Media, Material and More

And do you think it’s different doing radio versus television versus a live crowd? Yes.  Stand-up is a different muscle - and funny is funny - but [with] radio, you really can’t make it look like it’s rehearsed.  [With] stand-up, you want to give the illusion of spontaneity, but you can do something where people are like, “oh, he thought of that before.”  [With] radio, it’s got to really be a conversation.  And so, whenever there’s a radio show where they’re like, “so tell us some of your bits,” I’m just like, “no!  I was going to.  I was going to disguise them as conversation, but now...” And a lot of radio is ad lib.  You have to be able to react to what’s happened.  And stage, you have to be able to react sometimes.  But you can steamroll... you don’t need ad lib.  TV, you have to be able to deal with the hosts not listening to you.  They will have their questions.  Every once in awhile, there will be a conversation, but most of the time, they’ll have their five questions, they will ask them, and so for TV, you have to learn how to take the interview where you want it to go.  You have to learn to steal the interview.  And those are completely different skills. A good comic should be able to do all three, but they all take practice. Do you prefer one medium over the other? Oh, I prefer live.  I very much prefer live.... It’s a tightrope.  It’s adrenaline.  That’s why we all do this.  We want a reaction. Did you start off doing live? I started off as a writer, and I started doing stand-up to promote the writing.  And then it turned out, this was my job. Do you write all of your own material? Yeah.  I mean, sometimes I might write with other comics [and] we’ll kind of shoot ideas off of each other, but I’ve never hired a writer and I don’t think I ever will.  Because I just need it to be in my voice. [Photo via Steve Hofstetter]
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