15 comedians reflect on their most surprisingly successful material.
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Stand-up comedy is an interactive art form.
Jokes that seem surefire in the comics head can fizzle once theyre actually told.
But conversely, jokes that comics were sure wouldnt work can kill.
Nate Bargatze
Iced coffee with milk.
I was surprised that it became as big as it did.
After I didThe Standups,that was the one people were talking to me about.
Its not that crazy; Starbucks messes up everybodys drinks.
I didnt think it would hit the way it did.
It really struck a chord.
Enough people have dealt with it, but havent worded it a certain way.
InThe Standups, the iced coffee with milk joke is in the middle.
And then onThe Tennessee Kid,I close with the new version of it.
Thats how much it took off.
You have to put [the biggest joke] at the end.
It was just sticking out, how hard it was hitting.
And you get excited to get to it.
Once it starts hitting harder, it gets more fun to tell.
Youve got to trust that youre normal.
I always say that Im the most average person.
My taste is descriptive of America, what Im into: sports, chain restaurants.
Would a psycho even order milk with ice?
I didnt really change it; I just added a call to donate to Planned Parenthood.
Because then it almost guilts them into liking it.
It was one of those things where I wasnt going to say sorry.
But there is something to tailoring jokes to different people.
When I was in Canada, I have a joke about Target.
They dont have Targets in Canada.
I asked the people of Canada, Whats your relationship to Target?
And they were like, It came, and they didnt do it right, so then it left.
Then I just go onto the next thing, and thats when it gets the laugh.
That was very, very scary for me.
Being like, You still like me, I hope!
If the audience trusts me, the laugh comes faster.
And if they dont, I really have to stay in that pause for longer.
I hope it makes certain people uncomfortable in the right way.
Catherine Cohen
Lately, I just start all my shows bysinging the word Hello!
really loudly, and then I say, Wow, I have an amazing voice.
And I was really nervous because I hadnt done any singing in my act, it was just stand-up.
But I missed singing.
But ultimately, leaning into that background actually turned my act into what Im most proud of today.
So I was scared to be big and feminine and loud.
I worried it would be annoying, but people responded to it.
And songs are what most of my act is now.
Thats where I found my voice.
It singles you out, and thats ultimately what you need.
But it is scary when youre a nobody doing open mics, to call attention to yourself.
Basically, the joke was that the dolphin was pretty excited to have knees.
This was before comedians were really doing smart stuff.
It was a time of dumb stuff, I would say.
And I thought that was going to be a hit, and it was almost never a hit.
So we both tried it at the same show.
I even went first, so it would be pretty clear that he was stealing my joke.
He did it after me, and he pretty much crushed it.
He did it exactly the same.
We tried it again, where he just did it, and it crushed again.
It turned out maybe it just needed a mans delivery.
The audiences reaction was always different to it.
And so, maybe half an hour before taping, I still couldnt figure it out.
And so I had another line, If it makes you guys feel better, he didnt kill himself.
Which isnt a joke, but it worked.
Confidence is almost more important sometimes, in a way that is scary.
A lot of the stuff I joke about comes from things Im scared of to begin with.
Finding comedy around them helps me cope with them.
It helps me push it further.
Ive always noticed that female journalist in a Middle Eastern country.
And all of a sudden you see her in this veil.
How far over her bangs is it?
The first time I did it, I didnt think anybody would get it.
It was a very small observation that I made.
People got it, and it was very surprising.
You could write something that is out of the box, and it could completely fall on its face.
But if its a success, youve done this completely new thing.
So the reward is much bigger than the risk.
Kathleen Madigan
I do abig thing about the Villages on my last special.
Theres a place in Florida called the Villages.
Its a 55-and-older place that my parents tried to scam three years in a row.
Everything I say in that bit is true.
But then it super-duper worked.
I learned I can be sillier if I want to.
So I never want to get too weird.
Other people feel its an art.
I feel like its an art to a point, but once youre getting paid, its commissioned.
Youve been paid for, so in my opinion, you gotta do the job.
But now I know I can be a little sillier, and theres no harm, no foul.
Initially, I didnt get why the joke worked.
But now I know why.
With a joke, you create tension and then you release it.
Theres tension in bringing up race.
But people always want to know where youre from.
So its me playing around with it.
And its so absurd.
Its worked in all kinds of audiences, even with Asian audiences.
They understand that its hard to tell.
Like, what does that even mean, to look a certain way?
More and more, Ive learned that it comes down to confidence.
You might think youre niche; you might not think youre for everyone.
But if youre confident in your joke-writing technique, its actually more relatable than you think.
That tiny one-sentence joke came about at a time when I was realizing that.
I was traveling and doing shows in places that Id never even heard of in the United States.
For that particular joke to work in, like, Wilmington, North Carolina, speaks to that.
Its about trusting that, within your truth, theres a lot who people have experienced that as well.
Sometimes the more specific you get, the more relatable it is.
Larry Owens
Originally, I had all these reservations about wearing wigs in my act.
I wanted to, as a queer person, bring their stories into my storytelling.
I decided to do some of the bits without the wig, and it doesnt work.
So I think theres some weird, queer science about wearing a wig as well.
Just because something doesnt work for somebody else doesnt mean it wont work for you.
I dont think theres anything lesser-than about wearing a wig or assuming a female form.
Its a three- to four-minute bit, and I never thought I would do it onstage.
It started because I got a stress fracture in my foot and I couldnt walk for two weeks.
Ultimately, they fall in love and she wins prom queen.
There were lots of trope-y high-school specifics in it.
I never thought I would do it live.
I was like,Its a festival audience, and its a long bit.
It felt so good.
Now Im sick of it.
I didnt think it would work because it was so long, and its so niche.
Its so specific to my humor.
Its mostly about how teens talk in media, as opposed to how humans talk in real life.
It doesnt start with a huge laugh.
I always know when its going to get its first laugh and its truly 45 seconds into the bit.
Im always shocked when I still have time to get to that laugh.
Its honestly scary every single time.
I feel a weird guilt around it.
As a comedian, if youre not making people laugh every five seconds, you feel guilty over it.
So I feel weird shame if I do something slow.
I have to calm myself down a little bit.
Sometimes I dont know if Im considered an alt comedian or a regular comedian.
I definitely do stand-up and do jokey jokes.
But if I ever showcase, they always split you up into stand-up or characters.
Most of my friends get put in characters, and Im in the stand-up.
And that bit is the antithesis of that.
I can be patient and I can do a slow build.
It doesnt make me less of a comedian.
I can get just as big of a laugh as those Comedy Cellar setuppunch line people.
Brendan Scannell
Ive got this whole bit about being catcalled for being redheaded.
If I walk by anyone of an older generation, people will tell me I have beautiful hair.
She expects every redhead to be her lost grandson.
But thats whats great about identity-based comedy.
Im able to express my redhead identity for people who dont have that experience.
You hear peoples specials, and its really effective.
The minute you see [a comic], youre trying to figure out who they are.
But since its been done so much, it has to be done in new, creative ways.
The last thing I made was a PowerPoint performance about Bernie Sanders.
And the video is me with a handmade papier-mache skull I made, unscrewing the top of the head.
And theres just a big pink butt with chocolate syrup fountaining out the top of it.
Repeating the same joke over and over again, its slightly polarizing.
Its basically an accusation.
Theyre so elaborate, and so prop-heavy, and with so much repetition.
Getting any reaction at all is fun.
Not getting a reaction at all is the worst people just sitting there with their arms crossed.
But if people are screaming in horror or laughing, then, hey!
Thats a days work.
When people are laughing, it enables my worst behavior.
Its only going to enable me to make something worse next time.
So of course my next PowerPoint, I did a more grotesque and horrifying version of it.
If people keep enabling my worst behavior, hopefully Ill make the grossest thing yet.
I was in a small room with these people for a full day.
It was a sound guy and a camera guy.
And the sound guy told this story about filming a commercial in the desert.
And he said, The guy walked around with a stick and a bucket.
And then [the sound guy] got a call and walked away.
I am stuck trying out other endings for this story forever.
The bit devolves into a song called Snakey Go Away.
Its so theatrical, and its a paper-thin premise.
I dont do it that much because you have to really like me.
It becomes a bit within a bit, where I get lost in the fantasy of a fantasy.
Well, youre going to get all of me.
I dont even have cremation money.
So if theres a fire, just leave me there, thats a free cremation.
Im trying to die on a budget.
People respond to it because youwouldthink cremation is cheap, but its not.
Its like $5,000.
People understand where Im coming from with that.
Knowing how much money it costs to die is a thing.
[The response has taught me] Im not the only one thats weird.
Not weird, but Im not the only person who thinks about death in a different way.
Nothing is too strange.
