Big-name comedians/comedy actors who rarely make you laugh

[Dicktar2023]

I also interviewed Rita Rudner, and found her to be both charming and extremely precise and well-rehearsed for her show. When I warned her about the topics to avoid in her northern AZ show, she immediately replied "I don't do politics!". Whew. Got that off the table right away. She put on a terrific sold-out show that tapped into the universal human experience, like so many still-beloved 1960s sitcoms did so well, since they were written by men and women who had actually lived life....not come from a pampered upbringing, then straight to Ivy League, then into a cushy network job with no context for what makes the mass viewership laugh.

We've all seen the unforgettable showdown between Joan Rivers and an audience member at a casino in Wisconsin who took offense at her Helen Keller joke, saying he had a relative who was blind. Rivers ripped him a new one, explaining how everyone brings their own baggage to each comedy show hoping to see everyone else's problems joked about, so they need to be prepared that was goes around....comes around. This time it was time for the guy to laugh at himself, and he chose to be offended rather than just let it pass. Every joke carries that potential.

I so admire professional comics who spend so much time and energy on getting not just each line, not just each word, but each syllable correct, as well as their caesura (timing, pauses, and word spacing), because there are so many elements in one single sentence that can make someone laugh.....or not.

Comics on the way up who are still playing nightclubs coast to coast, driving themselves each way, often record themselves onstage and listen to their bits over and over en route to the venue, to create muscle memory and be able to get back on track if they're suddenly distracted (i.e., heckled).

In Woody Allen's brilliant "Crimes and Misdemeanors" he's working on a documentary of an obnoxious "comedy genius" (Alan Alda), whose trademark phrase is "If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it's not." The way a frustrated Allen visually illustrates that near the end of the film is side-splitting.

First bolded paragraph. In the last, I dunno 5-6 years I've been at two shows where this happened. First, I saw Anthony Jeselnik and he was doing a series of dead baby jokes as he is prone to do and as he his finishing one a lady gets up and screams about having a baby just die. He immediately went at her and told her that it might be a good idea in her life to research the comedians she is going to see and how that might relate to the circumstances of her life before making plans. He handled it well.

The second was a Jim Jefferies show at Stiffel. If you don't know Jim, he's Australian, he's very dirty but he's also very smart and tells great stories. He also uses the C word more than all the comedians combined. So he's going thru his show and he hears some commotion that involved some kids. Not babies but more like 10-12 yr olds and he gets into it with a family that brought their 12 and 14 yr old sons. Started questioning their ability as parents. "You know, I talk a lot about really nasty and vile things and I cuss and use the C word all night. Not exactly in the running for parent of the year are ya."

Actually if you saw the John Mulaney special, the one after rehab, in the first few minutes he figures out there is a 5th grader in one of the boxes side stage. It was a funny interaction. The cynical part of me wonders if that was planned. Ocams Razor says stupid parents.

I too admire the standup comedians ability to perfect an act. If you look, and you don't always have to look hard other than typically needing to be in NYC, LA, SF or Vegas, you can catch a really big act drop into a really small club to workshop bits of their upcoming special or their new hour of material.

I'd think the modern 12yo can handle salty language, so bring the kid if you want. But don't complain about it.

FYI, it seems like Jeselnik fought off a "dead baby" heckler during one of his Netflix specials, so it's possible you saw a bit.

[GelatinousEndive]

This thread is about comedians we don’t like, but I’d like to talk about a show I saw a few months ago I liked.m

We saw Craig Ferguson at The Factory. He is charming, a charming old dude. By “old” I mean he’s quite a bit younger than I am but still he’s one of the seniors out there on the circuit.

There was no warm-up comedian. He stomped onto the stage wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes to the tune “ Everybody Dance Now!” and you haven’t heard that on bagpipes…It’s funny.

He gave a nice long set of commentary on life, generations, and his takeon the world. He’s a pretty nice guy. I’m just finishing his autobiography.

[Pink Freud]

This thread is about comedians we don’t like, but I’d like to talk about a show I saw a few months ago I liked.m

We saw Craig Ferguson at The Factory. He is charming, a charming old dude. By “old” I mean he’s quite a bit younger than I am but still he’s one of the seniors out there on the circuit.

There was no warm-up comedian. He stomped onto the stage wearing a kilt and playing bagpipes to the tune “ Everybody Dance Now!” and you haven’t heard that on bagpipes…It’s funny.

He gave a nice long set of commentary on life, generations, and his takeon the world. He’s a pretty nice guy. I’m just finishing his autobiography.

Craig Ferguson is one of the reasons I'm still alive, and doing so well.

A long, long-ago forum poster, a nice lady living with her lifelong love, and I struck up an online friendship over our mutual admiration of Craig Ferguson and many other mutual likes. I had just moved, with $400 to my name, to Los Angeles, where I rented a bedroom in a house owned by another long-ago former forum poster an actor (and his wife and son) with whom I reconnected after knowing him from high school musicals we had worked on four decades earlier.

The lady friend from these foruns knew I attended two Craig Ferguson "Late Show" tapings at CBS Television City, and expressed a desire to see one. She said she'd have to come alone since her partner didn't want to fly, so we made arrangements for her to take a motel in L.A., .....which sadly never came to fruition as she and her loving partner dealt with health issues. Yet, she heard my tales of struggles in L.A. and was astonishingly generous, frequently sending unsolicited checks to my landlord for my rent while I searched for jobs.

They married, and when his kidneys failed him, his heart ans spirit carried on in her, and she used his investments to help numerous grateful people whose lives' paths they had crossed, eventually moving, a widow, to near a relative in warmer weather to help with her health.

I spoke to this wonderful lady only one time; on the phone when I needed her SSN to make her the beneficiary on my life insurance when I finally landed a job with benefits. I never met her in person. I tried numerous times to contact her after she moved, to no avail. I fear her own health issues may claimed her.

Yet, thanks to her I was able to barely scrape by in L. A., and hang on long enough to finally be in the right place at the right time and find many years of success as a radio/TV talk show host and emcee for numerous Chamber of Commerce events, then using those connections to hook up with a national syndicator.

That enabled me to attract the lady I married --- after proposing to her in front of 4,000 people at one of those Chamber events --- and live a life since that before I could only dream of.

Todd Rundgren once sang "For the want of a nail, a shoe was lost. For the want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For the want of a horse, a rider was lost. For the want of a rider, the battle was lost.....".

Had that amazing lady not provided that "nail" more than 15 years ago......there's no telling what battles would have been lost. I sure as hell wouldn't be enjoying the life I have now. I learned in that decade in SoCal, immersed in showbiz stories, that nobody ever makes it alone.

And it all started with being fans of Craig Ferguson.... and sharing these forums.