A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think a lot comes from having the experience of doing stand-up comedy. It allows you to figure out the psychology of an audience; what things are funny and not.
Before YouTube, I used to show videos at film festivals, and that was good and constructive. Watching things with an audience is a great way to gauge - it's pretty clear what's working in comedy when there's a joke and people laugh or don't laugh.
Some comedians will tour and do these classic bits all the time. But now with YouTube and Comedy Central, people see your stuff, and they don't want to hear you do that again.
When you go out there to do comedy, you feel like you're doing battle with the audience a lot of the time. You're either going to get 'em, or you're not.
You always draw on your experiences with live audiences to know how to do comedy on films. You're working for a laugh that may or may not come six months later, but you're working in a vacuum at the time you are doing it.
I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.
With music, you're laying it all out there. They're judging you right away, and you can lose them quick. With the comedy, you've always got another joke to redeem yourself. Or, even if you've only got one joke, at least the punch line is at the end. Then they have to at least pay attention until the end.
If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you've got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.
In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest. And in doing that, you'll find out here's the other side. You'll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter.
I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.
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