Happy Halloween, everybody! We’ve summoned the ghosts of comedy’s past to put together the 10 best Halloween clips on our site. Sit back, crack open a bag of candy corn, and enjoy!

In no particular order…

1. TJ Miller: Mysterious Basement

Can I borrow your candelabra? Why? No reason really, I just need to grab something out of my haunted basement. No biggie.

2. Kumail Nanjiani: Horror Movie Reception

Be afraid. Be very afraid… of using At&T as your cellphone provider.

3. Jesse Joyce: Haunted House Trauma

The trauma of a haunted house isn’t necessarily limited to ghosts and goblins. Don’t believe us? Maybe you’ll believe Jesse Joyce.

4. Jessi Campbell: Spooky Shower

Jessi Campbell takes a scary shower, and she’s not even at the gym.

5. Butch Bradley: Watching Scary Movies

Butch Bradley is a scaredy cat. Lucky for us, he’s not afraid to talk about it.

6. Ryan Singer: Carl Treadway: Monster Hunter

If Ryan Singer doesn’t scare you, NOTHING WILL. He’s scary funny is what we’re trying to say.

7. Matt Braunger: Partying on Halloween

What would your favorite super hero look like wasted? Halloween to the rescue!

8. Nick Griffin: Scared of Horror Movies

Jesus the Friendly Ghost doesn’t have the same ring to it.

9. Andy Ritchie: Living with Ghosts

The housing crisis might affect some people, but there is one demographic who welcomes it. GHOSTS!

10. Auggie Smith: Halloween and Pedophiles

Mixing Halloween and pedophiles is a bad idea. To remedy it, just tell them to give out pennies instead of candy.

Posted: October 30th, 2011 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, News'n'stuff, Video.
Comments: none

TJ Miller appeared on Conan Thursday night and he did a mighty fine job. You may recognize Miller as Ranger Jones in the live action Yogi Bear movie, from multiple appearances on Chelsea lately, and in heavy rotation as a Rooftop staff pick. On his second appearance on Conan, TJ rounded out his set with a story of an awkward airplane experience follwed by an amazing set of impressions Check it out!

Make sure to check out TJ’s hour long stand up special “No Real Reason” when it premieres on Comedy Central Saturday, November 12th at 11pm.

Watch more clips from TJ on Rooftop

Posted: October 28th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, Late Night Television.
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If you ever see Andrés du Bouchet perform live, you’re in for a treat. With Andrés comes a host of hilarious, captivating characters, making for a night of comedy that’s truly unique. There’s Danny Yeahyeah, a warm-up comic whose idea of crowd work is unlike anything you’ve ever heard; or Karl Management, who’s as passionate about managing talent as he is about pitching genius reality shows (Men With Terrible Gaydar House). Andrés, who spends his days as a writer for Conan, brings Karl, Danny, and others to his new album, Naked Trampoline Hamlet, recorded earlier this year at Bar Lubitsch in LA. Rooftop recently chatted with Andrés about his writing style, Conan O’Brien’s grip on U.S. history, marketing strategies from an unlikely source, and more.

Rooftop: Tell me about how your character Karl Management—a slick Hollywood suit who’s never short on new reality show ideas—came to be.

Andrés du Bouchet: Well I think, if I’m not mistaken, the character and the shows were two different things initially. It was another example of me re-assigning material to a different character. Those shows might have just been a blog post at first or something I wrote. The Karl Management character—do you remember, several years ago, there was this movie called The Aristocrats?

RT: Yes.

ADB: In the movie, all these comics tell their variation of that joke and then I participated in a show at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York where the whole point of the show was just for all the comics to do their version of “The Aristocrats”. So I decided I would tell it from the point of view of the talent manager of who these people were coming to. In most variations of that joke, you’re telling it from a third person perspective, where it’s just like “Here’s what happened. The manager is sitting there and he says blah, blah, blah”. So I just decided I’d tell it as a first person point of view story of the guy and these freaks came into his office. I’m always a big fan of making characters as—like calling a manager Karl Management. That just tickles me. Talking that way is just fun for me. It’s sort of like a style of speaking that’s like, one of my favorite comedians, Eddie Pepitone and my friend Michael Reisman who’s one of the guys I did a lot of comedy with in New York. It’s not the way he normally speaks, but sometimes, to make a point, he’d talk like that. He’s probably my favorite guy to appear as. It’s just very easy to talk like that and mundane things seem funny to me.

RT: As Karl Management, you build this great energy as you list more and more reality show pitches. Is that list framework your creative sweet spot as a writer?

ADB: I think any comedy writer would tell you that the format of the list is one of the most fun things to write. It’s not necessarily easy, but the fact that you have this structure in place makes it easier than normal. The order you put things in can help you decide which ones are going to be more elaborate and which ones are going to be quicker and simpler. You build off of previous items on the list, because certain things are already on the list, you can have a callback joke later that is sort of building off that. Anytime there’s a structure in place, it just makes writing more easy and fun. It gives you something to build on. I love listing off stupid things—who doesn’t? I like quiz formats. Those are another example—a lot of the bits I write here at work sometimes are these quizzes Conan and Andy do back and forth. Those are fun because it’s the same sort of thing: you build off of previous questions and you’ve got this structure to work with.

RT: Can you give an example of that kind of quiz segment?

ADB: They do this recurring bit I came up with where, because the premise is “Some people think Americans shouldn’t be allowed to vote unless they are educated enough in American history that they can pass the same test immigrants need to pass to become citizens”. That was some news story on CNN.com at some point last year. I was like, “Why don’t we just have Conan say ‘I agree with that! I’m going to take the citizenship test right now on camera’. Andy’s like, ‘Are you sure? These questions are pretty hard’. Conan’s like ‘I know my stuff. Let’s do it’. So obviously you can already see what’s going to happen. The first couple questions are real and then they get…and the way we do it is Conan is always right, even if his answer seems ridiculous. So I make up the questions and all the stupid answers and it’s fun to put them in a certain order that builds in ridiculousness or the momentum shifts from all these fast ones to, all of the sudden, a round where it’s a more elaborate thing with “Finish the phrase” or “Fill in the blank” or whatever and then it gets more and more ridiculous and then the last big question, Conan suddenly answers accurately in a long-winded, dry explanation. Like, “Explain what the Teapot Dome scandal was” and he’ll give a big paragraph of a completely accurate explanation. Those are always fun for me to write because there’s that structure in place.

RT: You just had an album release party in LA. How was that?

ADB: It was a lot of fun. It was at this place called the Steve Allen Theater. Two of the other Conan writers were co-hosts and co-hosted as these characters who were supposedly a company hired by Rooftop to do the marketing for the album. They called themselves—the two guys who did this were Dan Cronin and Todd Levin—their marketing firm was called Human Centipede. They were like, “We had our name way before that stupid movie came out and they refused to change it”. They had this whole really funny riff about how their company name and their slogans and stuff are just very unfortunate matches to stuff from The Human Centipede movie. Their logo looked like three guys sewn together. It was really funny. They did a slideshow of where they were going to advertise my album and it was all these very inappropriate places—Photoshop-ed billboards of the album in very inappropriate places, like at the bottom of the reflecting pool at the 9/11 memorial. We had a bunch of other comedians do spots and we had a great musical act. We had another bit where these two record execs approach the musical act at the end of her set and offer her a record deal. It was a lot of fun, a good crowd. I gave everyone in the crowd a CD.

RT: Next week you’re off to New York with some of the other Conan writers for a show at Upright Citizens Brigade?

ADB: I’ll do stuff that’s similar to what you heard on the CD. On Friday, I’ll avoid doing things that are already on the CD now that I’m working on other material. I’ll do some sort of character bit or whatever.

RT: Anything else about Naked Trampoline Hamlet we didn’t cover?

ADB: I’m just happy to get it out there. I think it’s the kind of thing that people will get more out of if they listen to it a couple times. At least, I like to think that I’ve peppered it with a lot of little, weird nuggets. There are a couple callbacks. There’s something that I did on purpose which is—you know how there’s a lot of fake names I use? There’s one name I use twice in two different bits. I just want to see if people can pinpoint what that is. It’s a fun little Easter egg.

–

Naked Trampoline Hamlet is available for purchase through the Rooftop Comedy shop and Amazon.

Posted: October 27th, 2011 under Interview, Late Night Television, rooftop comedy productions, Video.
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Our old pal and “Best of the Fest” winner at the 2008 Aspen Rooftop Comedy Festival Matt Braunger was a joy to watch on Conan last night. Watch as he discusses awkwardness, drinking in your thirties, and Hungry Man dinners. Check it out!

Watch more clips of Matt on Rooftop

Follow Matt on Twitter

Posted: October 25th, 2011 under Late Night Television, News'n'stuff.
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October is an interesting month for movies. September is usually the dumping ground of shit films and November is when awards-season films start premiering across the country. So, October is a mix of both.

“50/50″ and “The Ides of March” are my two favorite movies I’ve seen this month and, I believe, the films you should go see now instead of crap like “The Three Musketeers” (hasn’t this movie been made, literally, a million times? I swear. I’m going to go look on IMDB [10 seconds late] Oh, I’m sorry. ONLY 29.) and “Paranormal Activity” (you are aware it’s the same movie, right? Like, almost literally the same movie. You’re paying good money to see the same movie for a third time.)

“50/50″ – A powerful indie film about friendship, love, and cancer. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the title character, a man diagnosed with cancer. His mother, played by the amazing Angelica Huston, is the next best part of this film. I think almost everyone has had this mother: she freaks out over everything and loves you too much.

Levitt’s character, Adam, is forced through more turmoil after he finds out his girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) is cheating on him. That leaves his therapist, Anna Kendrick, and best friend, Seth Rogen to help him out.

Levitt is phenomenal in this film and holds everything together. It has to be difficult to make a comedy with cancer as the centerpiece, but with him as the lead, it works very well.

It’s nice to see Kendrick getting more great roles and breaking out of the “Twilight” hell she is still in. It’s odd that, out of everyone from those movies, she’ll probably have the most longevity as an actress.

And then there’s Seth Rogen. I use to like Seth Rogen. Hell, I defended him to my friends who hated him. But now, I don’t like him. I get it, Seth: you like pot. You like talking about it. You like smoking it. You like talking about it while you smoke it. Please, let’s move on. I think he could do some great work if he had a director who challenged him. Right now, all his reactions are the same. He acts the same way in every movie. P.T. Anderson showed the world that Adam Sandler could, in fact, act. Let’s get him in an Anderson film and see what happens.

But, Rogen aside, it’s a fantastic film that is worth your money. Please, give money to this film. Hell, if you want to see “Paranormal Activity 15,” fine, but pay for a ticket to “50/50″ and hop over to it.

 

“The Ides of March” – If you don’t like political thrillers that are wordy and require you to pay attention to details, then go see shitty movies like “The Three Musketeers” or “Paranormal Activity 56.” George Clooney proves, again, why he is one of the top actors in the world and, one of the top directors.

Clooney plays a nominee for the Democratic Presidential ticket. His closets aides are Philip Seymour-Hoffman and the ever so dreamy, Ryan Gosling.

Gosling is a young guy with clear and good ideals. He wants politicians to be nice and clean and love Americans more than corporations. That’s why he is with Clooney. But, as the film goes on, he learns quickly that once you’re a politician, you’re always a politician.

It’s a fantastic film that I recommend you seeing. It’s main issue is simple: who is hotter, Clooney or Gosling? It’s hard for me to decide, because I look like a spitting image of George Clooney. It’s uncanny. Yet, part of me wants to go with Gosling. Is this because I think it’s weird to want to have sex with myself (Clooney)?

Follow Mark Potts on Twitter
We may never know.

Posted: October 24th, 2011 under Reviews, Ruminations, theorizations and stuff.
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Longtime Rooftop favorite Tommy Johnagin performed on Conan last night. He discusses a boyhood visit to the OBGYN, dating an older woman, the joys of red wine, and more!
You can catch Tommy live November 17th- 19th at the Comedy Club on State in Madison, Wisconsin. In the meantime, watch the clip!

Watch more clips from Tommy on Rooftop

Posted: October 19th, 2011 under Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, Late Night Television, Shows.
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We’re very happy to announce that submissions are open for third annual Magners Comedy Festival. Comics can submit their best 1-3 min worth of material (Oct 28th deadline) to compete in a series of voting rounds and the best 10 contestants will advance to face off at the festival in Boston. The top comic wins a trip to perform at the 2012 Glasgow International Comedy Festival! Visit our submissions page for contest rules and requirements. Good luck!

Posted: October 16th, 2011 under HOMEPAGE, News'n'stuff, Shows.
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The Women in Comedy Festival 2012 is accepting submissions for its annual event. Comedians can send submissions online in the categories of improv, musical comedy, sketch, stand up, and storytelling.

The deadlines for show submissions are Tuesday, November 1, 2011 with $30 submission fee and Tuesday, November 8, 2011 with $40 submission fee (extended deadline). Instructor deadlines are Tuesday, October 18, 2011 with $10 submission fee and Tuesday, October 25, 2011 with $15 submission fee (extended deadline). All deadlines are at 11:59pm ET.

The 4th annual Women in Comedy Festival will take place March 21-25, 2012 in Boston.

Visit the WICF 2012 site to apply. Good luck!

Posted: October 13th, 2011 under contests, Cool stuff from Rooftop Comedy, News'n'stuff.
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Mo Mandel started his comedy career in San Francisco, before going on to fame and fortune in Hollywood. Mo starred in Comedy Central’s Reality Bites Back, and had his own highly-rated Comedy Central special. He has appeared on Modern Family, Conan, and Craig Ferguson, he’s a regular guest on Chelsea Lately, and starred in the recently-cancelled NBC sitcom Free Agents. Next month, his first CD, The M Word, will be released on Comedy Central Records. San Francisco based comedian Sean Keane (Iron Comic, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, SF Sketchfest) was kind of enough to interview Mo for the Rooftop Blog.

Sean Keane:  First of all, congratulations on Free Agents. Were you a fan of the British show before you started doing this one?

Mo Mandel: I actually never saw it, because I don’t live in England, and I get American television. They gave it to us before we shot the pilot, but I didn’t want it to affect how I viewed the show and how I approached my character. But since then I’ve seen it and I think it’s really good.

SK: Do you watch the show when it’s on?

MM: Definitely. I’m a huge narcissist. I Tivo it, and it plays on a constant loop. Also, my roommate is an actor, and I’m a comedian, so I like to have it on in the apartment to make him feel horrible about himself.

SK: Is it exciting to work with Hank Azaria, and is it difficult to not just ask him questions about The Simpsons all the time?

MM: It’s very hard not to talk about The Simpsons, and I’ve had to accept the fact that I’m just going to do that. I’ve actually got him to record different Simpsons voices as my voice message machine. Currently I have Comic Book Guy telling people that my real name is Mohahn and then saying “Worst name ever.”

You should probably ask Hank Azaria if it’s difficult working with an aggressive burly Jew who is obsessed with The Simpsons. For me, it’s really not that hard, because I figure I’m an obnoxious guy, so I’m going to do it, but it probably annoys the hell out of him.

SK: You’re also working with Al Madrigal. Did you know him at all from your San Francisco comedy days?

MM: When I started comedy in SF, Al Madrigal was a name thrown around by SF comics as an example of how you could come out of San Francisco and really make it in Hollywood. Because of where he was at when I moved down here, I hadn’t had a chance to perform with him much. So this has been a real treat to work with him, he’s such a funny guy, and the same thing is true for Natasha Leggero.

SK: What you and Al seem to have in common is a really strong work ethic. You write a lot, you produce a lot of stuff. Was that something you’ve always had, or did you develop that after you got into comedy?

MM: I had a terrible work ethic in many other aspects of my life. Every job I’ve ever had I’ve been a complete slacker at. Because I love what I get to do now – writing, acting, and standup – other people have hobbies, my hobbies happen to also be my job. I love doing it more than any other stuff. But I was probably the worst person to work at Peet’s Coffee in the history of San Francisco.

SK: That was your job when you got into stand-up?

MM: I used to work the 5:15 AM to 1 PM shift every day, six days a week, and then do open mics every night. I didn’t have a car, so I had to bus around, it was a nightmare. I remember one day when I was feeling really low, just bombing at the open mics, and then I had to walk to work at five in the morning. It had rained the night before, and I didn’t realize I had holes in the bottom of my shoes. I was like a Dickens character. I got to work and realized my socks and shoes were soaking wet, and I didn’t have time to go home and change. So I took off my shoes and socks, put plastic bags around my feet, and then stuck my feet back into my wet shoes, and worked a seven-and-a-half-hour shift, serving lattes to yuppies. I remember thinking, if I don’t make it in comedy, I’m gonna blow my fucking head off.

SK: When did you decide to make the move to Los Angeles?

MM: It was when I won “Open Mic Fight” for Comedy Central. I was bartending on a Saturday, working a brunch shift, and I got a call from Comedy Central at 10 AM. I told my boss I had to go to the bathroom, checked my voice mail in the bathroom, and a woman told me I’d won, which meant $10,000. And then I had to go back downstairs and make Bloody Marys for the next six hours, while thinking, I’m getting the fuck out of here as soon as possible. I moved three weeks later.

SK: Was Reality Bites Back part of the Open Mic Fight prize?

MM: That was completely different. The price for Open Mic Fight was you got to be on Live At Gotham and you won some money. But through that I got to do the Miami Comedy Festival, where Comedy Central executives got to see me do more stand-up, and when they were casting the show, my name came up. And now we’re going into SEASON NINE on Reality Bites Back!

SK: The residuals just keep pouring in.

MM: As I look around my giant mansion, it’s ALL Reality Bites Back money. It’s me and Theo Von, living together in a huge, huge mansion in the hills.

SK: That’s the American dream.

MM: Let me tell you one story about that show. This is when I really got the sense that you have to be on TV a lot for anyone to know who the hell you are. One time after we’d shot Reality Bites Back – and it was currently airing – I was hanging out at a bar with Theo Von and a friend of his who had won Big Brother the year before. A guy comes up to us and says, I’m a big fan of seeing you guys on TV, I love your work, you guys are awesome. Then he walked off, without saying anything to me. I turned to the other guys and said, I guess we know no one is watching me on TV. And then the guy immediately popped back in, as if he were in a multi-cam sitcom, and said to me, “Listen, I just realized I didn’t even acknowledge you. Just because you’re not on TV doesn’t mean you’re not a human being. That was really rude of me.” And then he left. It was fucking ridiculous. It was as if someone had written the scene in order to crush my ego at a bar.

SK: When did you begin to focus on acting as well as stand-up? Do you think it helped that you were filming sketches and man-on-the-street pieces before things started really happening?

MM: It’s funny because, you do these little videos, and you think they never matter. I remember, I shot this little piece when the iPhone came out. Not a lot of people saw it, but I always thought it was kind of funny. And then after Reality Bites Back, I booked a co-hosting gig on a VH-1 game show pilot that never went to air, but we shot it. The producer told me that one of the reasons he booked me was that he’d looked me up on YouTube, he’d seen that video I’d made, and he decided, OK, this guy’s fast on his feet. So you never fucking know. You’ve got this resume online, and it really doesn’t matter how many people have seen it, as long as the right people are looking at you. If you think you have talent, you should find a way to showcase that, because it’s the only thing under your control. Who watches it is not in your control.

SK: Speaking of showcasing yourself, how much do you focus on Twitter? (Twitter: @momandel)

MM: Somewhat? I definitely enjoy doing it. I don’t know if you know this. I was just picked as one of the Top Ten Sexiest Men of the new fall television lineup by Cosmo.

SK: Congratulations.

MM: They wrote, “According to the pilot, Mo’s as funny on the show as he is on Twitter.” I don’t have a lot of Twitter followers, so obviously someone looked me up on Twitter. The fact that I’m one of the sexiest men on TV should tell all the women in the world that these magazines are absolutely ridiculous and you should not take your information from that.

SK: You ARE very strong.

MM: I don’t know. I think when you make one of these lists you have to have a Jew on it.

SK: If nothing else, you are the sexiest new Jew on television.

MM: Even that seems like a stretch. But I’ll take it.

SK: What’s your favorite thing that you’ve written that’s never been produced?

MM: I wrote a pilot for NBC last year about two guys working in a think tank trying to come up with ways to stop a giant meteor from destroying the Earth in five years. There was no solution, so everyone in the think tank basically fucked around and got into mischief every week. I thought it was a real interesting funny idea. It got a lot of buzz from executives, but ultimately wasn’t enough to get made. But the response I got from people who read the pilot has been very very good. It may have been a good thing that they passed, since getting to know NBC executives probably got me Free Agents, so you never know what’s going to lead to what.

SK: You do Chelsea Lately a lot. Have you noticed a boost from those appearances?

MM: Absolutely. You can tell because a lot more women will come to the shows, and a lot more hot chicks. Especially if they plug the date on an episode of Chelsea, it’s quite a boost – in fact, way more than anything else. It’s not so much how many people watch the show as it is how many people love the show. And people who watch Chelsea Lately fucking love it, so they really embrace people who are on there.

SK: Add that to the Cosmo thing, your audiences are really going to change. What can fans expect from The M Word, your new album that comes out November 8^th?

MM: They can expect a very uncensored, hopefully very funny high-energy comedy album, that is completely offensive – and also hilarious – to all. I recorded it at my favorite club, Comedy Works in Denver. I’m really proud of it, it’s an honor to have an album out on Comedy Central Records, and I think the cover’s pretty dope. Anyone who is doubting the top sexiest thing, they can look at the cover and shut the fuck up, because it speaks for itself.

Follow Mo on Twitter.

Follow Sean Keane on Twitter.
 

Posted: October 12th, 2011 under Interview.
Comments: 3

Hello, Reiders. I feel like we’re really beginning to get close now. You treat me so good, and I really appreciate you. Look –we’re so fond of each other.

Happenings: I’m trying to get a tape ready to submit for comedy festivals. Figure it’d be a good way to get out in the comedy world a bit, gather a few more credits to my name. It’s a little more difficult here –I’m not passed at any clubs, and though I’m getting booked regularly on shows it can be hard to get a good tape. Most of the venues aren’t always the most respectable looking; despite having a good set, a coffee shop or a Thai restaurant backdrop may make it not the best choice for a submission. A few comics I know have gone outside the city to make tapes, to Boston or to their home clubs. I’ll be doing a show in Boston in December, so I’m hoping to get a good tape from that, but until then I may have to settle with what I can tape on my flipcam, though it’s no excuse not to submit. I also got head shots today, something I’d been meaning to do but had always put off. It feels good to take some necessary steps outside of writing and performing to help my career.

I talked a few weeks ago with comedian Billy Prinsell. We were getting ready to perform at a hostel in Chelsea, and sat out front discussing how humor works. Billy was a philosophy major in college, and wrote his thesis on comedy. Among other things, he stressed the importance of having a defined character. The comedic character, he said, is a character whose personality is a constant –they remain the same while events go on around them, and humor arises from how they respond to the situation. It does not change them; they maintain a point of view and comment upon each event. This differs from the dramatic character, which does not hold a consistent personality –they change with the events, and are affected deeply by what happens around them. Billy’s comedy reflects this understanding. He is himself, but a highly characterized version of himself, and what he says it not always funny in and of itself, but often is funny only in the context of his well-defined character. He’s a buff guy, a trainer at a gym, seemingly muscle-headed and bro-y, which makes even the mention of Beauty and the Beast or Greek mythology seem hilarious. It’s been giving me a lot to think about. Even the great comedians, Louis CK, Maria Bamford, Doug Stanhope, despite covering a huge breadth of subjects and ways to formulate a joke, are very consistently themselves. You know who they are, what they are, and they can be described fairly easy. This is not a bad thing; it lends a clear context to all their jokes.

On the other hand, I think it’s dangerous to look for so easy a definition. I remember seeing Bobcat Goldthwait a couple years ago at Go Bananas. He’s a big comic, and is known in stand-up for his nervous, voice-cracking, bizarre delivery. It’s a character, clear and obvious. At Go Bananas he abandoned it. He talked normally, told stories, and did a great set. Afterward he talked about how happy he was that he could do that –abandon his character, the trademark voice, just act as he acts and still do well. He said that in other cities he couldn’t get away with that, that if he doesn’t do what he is known for that the crowd won’t respond. The character helped him get to where he is in comedy, but it also eventually became something he resented.

I am trying to maintain a consistency with my humor. With getting up so much each week I find myself working on jokes that I don’t necessarily resonate with, that don’t reflect the qualities that make me a unique comedian. I’ll work on those jokes until I find something I like more that fits my style, and then drop them. I know right away for the most part if a joke is something I will hold on to, not even if it works, but if it fits. It is important to develop a clear style, to provide a context for the audience, a unity to your set. But at the same time I’m wary to define that so early in my comedy career –it will change as I go on, develop and make itself clearer, and limiting myself too early could be something I regret later. I guess it’s a balancing act in the end, between experimenting and looking outside your style to keep yourself interested, and learning to define and exude a specific personality to keep your audience invested. I used to try to guide the audience into my comedy with easier jokes that were more traditional, but changing personalities midway to do a more bizarre kind of comedy (which I enjoyed more) threw them off. By coming out strange, doing simpler but still odd humor up top, I find I gain their trust easier for the rest of the set –I won’t betray them, they trust me because even if they don’t know what to expect, they at least know to expect that.

Posted: October 11th, 2011 under BIG CITY, LITTLE REID.
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