building your own, 96–98, 100, 114, 119; clubs becoming, 43; damage to, 114, 117; managing through Twitter, 117; training centers as, 44 Brett, Jason, 189n7 Broad City (Jacobson and Glazer), 102, 183 bullshit, pointing out, 31 Buress, Hannibal, 111–112, 114, 118 business of comedy, 5–8 Buzzfeed, 112 Calloway, Chesley, 12–13, 19, 57–59, 77, 189n8

Index

caretaking and trust, 68–69 Carey, Drew, 73 Carolines on Broadway, 6–7 Carolla, Adam, 100 Carrey, Jim, 122 Carson, Johnny, 99 Carter, Judy, 6 Carter, Prudence, 159–160 Catastrophe (Delaney), 128 Celebrity (Rojek), 116 celebrity culture: as industry, 109, 114– 115; on Internet, 128–135; as practice, 119; purposefully avoiding, 121–122; unhealthy for comedy, 135 Cera, Michael, 30, 101 Chappelle, Dave, 120–123; Chappelle’s Show, 183 “character-focused” theater, 49 character-sketch writing, 50 Chicago: diverse but segregated, 38, 156–157, 164; stand-up racially segregated in, 37; as training ground only, 1–2. See also Second City, The (Chicago) church, performance in, 32 Church-Cooper, Jennie, 64–65, 72, 74, 87, 93, 189n9 Church-Cooper, Joel, 65 “civilians,” social boundary with, 61, 76 classes, comedy, 9, 16 class privilege, 9–10; education and, 26, 36–37, 160; and exploitative working conditions, 54; and intersectionality, 140, 160, 164. See also white-male privilege Close, Del, 32, 44, 48 clubs, comedy, 135–136; All Jokes Aside club, 157; autonomy to make own standards, 183; Carolines, 6–7, 162;

Index

Comedy and Magic Club (Hermosa Beach), 61; Comedy Cellar, 6, 42, 71, 142; Comedy Studio, The (Cambridge), 39–40, 198n13; culture of majority-white clubs, 161– 162; Hollywood Improv, 13; investing in comedy, 185; Jokes and Notes club, 70, 157–158, 164; Stand, The, 7; Zanies Comedy Club, 1, 16, 54, 92–93, 104, 135–136, 158–159 code-switching, 163 Coed Prison Sluts (Annoyance Theater), 73 Colbert, Stephen, 164 cold calls, 75 Cole, Brandall, 28, 124–125, 189n10 Cole-Kelly, Adam, 65–66, 105–106, 126, 179–180, 189n11 collaboration, importance of, 134–135, 188 collective bargaining, 14, 109 collective identity of comedians, 61– 63, 185–186 college(s): as comedy venue, 6; education, 4, 10, 26; Facebook and, 116, 119; NACA (National Association for Campus Activities), 93; similarity of UCB to, 53; as training ground for comedy, 34–40, 57, 67 Collier, Jenny, 167 Collins, Patricia Hill, 146 color-blindness myth, 139–140 comedians: not considered artists, 87; psychological study of, 23. See also community, comedy; improv; stand-up comedy “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee,” 137 Comedy and Magic Club (Hermosa Beach), 61

211

Comedy as a Second Language, 15 Comedy Bible, The (Carter), 6 Comedy Cellar, 6, 42, 71, 142 Comedy Central, 34, 175 comedy festivals, 11 Comedy Improvisation Manual (Besser, Roberts, Walsh), 44 comedy industry: growing and changing, 136; insularity of, 180; as most honest art form, 31; not a meritocracy, 179; requiring a response, 124. See also clubs, comedy comedy news panels, 15 Comedy Studio, The (Cambridge), 39– 40, 198n13 Comic Lives (Borns), 5–6 Comic View (Brandall), 124–125 community, comedy: community training, 54–55; earning respect within, 126–127; as a group, 61–63, 76–77; rewards of, 3, 72, 74–75 competition among friends, 78–79 complimentary tickets, 185 consistency, importance of, 134 Constand, Andrea, 111 contagion, going viral as, 118–119 Cook, Dane, 12, 90 Cooper, Bradley, 142 Cordero, Eugene, 105, 111, 131, 147, 189n12 Corolla, Adam, 30 corporations: corporate ownership of market, 174–175; programs at comedy training centers, 44–45. See also comedy industry Cosby, Bill, 111–114, 118 credentials in lieu of pay, 8 Creek and The Cave, The, 12, 15, 86, 166 crossing over to white audiences, 16, 164

212

Cruz, Danny, 190n13; alt scene not more diverse, 163–164; on gender and comedy, 170; objecting to catering to whites, 147; stand-up most honest art, 31; treatment of new recruits, 77–78; work cycle before shows, 40 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 53 CSL (Comedy as a Second Language), 12, 57 Cullen, Lisa Takeuchi, 176 cultural capital, 37–38, 67 Daily Mail, The, 112 Daily Show, The, 15, 40 Daniels, Jeff, 17 dating issues, 74, 187–188 DEF Jam, 162 Delaney, Rob, 90, 128–129, 133 Delgado-Smith, Rebecca, 74, 83, 104– 105, 155–156, 193n58 delusion, 106–107 dented-can theory, 24, 30 DeRosa, Joe, 172 digital technology, 96–98, 174 dignity, maintaining, 3 Dignity of Working Men, The (Lamont), 3 directing: comedy as theater, 8, 49; nonwhite directors, 17, 97, 143; training in, 14, 184; at UCB, 51; woman directors, 17, 86, 95, 169 diversity: gay shows, 163; growing quickly in comedy, 188; not the same as empowerment, 182–183; outreach by Second City, 16; race and gender in entry-level jobs, 17– 18; and tokenism, 148, 167–169, 173, 175–176, 184–185. See also race; woman comics

Index

Dixon, Pat, 63, 74–75, 103, 131, 190n15 Dumb and Dumber (Daniels), 17 Dworkin, Andrea, 141 early-career performers, 8–11 earnings, 11–12 Eberhardt, Jennifer, 139 educational disparities, 26, 36–37, 160 ego identifying and gender, 153 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 200n12 Eisenberg, Lee, 76, 91–92, 94–95, 190n16 emotional intelligence, 25–29, 52–53 emotional palette, accessing entire, 54 empathy and social media, 119 “enchantment,” comedy as, 32 “enlightened eclecticism,” 26 entry-level jobs, race and gender in, 17–18 ethnic jokes, 29 ethnic nights/rooms, 16, 184 Evans, Calvin, 190n17; on barriers for female comics, 151–152; as a black performer in Chicago, 38, 157, 164; on coping with inequity, 179; on fame bringing opportunity, 122; getting start in college, 37–38, 67; on hard work, not luck, 90, 100; longevity more important than fame, 124; no road map to comedy, 87; on Second City training, 45–46 Everybody Loves Raymond (Rosenthal), 126 exhaustion, 94 experimental comedy, 7 Facebook: “friends” on, 116, 119; limited impact on celebrity, 128; monetization process, 101–102; young users moving to Instagram, 118

Index

Facklis, Dina, 47, 48–49, 60–61, 81, 169, 190n18 failure and humiliation, 103–104. See also rejection fairness myth, 89–90 Fallon, Jimmy, 68, 164 fame: ambiguous desires for, 124; available to anyone, 127; bringing fatigue and remorse, 116; comedy and, 120–128; fame industry, 20, 110, 114; future of, 135–136; influenced by inequality, racism, sexism, 121; living up to image of, 125; and mortality, 119; necessary to be taken seriously, 122–123; Paris Hilton type of, 126; respect of peers more important than, 126–127; as social epidemic, 119; sociology of, 114–119 “familiarity without responsibility,” 115, 202n7 fans: emotional investment of, 115; as Internet “friends,” “followers,” 116–117, 131 fat shaming, Amy Schumer on, 154 FCC (Federal Communications Commission), 174–175 feedback, 23, 27, 33, 41, 70, 104, 174 Ferrier, Beth, 111 Fey, Tina, 137 Five through the Door exercise, 49 Flam, Jamie, 13, 32, 190n19 fluid exchange, performance as, 18 Foxworthy, Jeff, 73 Fresh Off the Boat (Huang), 176, 181–182 friendships among comics, 78–79 full-time comedy professionals, 92– 102 funniness: can’t be taught, 54; fluidity

213

of, 103; not most important quality, 49, 51–52, 91 FX, 96–98 Gamson, Joshua, 114–116 gatekeepers, 100, 181–182 Gawker, 112 gay shows, 163 gender pay gap, Hollywood, 142 genre-crossing, 10 Get Hard, 144 Glaser, Nikki, 89 Glass, Todd, 15, 23, 27–28, 41, 89, 190n20 Glazer, Ilana, 102 Goel, Sharad, 202n18 Google results for “best comedy club,” 157 Granovetter, Mark, 200n5 Green, Tamara, 111 Greenwood, Dara, 117, 119 Groundlings, The (Los Angeles): classes at, 14, 33–34, 44, 49–51, 73, 103; diversity outreach, 16; Sunday Company, 51; as theater, 8, 49. See also Barrett, Richard; Michele, Heather de; Palermo, Brian; Wiig, Kristen Haas, Bert, 190n21; booking performers, 1, 49, 158; on celebrity culture, 135–136; looking for likability, 64; looking for natural funniness, 54; looking for professionalism, 92– 93; pep talk for performers, 1–2, 104, 107 Hall, Arsenio, 71 Halpern, Charna, 32, 43, 44, 48, 190n22 “hard work” and myth of meritocracy, 88–91, 109, 128

214

“Harold, The” improv game, 48 Harris, Angel, 159–160 Hart, Kevin, 142–144, 196n23 Harvard Lampoon, 121, 144, 162, 176 Harvard Sailing Team, 156 Hayes, Chris, 88 HBO specials, 5–6 heckling, 185 Hilton, Paris, 126 Hispanics: catering to white audiences, 147, 163–164; comics representing their race, 172; comics using cliché jokes about, 147; fewer opportunities for comics, 163; Latinas seen as “hot” and “hot tempered,” 155– 156; Latino comics favoring standup, 183–184; pushed too quickly, 168; speaking roles in movies, 17; and war on drugs, 139; and wealth gap, 140 Hobbes, Thomas, 29 honesty, 31, 71, 183 honesty of performance, 32 honorable masculinity, 3 hooks, bell, 153 Horace and Pete (Louie CK), 97 hosting shows, 11 Howard, Kellye, 187–188, 190n23 Howard Stern Show, The, 112 How to Be Black (Thurston), 22 Huang, Eddie, 181–182 Hunt, Darnell, 143, 174–175, 180 hypervigilance, 28 hypervisibility as recruiting opportunity, 172–173 identity, selling an, 19 IFC (Independent Film Channel), 83 Iglesias, Gabriel, 12 implicit bias, 139

Index

improv: acting skills required for, 51; as “all you,” 35; analytic approach to, 52; auditioning for class in, 50; as business model of theaters, 9–10; collective reality in, 47; financial barrier to entry, 160–161; Groundlings training school, 49–51; honesty in, 32; inability to stop, 80; life skills from, 45; as “nerd” comedy, 10; and philosophy of language, 53; racial stereotyping in, 145–147, 161; “short-form” and “long-form,” 44; space required for, 8; UCB training school, 8; “Yes, and” principle in, 32, 46–47, 60 incongruity theory of humor, 29 Instagram, 117–119, 125, 131–132 institutional dimension of racism, sexism, 139–140 intelligence, 25; of the audience, 43; class and definitions of, 26; emotional, 25–29, 52–53 Internet, 11; celebrity on the, 128–135; “friends,” “followers” on, 116–117; Louis CK digital production, 96– 98; prevalence of, 116 interns coming from privilege, 180 intersectionality of racism, sexism, classism, 140–141, 160 interview shows, 15–16 interview style for this book, 20–21 iO (Improv Olympic): classes at, 14, 33, 44; diversity outreach, 16; iO West, 16, 36; mostly white clientele, 159; professional-development programs at, 44. See also Facklis, Dina; Halpern, Charna; Rowland, Patrick iPhone replacing network production, 100

Index

Jackhole entertainment group, 30 Jackson, John L., 18 Jacobson, Abbi, 102 Jagodowski, T. J., 126 James, Kate, 190n24; comics as emotionally intelligent, 27; getting used to rejection, 103; as partner with ex-boyfriend, 74, 78; on recreating goals, 106; on SNL questions, 109–110 JASH platform, 30, 100–101, 132 jealousy, professional, 78–79 Jenkins, Rick, 39 jerks in comedy, 65, 77 Johnson, Kim “Howard,” 32, 44, 48 Jokes and Notes club, 70, 157–158, 164 joke stealing on Twitter, 130 joke writing, assumed black ineptitude at, 144–145 Jones, Leslie, 175 Joseph, Jeff rey, 190n25; audience wanting to perform black identity, 162; on “beyond race” notion, 149; on gender and comedy, 152; no more standard road to success, 88; on social networking, 67, 73; on whites’ use of “nigger” onstage, 149 Just for Laughs festival, 93, 99–100 Kanter, Jason, 107, 190n26 Kaplan, Myq, 191n27; career pathway, 93, 198n13; on Dane Cook, 90; having fingers in all comedy pies, 93, 129; on Marc Maron, 83–84; from parody songs to stand-up, 39–40; on racial stereotyping, 144; on Rob Delaney, 90 Kaseberg, Robert, 130 Kellison, Daniel, 30–31, 100–101, 191n28

215

Key, Keegan-Michael (Key and Peele), 16 Key and Peele, 16, 183 Kimmel, Jimmy, 30, 102, 164 Kingsley, Langan, 73, 80, 123, 191n29 labor pyramid, 135 Lacey, Mike, 69 ladies’ nights, 184 Laker, Chris, 87, 166–167, 191n30 Lamont, Michele, 3 Landgraf, John, 97 Lane, Matteo, 65, 78–79, 127, 129, 163, 191n31 late-night shows all white men, 164 Late Show with David Letterman, 30 Latino/a comics. See Hispanics laughter: as feedback, 32–33; laughing at versus laughing with, 121, 123; laughing together, 31; losing meaning, 122 Laurent, Holly, 35–36, 126, 153–154, 191n32 Lauria, Peter, 137 Lawrence, Jennifer, 142 Lawrence, Mike, 66–67, 103, 104, 122, 191n33 Lena, Jennifer, 9 Leno, Jay, 68–69 Leonard, Kelly, 44 Letterman, David, 120, 164 Let Them Eat Chaos, 36 Lexell, Olga, 130 “liminal” status of comedians, 30 Lindsey, Mary, 70–71, 157–158, 161, 169– 170, 191n34 Linehan, Graham, 128 listening as key to improv, 47–48 loner myth of comedians, 38 longevity of comedy careers, 109

216

Louis CK, 64; building his own brand, 19, 96–98; digital production, 96– 98; on standard contractual model, 98–100, 200–201n16 Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater, 97–98 luck, relying on, 100 Lucky Louie (Louis CK), 97 Lynch, Jane, 181 Mace Bacon: The Worst Guy Ever!, 36 MacFarlane, Seth, 182 “Magic Negro” movie characters, 143–144 Mainstage sketch team, 14 “mainstream” America: crossing over into, 164; male-dominated, -identified, -centered, 140–141; and media ownership, 174–175; movie casting designed for, 143; necessity of appealing to, 70; networking with, 67; opportunity structure within, 156–171; and “prove-itagain” bias, 169. See also whitemale privilege Maker Studios, 132 Mamet, David, 108 managers, 87–88, 185 Marbles, Jenna, 102, 133 Maritato, Nick, 191n35 Maron (IFC), 83 Maron, Marc, 83–86, 100, 108 Marwick, Anna, 202n15 Masada, Jamie, 191n36 Master of None (Ansari), 183 masters of ceremonies, 11 Maxwell, Dobie, 191n37; comics can see the “bullshit,” 31; intelligence, sensitivity of comedians, 25; kinship among comics, 63; on network and talent, 74; not asking friends

Index

for work, 73; performers as “dented cans,” 24–25, 30; on retirement plans, 107 McIntosh, Peggy, 138–139 McLeod, Jay, 200n12 Mears, Ashley, 18 media ownership by whites, 174–175 mentoring: by bookers, managers, 185; Cosby’s misuse of, 114; encouraging, 54; hypervisibility helping with, 172–173; mentors with benefits, 114, 170–171, 187; must be current, 99; need to prioritize economics, 186; by older performers, 41–42; by peers, 77, 172, 173–175; and race, 70–71; seen from both sides, 46 meritocracy myth, 88–89, 186 Metzger, Kurt, 6–10 Meyer, Mickey, 132–135, 188, 191n38 Michele, Heather de, 8, 49–52, 190n14 microcelebrities, 117, 202n15 middlemen, eliminating, 100 Minhaj, Hasan, 40–41, 148, 154, 160– 161, 191n39 Mintz, Lawrence, 28 mismanaging relationships, 71–72 Modern Family (Vergara), 155 mortality and fame, 119 movie characters, race and gender of, 17–18, 143, 158 Mr. Show, 10 multiculturalism not same as empowerment, 182–183 Munks, Jessica, 191n40 Murphy, Eddie, 71, 122 music-comedy hybrid shows, 15, 39 myth of postracialism, 139 NACA (National Association for Campus Activities), 93

Index

narcissism, 24, 119, 124 National Enquirer, 111 natural funniness, 54 “nerd” comedy, improv as, 10 Netflix, 112 networking: across color lines, 67; drawbacks of, 74–79; as hard work, 90; health effects of, 60, 69, 74; men and, 166; by role models, 172; at Second City and Groundlings, 73; social capital and, 58, 59; social versus professional, 20; use of Twitter for, 130–131 New York Improv, 5 New York Magazine, 113 New York Times, 111 “nice,” value of being, 64–65, 77 Nickel and Dimed (Ehrenreich), 200n12 “no” as “not yet,” 104, 108–109 Nolan, Nora, 79–80, 153–154, 165, 191–192n41 nonwhite shows as “niche” shows, 175 “normal,” privilege of being, 138 Normand, Mark, 27–28, 66, 131, 162, 192n42 Norton, Jim, 64 Novak, Jacqueline, 151–152, 154, 165, 192n43 Nucifaro, Nick, 136 Nussbaum, Martha, 141 Obama, Barack, 140, 142 Obama, Michelle, 140 objectification, 141 O’Brien, Conan, 130 observational skills, 26 offstage personas, 66–67 older performers as mentors, 41–42 open mics, 11; community-building in, 40, 77; low barrier to entry, 39, 160;

217

as new material testing ground, 40–41; as training ground, 38–40 opportunity structure: and racism, 156–164; and sexism, 164–171 O’Rourke, Annie, 72, 74, 102, 153–154, 192n44 Oswalt, Patton, 99–100, 105, 130 “other,” targeting the, 29 outsider, adopting perspective of, 31 outsiders image of comedians, 4 Palermo, Brian, 47–48, 61, 75, 79, 150, 192n45 pandering to white racists, 121 “parasocial” relationships with celebrities, 117 Parks and Recreation, 15 partnerships, comic, 78 Pascal, Amy, 142 patriarchy, 140–141; male decision makers in comedy, 152; women living through, 153 Patton, Sean, 12, 58 pay for comedy: fair versus exploitative, 2, 13; in socioemotional perks, 61–62; unpaid/poorly paid labor, 7–9, 15, 91–95, 107, 109, 124– 125; whites paid more, 175 pay rates, 6–7 peak performance as reciprocity, 32 Peele, Jordan (Key and Peele), 16 People’s Improv Theater (Chelsea), 15 perceptiveness/sensitivity, 25–29, 51 Perez, Rojo, 81, 129, 168, 172, 192n46 performance: as exchange not consumption, 18; performing a black identity, 162 Perkins, Nancy, 95–96, 174, 192n47 perseverance by comedians, 2–3 persistent stereotype threat, 141 personality types, 24, 84

218

Peterson, Richard, 5 Phillips, Henry, 27–28, 32, 61, 79, 131– 133, 192n48 Phillips, John M., 34–36, 192n49 philosophy of language, 53 Phunny Business (Lindsey), 157 physicality and black comedy, 144–145 Pirandello, Luigi, 30–31 Pitman, Sam, 189n11 playing field different for marginalized groups, 156–157 “playing the dozens,” 162 podcasting, 27, 83, 93, 100, 108 Poehler, Amy, 8 “point out the ugliest things,” 31 police officers and implicit bias, 139–140 “postapocalyptic future” of Internet, 132 postracialism: and black comedians, 149; myth of, 139 power brokers from privileged class, 59, 184 product integration, 102 professionalism, 2 “prove-it-again” bias, 169 psychological study of comedians, 23 psychotic tendencies, 23–24 “public secret” of racism, 121 “punching up” work, 109 Queen Latifah Show, The, 112 Quinn, Colin, 64 quitting, 104–105 race: “acting white” accusations, 159– 160; Asian Americans in comedy, 182, 183; “black culture” as cause of inequality, 112–113, 159–160; and celebrity industry, 115; comics of

Index

non-categorizable appearance, 147–148; crossing over to white venues, 16; dimensions of racism, 71, 139–140; impact of racial segregation, 71; of movie characters, 17– 18, 143, 158; myth of postracialism, 139; and opportunity structure, 156–164; power and profitability of racism, 121; racial conventions and stigma, 142–150; representing when performing, 172; and war on drugs, 139; and wealth gap, 140 Ramachandran, Vilayanur, 53 reading people as skill, 28 reciprocity: between performer, audience, 32; support among comics, 64 recruitment: helped by hypervisibility of comics of color, 172; of lower economic classes, 184; through social networks, 59 reforms needed, 183–186 regional differences in humor, 57–58 reinvention, 105–106 rejection, dealing with, 103–107, 109 relief theory of humor, 29 representing racial/gender group, 148, 172 reputation, 13, 19, 43, 82, 126 resilience, 104, 107, 109 retirement plans, 107–108 Ride Along, 142 ridicule of non-“normal” people, 137–138 riffing, 162 risk taking: of not being authentic, 152; by performers, 40, 47, 66, 97; of self-distribution, 97–98; social networks lessening, 73; stand-up and, 161; of venturing outside main-

Index

stream, 143, 146; by venues/producers, 6, 13–15, 96, 185 road circuit, 5 Roberts, Ashley Brooke, 9, 79, 87, 165– 166, 171, 192n50 Roberts, Ian, 44 Rock, Chris, 17, 36, 64, 71, 158, 196n23 Rojek, Chris, 115–116, 120 romance and crossed signals, 170–171 Romano, Ray, 68 Rosenfeld, Zach, 192n51 Rosenthal, Phil, 126–127 Rowland, Patrick, 193n52; on “acting white,” 147, 159–160; appeal of comedy, 31, 161; on fame within/outside of community, 126–127; missing friends and family, 76; on perils of being a jerk, 65; pride in being a role model, 172; refusing to give up, 105; “yes, and” away from stage, 60–61 Rudin, Scott, 142 satisfaction as measure of success, 85 saturation point of absurdity, 53 Saturday Night Live, 34–35, 109–110, 175 Schadenfreude, 74 Schamaun, Abigoliah, 124, 127, 150, 152, 193n53 Schumer, Amy, 89, 154 Screen Actors Guild, 14 screenwriters: class and status and, 36; importance of hard work, 91–92; importance of social dexterity, 65– 66; other writers as surrogate family, 76; prices for screenplays, 14; prime age for, 108; racism, sexism among, 175–176; success comes and goes quickly, 72; unpaid work, 92; working conditions for, 5

219

second chances, 103–104 Second City, The (Chicago), 16; AEA union and, 14; classes at, 33, 44; diversity outreach by, 16; Key and Peele at, 16; Mainstage sketch team at, 14; mostly white clientele, 159; not the enemy, 158; “prove-itagain” bias toward women, 169; racial stereotyping in improv, 145– 147; revues, 36; teaching life skills, 45; as theater, 8; training center for professionals, 14, 16, 44–46, 73. See also Barthwell, Ali; Facklis, Dina; James, Kate; Laurent, Holly; Rowland, Patrick; Sohn, Rebecca; Waltien, Steve Sedaris, Amy, 127 segregation by race and class, 140, 156– 159, 184. See also mainstream; race Seinfeld, Jerry, 128, 137–139, 149, 158, 161 self-affirmation, fame as, 124 self-belief, 103 self-defined success and failure, 105–106 self-policing: among women, 173; need for among white men, 176–177 self-promotion on Twitter, 130–131 “sellout” accusations toward blacks, 160 Selman, Matt, 36, 57, 89, 91, 108–109, 132, 193n54 sensitivity/perceptiveness, 25–29, 51 Sevara, Ken, 89–90, 193n55 sexism: dimensions of, 140–141; restrictive entry, 4; sexuality from a position of power, 169; sexual violence against women, 113; as unasked question, 164–165. See also woman comics

220

shared experiences with audience, 26, 161 Sharkey, Patrick, 140, 200n12 Short, Andrew, 28, 40, 65, 79, 193n56 showcases, 5, 88–90, 92–93, 104, 184 signifying, 162 silencing of non-“normal” people, 137–138 Silverman, Sarah, 30, 101 Simpsons (Selman), 36 sitcom model, 95–97 “six-second TV shows,” 132 sketch comedy, 8, 14 Skinner, Eliza, 193n57; career path of, 93–94; comedy partnership like marriage, 78; dealing with male audience’s gaze, 154–155; problems caused by scarcity of women, 168; requirements of celebrity, 122; support from comedy community, 62– 63, 80; use of Twitter, 129; on white male gatekeepers, 180 “slut shaming,” 187 “smart” comedy, 26 snowball effect, 187 social and professional lives, fusion of, 72–74, 81–82 social awkwardness among writers, 65–66 social capital: and cultural capital, 66–67; effects on job opportunity, 84; and networks, 58–60; and sexism, 165 social costs of comedy profession, 74–82 social identity/sensitivity, 27–29 socializing: and danger of “slut shaming,” 187; mentors with benefits issue, 114, 170–171, 187; as part of

Index

performer’s job, 59–60; value of decency, kindness, 64, 68, 71 social media, moral panic over, 119. See also Facebook; Instagram; Twitter social mobility, 200n12 social power and taste making, 18 social-psychological dimension of racism, sexism, 139–141 sociology: of fame, 114–119; of labor and careers, 84–86; of making meaning from rejection, 103; of taste, 18 Sohn, Rebecca, 193n59; on finding voice in white male society, 152– 153, 155, 165, 173–174; on group dynamics in improv, 47; on honesty in improv, 32; on overvaluing fame, 110 Sony Pictures, racist comments at, 142 Stand, The, 7 stand-up comedy: cheap to produce, 7; different routines for black/white audiences, 162–163; low barrier of entry to, 160; stereotypes of comics doing, 9–10; traditional formula for success, 88 Stanhope, Doug, 127 State, The, 10 Steele, Claude, 141 stereotypes of performers: as outsiders, truth tellers, 29–33; as psychotics, 23–25 Stewart, Jon, 164, 196n23 Storts, Danny, 107 storytelling, 49–50 straight-white-male privilege, 137–138 “strength of weak ties” theory, 200n5 Stuck in Place (Sharkey), 200n12 study of labor and careers, 84–86

Index

Stupnitsky, Gene, 91–92, 190n16, 193n60 subjective measures of success, 84 success, 102–110; defi ning, 109; fear of, 66; not quitting as, 83; satisfaction as measure of, 85; subjective measures of, 84, 105 Sue, Derald Wing, 141, 204n7 “suits,” listening to the, 95 superfans, 117 superhero roles reserved for white men, 148 superiority theory of humor, 29 “Surprise, surprise,” 62 surrogate family of comedy, 76 syndication, 109 systemic inequality, 165 tastemakers, 17–18 TED Talks, 53 television: digital technology and, 96– 97, 174; online production and distribution, 97–98; playing to whites, 182; sitcom boom (1980s, 1990s), 95–96; station ownership, 174 theater venues, 8, 136 Thurston, Baratunde, 193n61; intelligence of comedians, 25; on race and comedy, 149; rejecting “dented can” theory, 24–25; “testing” by white coworkers, 148; on unpaid stand-up work, 2; on white male late-night shows, 164 ticket prices and revenue, 8, 11 Time, 112 tokenism, 148, 167–169, 173, 175–176, 184–185 Tonight Show, The, 88, 99 Tookes, LaKendra, 175

221

Trent, Rebecca, 193n62; advocating for comics, 87; career path of, 86; on costs of profession for women, 89; providing safe environment for comics, 68; vetting performers for CSL, 12–13, 19 truth and honesty in comedy, 31, 71, 183 Truth in Comedy (Close, Halpern, Johnson), 32, 44, 48 Tsujihara, Kevin, 142 Turner, Graeme, 119 Twitter: ad revenue, 102; and Cosby story, 112, 114; demographics of users, 116; eliminating gatekeepers, 100; joke stealing on, 130; length limit enforces efficiency, 129; managing celebrity through, 117, 119, 125; profiting from, 132; Rob Delaney a star on, 128–129; “where comedy goes to die,” 129–130 two-drink minimum, 185 UCB (Upright Citizen’s Brigade): artistic director of, 51–52; black-box theater, 53; classes at, 33–34, 44, 51–54; diversity outreach, 16; financial barrier of entry to, 9, 160; improv and sketch at, 15; increasing diversity at, 16; instructors instead of bookers, 14; “paying” with credentials, 8–9; professionaldevelopment programs at, 44; students transitioning to paid work, 73; theater business model and criticism of, 7–10, 52–53. universal neuroses, unmasking of, 30–32 unmasking of vanities, 30

222

unpaid/poorly paid labor, 7–9, 15, 91– 95, 107, 109, 124–125 “unreality,” rise of, 115 urban neighborhoods: black urban poverty, 140; culture of urban rooms, 16, 158–159, 161–164, 184; gentrification in, 102; “safe” areas, 184. See also Chicago Vergara, Sofia, 155 versatility, 90 Vine, making money from, 132 “virality,” 118, 135 voice, finding/hearing your: challenges of, 27, 35, 120, 163, 168–169; “coming to voice,” 133, 153, 168, 173; honesty in, 52, 183; voices other than straight white men’s, 4, 152–155, 163, 166, 169, 173, 181–183 Walkoe, Tim, 42, 193n63 Walkowski, Joel, 41–42, 193n64 Wall Street Journal, The, 111 Walsh, Matt, 44 Waltien, Steve, 47, 49, 110, 124, 193n65 war metaphor for comedy, 78–79 Warner, Tim, 31, 127, 149, 194n66 Warner Brothers Entertainment, 142 war on drugs and race, 139–140 Washington, Denzel, 143 Washington Post, The, 111–112 Watts, Reggie, 30, 101 Wayans, Keenan, 71 wealth gap, 140 Wedding Ringer, The, 144 Whitaker, Mark, 111 white-male privilege, 137–139; dominating TV studios, networks, 180; and late-night shows, 164; only

Index

booking each other, 165; and percentage of media ownership, 174– 175; typecast as familiar, 150. See also class privilege whites: ability to talk to, 67, 70; believing in “color-blind” comedy, 149–150; culture of majority-white clubs, 161–162; should model respect, 185, 187; social capital of, 71, 76; whiteness as safe standard for comedy, 158; white supremacist patriarchy, 121, 139, 155, 183–184. See also race Whose Line Is It Anyway?, 159 Wiig, Kristen, 49–50 Wilkinson, Alexis, 194n67; on black versus white audiences, 144–145, 162–163; desire for success, not fame, 121–122; at Harvard Lampoon, 121, 144, 176; on mentor with benefits issues, 170–171; on racism/ sexism by writers, 175 Wilson, William Julius, 140 winner-take-all celebrity model, 135 witnessing your own performance, 28 woman comics: “Are women funny?” issue, 150–152, 156; assumed to be lesbian, 153; competition and support among, 173; dealing with sexual advances, 169–170; equal numbers at Second City, 16; family demands on, 89; focus on looks of, 154–156; as movie directors, 17; “normal” women as “cute,” “feisty,” 155; not seen as serious businesspeople, 156; pressure on to stay skinny, 181; pressure to “join the boys’ team,” 174; scarcity of seen as lower standards, 167–168;

Index

seen as interchangeable tokens, 167, 176; some improvement in industry, 174; speaking roles in movies, 17; strategizing appearance onstage, 155; as too loud, too weird, 62–63 work, study of, 84–86 working-class morals, 3 “worthlessness” of old model, 99–100 Writers Guild, 14, 109 writing for television, 94. See also screenwriters WTF with Marc Maron, 83, 108

223

Yes, And (Leonard and Yorton), 45 “Yes, and” principle, 32, 46–47, 60, 146, 186–187 Yorton, Tom, 44 YouTube, 174; and Bill Cosby, 112, 114, 118; “Epic Rap Battles of History” (Meyer), 132; Jenna Marbles’ career on, 133; monetization process, 100–101 Zamata, Sasheer, 175 Zanies Comedy Club, 1, 16, 54, 92–93, 104, 135–136, 158–159

This page intentionally left blank

CULTURE AND ECONOMIC LIFE Diverse sets of actors create meaning in markets: consumers and socially engaged actors from below; producers, suppliers, and distributors from above; and the gatekeepers and intermediaries that span these levels. Scholars have studied the interactions of people, objects, and technology; charted networks of innovation and diffusion among producers and consumers; and explored the categories that constrain and enable economic action. This series captures the many angles in which these phenomena have been investigated and serves as a high-profile forum for discussing the evolution, creation, and consequences of commerce and culture. Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina Daniel Fridman 2016