I'm considered a "clean comedian" or "family friendly comedian," but that's just how it comes out. There's no incredible calculation behind being clean or family friendly; comedians talk about what they can get away with. Chris Rock or Lewis Black are just gonna do the type of comedy that they're going to do. If you know them, it makes sense what type of comedy that they're doing. I'm always hesitant to be identified as a clean comedian because all comedians, whether they be clean, female or African American or transgender, the only adjective they want is to be funny.
I sometimes I feel as though "clean" is this asterisk that kind of disqualifies some of my success. People are not coming to...
Related posts tagged 'Styles of comedy'
More
Related posts tagged 'Styles of comedy'
It's definitely an advantage to be high energy, but ultimately you want to be yourself. Comedians with forced energy look ridiculous (to me).
I’m 100 percent okay with it. For a while it was like, I don’t want to be a Moth person. Not like that’s bad, but the Moth is usually looking for one-offs from humans that have one incredible, life-changing story. But comedy’s evolved and there’s something for everybody, and more than ever, my people kind of find me. Of course, in a comedy club, you have a lot of seats to fill. I’m popular in some markets more than others, and so I can feel when it’s like 30-70, 50-50, 80-20 my people.
A lot of it is bragging. It used to drive me crazy when I knew that a stand-up’s agenda was about showing how smart they were. The last character you want to be is a guy who’s smarter than the audience. But there’s some hole inside that these stand-ups have to fill. It has nothing to do with making people laugh.
I’ve learned that if I foul it up, if I pause wrong or stumble over a word, the joke doesn’t go as good, and sometimes it doesn’t even go at all. It’s so much about timing. If there’s a three-second gap and I don’t say the next joke, I can lose the whole thing.
It really is a lesson I realized early on: You better know what you’re gonna say and say it the right way. Even if I wasn’t doing one-liners, even if it more traditional, telling stories, I’d still have to say it in the exact right way. It’s just how my brain works. I’m lucky all of this just meshed, you know? I didn’t decide to talk like this or sound like this. The surreal jokes and the voice just worked together. It was all by acci...
I've always been fascinated by dark subjects, especially people's reactions to them. Why are people so uncomfortable talking about death if everyone dies? And why do people sometimes laugh at these horrible things? And why do they seem to laugh harder when it's about a dark subject? Plus, no one else seemed to be doing it.
I just noticed that audiences didn't want to laugh at me because of the way I looked, so I just went with that. It seemed fun to play a villain on stage and I wanted my jokes to be so good that I could just calmly tell them on stage. I didn't want to show any neediness. It was important to me to be cool up there.
They're one in the same my friend. One in the same. (dips feet in a bucket of fish, reads about what Kant Can and Kant do)
It’s what you call evergreen topical. ’Cause most people don’t know anything. I learned on The Tonight Show, once you get past secretary of state, nobody has any idea who you’re talking about. They just don’t know anything. So you have to talk about, How ’bout the ECONOMY? And CONGRESS?
Well I should say... alright, I would curse occasionally in my act. When I started doing sets on Letterman and Conan, for network practices, legal practices, I would have to remove curse words. And what I found, is that, occasionally I'd have to remove those curse words, I would realize that the joke wasn't finished really, that I'd just throw in a curse word here and there.
One year I did Conan like ten times when I was doing Pale Force, so then I'd just starting writing without the curse words in it. But I am someone who curses in everyday life, and I also feel that the curse words were not necessary; given that I'm talking about camping or donuts, that contributed to it also. It's weird b...
Related posts tagged 'Finding your voice'
More
Related posts tagged 'Finding your voice'
I just got lucky. This is how I talk, this is how I think, this is what I look like onstage. And it’s still like that for me: I gotta write stuff and then I gotta go onstage and I gotta say it.
I've always been fascinated by dark subjects, especially people's reactions to them. Why are people so uncomfortable talking about death if everyone dies? And why do people sometimes laugh at these horrible things? And why do they seem to laugh harder when it's about a dark subject? Plus, no one else seemed to be doing it.
Question: How long did it take you to figure out your persona? Is there a video out there of you early in your career making Gaffigan-esque jokes?
Answer: No Gaffigan-esque videos out there, but it took me years to put this persona together. Just endless nights of open mics and trying new things.
I never set out to find my voice. It just happened organically. I’ve been doing comedy 30 years, so it’s hard to pinpoint when my persona developed. I never thought I really had a unique cadence until people started doing impressions of me to my face. As far as advice for comics about finding their voice, I would just say keep going onstage, and it will happen eventually.
When I started out, I was doing more conceptual bits that were just kind of silly. And then gradually, I expanded my premises. Everyone when you start out, for the most part, your material is very brief. You don’t trust that you can stay on stage for that long and get laughs. You don’t want to overstay your welcome. So you tend not to flesh out your premises that much. As you get more confident and more relaxed, you’re able to give a premise the treatment that it deserves and really explore your ideas. That’s what happened with me—I gradually expanded, and my comedy slowly became more about me and less about high concepts.
When I first started taking improv classes (2003), I never used my own voice once in a scene. I really didn't feel comfortable doing that. I was a distinct character in every improv scene I did until I moved to NYC and started taking UCB classes (2008). So all of that character practice was great, but dropping them was also huge for me because it was easier for my performance style to translate to TV work.
My journey hasn't been any darker than the average person. I grew up with a family who liked to be funny and made me a laugh a lot so I think that's why I like to goof. As for the "genuinely" thing... I do genuinely love all kinds of comedy. Remember those spoof movies around a decade ago that came out once a year for awhile? I'd go to them and laugh my head off and I had a friend who was like "But ironically right?" No! If I'm laughing, it's genuine and I don't question it. THIS IS A PAID ADVERTISEMENT FOR "DISASTER MOVIE."
Finding a scene where it was like, “Oh, this is the kind of stuff I’ve always wanted to do but couldn’t in the clubs in Philadelphia.” I wasn’t able to completely see myself on stage and be funny in the way I truly wanted to be. The alt scene helped me shape a much more conversational style and gave me the confidence to be as creative as I possibly could be, and not have a voice in my head saying, “That’s going too far, people need that club rhythm in order to digest what you’re saying.” The alt scene showed me a different way of doing things.
I just tell jokes about my own life and try to make it relatable enough for as many people to enjoy as possible.
I didn't set out with a plan or specific style in mind, I just wrote, and it came out of me fairly deadpan. Then as the years passed, I grew closer and closer to my own personality, which is a little more lively. I would say the style is inspired by Robin Williams, Jimmy Carrey, Maria Bamford, and from doing Speech (the Humorous Interpretation category) in high school.
Popular categories
Foam corner
Making a show
Inside baseball
Filmmaking
Favorite books
Favorite comedians
Coming up with ideas
Relationship with other comics
Advice for aspiring comedians
Childhood
General life advice
Writing
Favorite movies
Acting
Relationship with fans
Working with other comedians
Styles of comedy
Performing
Podcasting
Comedic influences
Saturday Night Live
Favorite memories as a comedian
Favorite music
Reflecting on own work
Fan stories
Favorite jokes
Creativity
Finding your voice
Yuks
Screenwriting
Jim Gaffigan