About Matt McDonald Expertise I DO NOT FULFILL REQUESTS TO TELL JOKES! PLEASE DON'T ASK. I can answer questions regarding getting started in stand-up comedy: what to expect, what to do before, during and after your first show, pushing past stage fright and associated pants-wetting fears and so on. I am also reasonably comfortable talking about the basic business aspects of stand-up where beginners are concerned.
Experience I DO NOT FULFILL REQUESTS TO TELL JOKES! PLEASE DON'T ASK. Experience in the area I "worked" for nine years as a stand-up comic in Ohio. Most of my experience comes from open mics, local competitions and the like but I do have some familiarity with "the road" as it pertains to beginners. I have counseled/coached/mentored several people who wanted to get into stand up and wanted the full lowdown on what to expect once they started to pursue it in earnest. In 1994, I made more money from winning local open mic night contests than I did at my actual job. I also performed in improv comedy for a couple of years, though I never considered myself very good at it - I can answer general questions re: improv as well.
Due to a volatile temper and abysmal luck, I never managed to make it to the next rung of the ladder. Middle age has mellowed me and now you can learn from my mistakes.
Question what is your view on comics who use foul language? I think it ok but my mom says it rude.
thanks stan
Answer Stan,
Your mom, and everybody else, has a right to their opinion but when you get right down to it it's the comic's act, it's the comic's success or failure, etc.
So the short answer is this: let everybody have their opinion and tell you whatever they want to tell you, ignore them and do what you want to do. If you're thinking about going on stage, you're the one who is taking all the risks and putting yourself on the line. Nobody else except other comics and you gets to judge. Period.
Personally, I really chaff at the notion that you have to be clean to be good. It really bothers me because I have put a lot of time in, both on stage and behind, to know what *I* want to do in my act. Further, I have a knowledge of what my act is about, how it is reflective of me and my worldview and if I feel it needs to be dirty, there's a reason for that.
I actually got into this very same argument with my mom many times when I was regularly performing - she always wanted to tell me how great Red Buttons was, and why couldn't I be clean like Red Buttons and blah blah blah. I finally told her "Hey, if you like clean comedy so much and you're so worried about dirty language in comedy, then you work up an act and do it, and I'll be there to support you. But until such time as you know what it's like to stand on stage with nothing but your act and the stones to deliver it, you have no idea what you're talking about."
I'm not saying you should tell your mom the same because my mom and I have a bit of a unique relationship, but that's really what it comes down to. Soldiers consider themselves different from civilians because there are choices they have to make that no civilian ever has to think about. In a far, far, far less important way, there are comics and there are civilians. It is very easy for a person to say "Oh, I would never do this or that in front of an audience". It's easy to say that when you're sitting comfortably in the audience. It's a different world when you're on stage. It's a different set of options, of boundaries and parameters. It's just not comparable. So the advice of a "civilian" is, frankly, worthless.
However, there are potential issues to consider when you start getting into the question of working "clean" or working "dirty".
First of all, to me there's a difference between "working blue" and being a "dick joke" comic. Both are "dirty" but, to my mind, in different ways.
I worked blue, by which I mean I cursed in my act. Even bits that were not by nature dirty I tended to dirty up by using rough language. To me, that's working blue: the use of "foul language" and four-letter words. Some clubs consider you "blue" if any of your material is potentially offensive *for any reason*. So if you have jokes about, I don't know, black people and white people, some clubs would consider that a "blue" act because the potential exists to upset people, even though you may never use a four-letter word.
As an example of that, a few months ago I popped in to a local open mic and did about 8 minutes of new material, all of which was political/social, no sex jokes at all. I had some material about the gay marriage controversy, etc. Another comic invited me to open for her at some local room she was working the next night if I could "clean it up a bit". Now, I hadn't done any sex jokes, and the harshest word I used was "shit". What she was asking was whether I could do material that didn't touch on controversial or difficult subjects. So to her, I was a "blue comic" because of my material itself, not because of my language.
On the other hand, you can do material that is strictly scatological/sexual in nature. Those are "dick jokes". These are inherently "dirty" simply because you're talking about poop and pee and penises and vaginas, etc. See Andrew Dice Clay for a dick joke comic. Of course, "blue" and "dick joke" usually overlap to some extent: it's virtually impossible to do dick jokes without, at the same time, using vulgar terms and curse words. They go hand in hand. So I worked blue in my entire act and some of my jokes were dick jokes.
Keep in mind, that's my view of it. A lot of comics, clubs and bookers don't make the distinction and consider use of the word "shit" to be the same as a three minute bit about oral sex: it's all dirty as far as they're concerned. I always felt that a bit more nuance was necessary in order to really summarize a person's material. Personally, I found that audiences were receptive to foul language in almost any context (as long as it's not completely over the top and you avoid certain "nuclear options", like the c-word), while an hour of dick jokes tends to need a specific type of audience to work. That's why I think the distinction between "blue" and "dick joke" is important.
To me, being a "blue" comic was not a pejorative term - it was a state of being - while being a "dick joke" comic was a slander. "Dick joke" comic implies that you've got nothing but jokes about that one topic. Typically, dick-joke-reliant comics have a slate of bad, run-of-the-mill or just plain stupid dick jokes, so that's why being a "dick joke" comic was a bad thing to me. It was laden with a value judgment about the talent of the comic in question. A "blue comic" was simply someone who used foul language, a condition that can be objectively verified and has nothing to do with the quality of one's material.
The majority of comics at all levels work blue to some extent or another. A slightly smaller percentage have dick jokes in their act and an even smaller percentage are dick joke specialists. Headliners are usually polished enough to adjust their act for the venue. Richard Jeni is a great example. If you watch him on TV, he's squeaky clean and can do an hour easy and never get within a country mile of the genitals. But in a club, he opens it up a bit more and does some dick jokes (very high end dick jokes, but dick jokes nonetheless). That's because in a club, you're dealing with people who are drinking - comedy clubs are really just fancy bars. Whenever alcohol is involved, the IQ of the room drops sharply and you have to make concessions to that by using well-placed dick jokes and working blue.
Anyway, at the open mic level, working blue and doing dick jokes are usually tolerated, if not encouraged. There are open mics that are billed as "clean comedy nights" but those are obvious and unmistakable. Open mic audiences tend to be "lowest common denominator" settings, so you usually have to stoop to their level and offer them some peepee and fart material (dick jokes) before they'll listen to you talk about anything else. And, to keep their interest, you usually have to litter your act with four-letter words, etc. For me, that came naturally because cursing is something I do in normal conversation with my friends. I never felt self-conscious about it because I'm not one of these "vulgarity indicates a lack of intelligence" type of people. I know I can talk and write circles around just about anybody without using foul language. For me it came down to the fact that my material was raw, angry and confrontational, therefore foul language (working blue) was a natural extension of my act.
As for dick jokes, I wrote a lot of them when I first got started (that's common) and I did do those on stage. However, I was never all that interested in those particular jokes because I felt like a lot of them were easy hackwork. I'd do them maybe once or twice and then forget them. I did write a couple that were really unusual, had an interesting or different perspective and matched with the "attitude" of my other material. I was happy to do those because I was more interested in having a good, unique act than I was in having a "clean" act. It just so happened that the dick jokes I wrote tended to be bad - had I written more good ones, I would have done more dick jokes in my act. Over time, I wrote fewer and fewer simply because I was more focused on other topics. That's typical too.
Some people will tell you that working dirty, especially doing dick jokes, is the "easy" way out and will wear the moniker of "clean comic" like a badge of honor. I don't agree with that. For one thing, sex is a natural part of life - a huge part of life for a lot of people - and not talking about it is, to me, disingenuous. What I'm talking about are the comics who write dick jokes, have no problem telling dick jokes among the other comics and then go onstage and say "Oh, I'm a clean comic". There are audience members like this too - they love to tell dirty jokes at work and so on, but they get into a club environment with strangers and they feel awkward or embarrassed to laugh at dirty jokes around people they don't know. Some people are weird like that: they think if they laugh at a dick joke, it's like an admission that - GASP! - they actually have and think about sex.
If you simply don't write jokes about it, that's different.
Additionally, working blue and doing dick jokes isn't necessarily an indication of lack of talent AND it is possible to write extremely challenging blue material/dick jokes that run the risk of turning an audience off - they're not always the easy way out. Listen to Bill Hicks if you don't believe me - that guy had some of the harshest, most extreme dick jokes in comedy. You can't listen to him and continue to believe that dick jokes are always an easy way out. Often they are the easiest path to laughs, but not always. Or perhaps I'm rationalizing.
It's not uncommon to find open mic comics who purposefully work as "clean" comics. It's just that the temptation to go blue or do dick jokes is quite prevalent at the open mic level. Dick jokes are usually the first jokes a comic comes up with, because they're pretty easy. Additionally, when you get up for the umpteenth time to a room full of half drunk yokels, it's hard to avoid dropping an f-bomb here or there.
Some clubs, though not many, have restrictions on language or material and they'll either let you know what those restrictions are or they simply won't book you if they know your act just doesn't work for them. However, most clubs leave it to the audience to decide what they want to hear, so the poster for an upcoming comic will subtly hint that a comic is blue or relies heavily on dick jokes. The bill for the comic might say "Adults Only" (which is stupid because you can't get into most clubs unless you're 21, but the phrase lets people know there is "adult material") or they might call a comic "The King of Dirty Jokes". Things like that.
There seems to be a growing trend for "Family Friendly Nights" or "Family Friendly Clubs". For example, a club might have a "family comedy show" on Monday night, then the rest of the week they'll have their normal show with completely different comics, who have the option of working blue/doing dick jokes. Or, a room might pop up in a local restaurant and the booker will make sure to always book it with clean acts. Those seem to be increasingly common, which is probably a reaction to the fact that most comedy shows, in any type of club, will have some measure of bad language and sexual material.
The real problem you run into as a beginner is in moving into paying gigs. The emcee at a show, regardless of whether it's for a B or C room, has to be sort of low key, whitebread. At least, that used to be the case. I went to a show last night and the emcee was pertty dirty. However, the headliner was also pretty dirty as well. In all likelihood, this is an example of a club manager doing a good job: he had an emcee he wanted to book who had some dirty material, so he booked him with a headliner who was even dirtier.
If you're using language that's harsher than that of the middler or headliner, you tend to steal a little bit of their steam and induce the audience to expect a certain type of comedy that the other comics will not give them. Generally, you have to think of the middler and headliner as your "bosses". And you never want to show up your boss in front of a client. You, as an emcee, are support staff for the rest of the show and you can't do anything that the middler and headliner won't be able to top. This is not to say you can't be funnier than them, it's just that you don't want to be more "extreme" them.
This means that emcees usually have to keep it pretty clean. If you're not sure, there's no harm in asking the club manager. Just go up to him/her prior to the show, or at the time you're booked, and say "I just want to be sure I'm meeting your expectations of me, so I want to know if you'd like me to work completely clean or if I can do TV cursing or what?" I can't see that there'd be any harm in this and the manager may appreciate your level of professionalism in making sure you're doing a good job.
If you're not sure how dirty you can get as an emcee, another tactic is to watch the middler and headliner at the first show, then adjust your material based on how they work, always playing to the "cleaner" of the two. If the middler is really blue and the headliner is less so, you need to be less blue than the headliner. If the middle is squeaky clean and the headliner does nothing but dick jokes (a good indication, by the way, that the club booker doesn't know what the hell s/he's doing), you have to be squeaky clean. This goes in any room, at any level. When you move up to middling status, you then only have to worry about "playing under" the level of dirtiness of the headliner.
So that's the basic "lay of the land" as far as working dirty.
I have had some discussions with other comics about the pros and cons of whether you should actively try to work clean as an open micer or not. This applies only to those comics who are torn between working dirty or not. For some aspiring stand-ups, like me, it's not an issue to begin with. Simply put, some comics just do what they're going to do, without worrying about "clean or dirty".
On the "Yes, you should try to work clean" side, there are usually two arguments.
Number one, as I said above, the emcee typically is expected to work clean. Since your first paying gigs will be as an emcee, it behooves you to start working clean now. This is a perfectly rational argument that I can't refute.
Number two, working dirty, for a lot of stand-ups, becomes a crutch. They find themselves unable to do their act without cursing, or they find that their best material (i.e. that which gets the most laughs) is dick jokes and they write bunches more dick jokes without writing anything else. This I would also say CAN be true for some comics. To me, this argument has to be addressed differently, depending on whether the problem is too much cursing (working blue) or too many dick jokes.
If you're worried about how much you curse on stage and whether you'll be able to avoid it when you need to, I think that goes to who you are as a person. I never struggled with the transition from working blue at open mics to working clean as an emcee - I just cut out the curse words. For me, I was able to just set a switch in my brain that prevented the bad words from coming out. Just that easy. For other people, the four-letter words are far harder to get rid of because they're such a part of how they talk. I think a lot of it has to do with what you do when you're not doing comedy.
For example, I was a customer service rep in various forms. Obviously, if I wanted to keep my job, I couldn't go around cursing to the customers. Therefore, I had developed the ability to control my profanity levels based on my environment. There was, very briefly, an open micer around here who did his material and every other word was "fuck" or "shit" or whatever. He went to a clean night once, thinking he could just get rid of it, and he couldn't. He just said the same stuff, without even thinking about it. Consequently, he had a job where he didn't have to reign in his language like I did, so it was harder for him to self-regulate.
So you can develop an ability to control language issues and that's an ability you should start working on ASAP because it will come in handy. First of all, do a clean set at an open mic and see if you can easily switch yourself into "no cursing" mode. If you find that you can, you're in the clear. The only thing I would suggest is to periodically choose one bit in your act that you normally do dirty and do it clean during a show. This will help you to keep that profanity valve well-oiled. If you find that controlling the amount of cursing is impossible, leads you to go blank or makes you think too hard about what you're doing, you need to develop a profanity switch.
For example, start going to open mics with the intention of working 100% clean and keep doing it until you get it - if you say even one "damn" in your act, consider it a failed effort and try again. Once you have it, start doing half of your shows clean and half "normal" until you can get to a point where, two minutes before you go on, somebody can tell you either "clean" or "dirty" and it doesn't rattle you.
Another approach some comics make is to maintain two sets of material: clean and dirty. Some jokes, you'll find, naturally lead you to curse and some don't so you take the ones that don't and you make a set out of those and the ones that do and you make a set out of those. Then, you've got a set of material for any situation. This is the sort of thing you have to work on for a while because when you first start, you'll struggle just to have one good set, let alone two.
If your problem is that you rely too much on dick jokes, you might have a bigger issue. It is easy to become addicted to dick jokes. Dick jokes are not "better" than clean material, but they are easier and quicker to write. The sad fact is that it is easier to get a laugh with a bad dick joke than it is to get a laugh with a bad non-dick joke. So you get sort of addicted to the "quick fix" that dick jokes can provide. Having a hard time coming up with new material? Write a quick dick joke! Can't seem to find the punchline for a premise? Consider a dick joke!
So how to break out of this cycle? I don't know that there's a good answer for that. Basically, you just have to either consciously not write dick jokes OR consciously not include dick jokes in your act. This is not to say you should completely excise dick jokes, but if you feel like you already have enough, you have to draw a line in the sand, so to speak, and refuse to add new ones to your arsenal. I think most beginners write a lot of dick jokes and this tapers off over time as you learn how to explore a premise, what your stage persona is and so on.
Now, on the other hand, there's one compelling argument against forcing yourself to be clean (at the open mic stage - this doesn't necessarily apply once you have a year or two under your belt, at which point you should already know whether or not you're a "dirty" act).
At the early stages of your career, I don't think you should place expectations on your material. You can't say to yourself "I'm going to work clean" because you don't know if that's going to match who you are on stage. Of course, it's likely that you stage persona will match your real life personality, just ratcheted up to 11. So if you curse in real life, expect that you're going to curse on stage, maybe even more than you do normally. I think it's harmful to your progress and sense of achievement to yoke yourself with a burden of expectations that is essentially arbitrary. And to me, that's what a drive to work "clean" is for a new person: a desire to meet an arbitrary expectation.
My point here is that it's difficult enough, in your first year to two years, just to get on stage and have material that will get laughs. If you add yet another layer to that - "I MUST BE CLEAN!" - you're setting yourself up for failure. Down the road, if you decide you want to clean it up for some reason, fine, great. At that point, you've got enough ground under your feet that you'll be able to support the extra weight you're deciding to carry.
Now, if you have a sense of shame about it, or if you find that you're appalled by the material you find yourself doing, that's something entirely different. I know it sounds strange, but I have found myself, more than once, doing jokes that I knew were terrible and the only reason I kept doing them is because they were guaranteed laughs. Your ego can definitely hijack your higher instincts and begin driving you toward material that you really don't like simply because it gets the laughs you crave. If that happens, if you find that you are embarrassed by your act or parts thereof, it's clearly time for a change. In these cases the unnecessary burden is not being "clean", it's being "dirty" (or dirtier than you're willing to be). So my point still stands: in your first couple of years, the most important thing is being as free and open about your act as you can be.
