Talking Awesome

While I don't want the next three months of this blog to become all about how much fun it is to have HBO and Cinemax for free, I would be doing a disservice if I didn't talk about one of the perks I found this week which was the HBO special, "Talking Funny". Basically, it is four comedians I have a lot of respect for (Ricky Gervais, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Louis CK), sitting around discussing comedy. From the moment I first saw the previews for this special last month during the HBO free preview weekend I was dying to see it, but figured I would wait until I was down in Wareham, because it wasn't airing for another couple of weeks and while I didn't have HBO at home, we do happen to have it at the beach house. Fortunately for me that process was sped up.

It was everything a comedy nerd like me hoped it would be. I've talked before about how much I admire stand-ups because I certainly can't do that, but at the same time I don't like stand-ups who think they are doing important, society-altering work. I admire the skill and respect people who take being funny as hard work, but don't get it twisted and think you're curing cancer. It's that balance which is important. You would think that if anybody had the right to have a skewered perspective about themselves it would be these guys, but it was the exact opposite. A specific example was Louis CK telling a story about opening for Jerry Seinfeld 20 years ago and introducing him as, "The funniest comic in the world". Seinfeld did his whole show, got off stage an hour later and went directly to Louie (showing it had been bothering him the entire hour) to tell him to never do that again, because it sets the bar too high. After CK finished telling the story Seinfeld mentioned that he did the exact same thing a couple months back because he still doesn't want that much pressure when he goes on stage.

You would think that if anyone was comfortable with high expectations it would be Seinfeld, but he talked about always just trying to make that room laugh because he was actually funny, not just because he was Jerry Seinfeld. This led to an interesting discussion of whether people come to see them or to see the act and exactly how many old jokes can you do. Unlike musicians, most audience members aren't coming to hear the classics - they want new stuff. The general consensus was that you could mix in some old jokes, but if you want people to keep coming back you need to mostly have new material.

They also started talking about each other's bits which was really fascinating to watch. I know that comedians have this thing about people stealing their bits, but it proved that two people can actually tell the same joke in completely different manners. Louis CK has a joke about parents taking their kids on vacations and it being so stressful that his only vacation only lasts as long as it takes him to close his wife's car door, walk around the car and get into the driver's seat. Seinfeld said how much he laughed at this bit and starting doing it for Louie, but it was all clean-up, polished and with not nearly as much raw-emotion. (Basically, he Seinfeld-ed it.) Yet it was still funny.

They covered a lot of other ground as well: how much profanity to use, ways to craft a stage act, what their first big joke was, when they knew they would make it as a stand-up and so on. All in all it was really great to watch. Here's the highest compliment I can probably give this program: the biggest problem I had with it was that it had clearly been edited for time. It was 50 minutes and I would have much rather seen HBO extend it for another hour, instead of cutting it down to make sure we got a re-run of "Game of Thrones". If you have HBO it should be on-Demand for a couple more weeks and I really recommend watching it if you have a chance.