r/Standup

What's up r/Standup!
Longtime lurker, first time poster.

My name is Louis Katz. I've been a professional comedian for 25 years. Over the past year, I've expanded beyond writing and performing my own stand up to consulting and directing other comedians' specials.

I consulted on Frankie Quiñones' Hulu special, Sheng Wang's newest Netflix special, and I'm currently consulting on Dan Soder's upcoming Netflix special. I also worked intensively with Bobby Lee on his upcoming Hulu special, which I also directed this past January.

To be clear, these are all extremely funny and talented comedians in their own right, and they certainly don't need any help from me to be hilarious.

But a lot of times even great comedians are too close to their own work to clearly see how their acts can be improved. While the audience's reaction might be telling them a bit isn't really working, I help figure out why it's not working and how to fix it. Often times this consists of making minute changes to individual jokes so they hit harder and land better. But I also take a more holistic approach, moving jokes around to accentuate themes, giving the hour some structure, and improving flow to keep the audience engaged.

Basically, I'm trying to help comedians shape, polish and elevate their material so their hour specials can be something truly special.
Or in other words, I'm trying to be like the Rick Rubin of comedy. Except I'm an actual, working comedian and Rick Rubin can't play music.

So why am I posting about this here?
First of all, just to publicly announce that I'm doing this kind of work now. I'm open to working with different levels of comedians, so please reach out and DM me if you're interested in my services. And second, I want to try creating short form content where I help other comedians with their jokes/bits. So if you have a short 1-3 minute bit you'd like help with that you'd be cool with me re-posting, please dm me the clip!

I'd also like to know what the community in this subreddit thinks about all this in general, both the consulting and the concept for content. So feel free to comment with any questions and/or opinions.

I'm just curious out there how some comedians get paid gigs after some time in standup. I mean enough to sustain a living. I live in Vegas and there's tons of clubs and venues out here and the scene seems pretty good.

I don’t mean la or New York. Not a town to go to “Make it”. Where’s your favorite club? If you could just move in down the street and perform on your favorite stage whenever you wanted, which one is it?

I’ve been doing comedy for 6 months now. I just signed up for a comedy contest through Helium, and I instantly felt regret.

I have jokes, but 6 months in I, of course am not stellar, and I’m still working on my tight five. I can fill 5 minutes but not with jokes that have been tested more than a handful of times.

I have one month or about 30 open mics until the contest. However I can easily make up an excuse and bow out of the contest this week if I feel it is a mistake.

I wanted to ask seasoned comics, is 6 months irresponsibly early to enter a contest? Should I bow out and wait until I have a tight 5?

Or should I treat it like a scary thing that you just got to bite, be kind, try to be funny, probably bomb in front of 100 people and deal with it after.

FYI, my new stuff is 90% clean so I’m not worried about shock humor or being too dark.

I'm in my 40's and only started comedy a couple of years ago. I'm doing well and get booked regularly. I don't have any evidence for this but I feel like my age is holding me back from going to the next level. I feel like the dominant clique in my scene is young and they do most of the bookings. I'm friends with everyone but I'm not in the inner circle, and why would I be? A bunch of cool 20/early 30 somethings and then me, someone 15 years older than them? No lol. Now that I'm beyond the initial rush of getting paid bookings and all I'm just having trouble navigating how someone my age gets ahead in standup. I know everyone says be undeniable but I feel like bookers don't want to invest in someone old even if I am funny :/ I also think part of getting to the next level is networking and that's hard to do when I'm significantly older than the network. Anyway.

Hi everybody!

I want to take my husband to the Comedy Store in LA to celebrate our one-year anniversary. It's the "paper" anniversary so I figured tickets are a cool addition to the festivities.

I want to shell out for the best seats in the house. I'd like to be in the action. There are a ton of seating options available for purchase but I can't seem to figure out which are the best options or where each of the seats are located. Does anybody have some insight?

Thank you!

Yall really supported my first one. So here’s my second one.

For the more experienced guys in wondering if you'll write or switch material up on the fly to cater or just give it a go to workshop it?

I am still very new but I've done a couple open mics at a location that felt like an odd vibe.

Small little pizza place but the people that seemed the most popular were mostly using stage presence to get by without any punchlines.

One performer was recently passed at a club and that had me more confused considering the material they were putting out.

I know I'm not good and still getting through stage fright to hit every point along the way but I noticed this and has been discouraging.

My jokes are mediocre at best but I did put in time to write punchlines I thought.

Hi, I’m looking for non-political or left leaning standup specials on Netflix. I enjoy Taylor Tomlinson, Iliza Shlesinger, Bo Burnham, and Burt Kreischer.

I’ve seen some backlash this week mainly from prominent online Black commentators (FD Signifier, Joe Budden Podcast, Dr Umar Johnson) and discussion on social media saying:

• the racist jokes crossed a line
• white comedians have gotten too comfortable making racist jokes to Black people
• Kevin Hart sold out Black culture permitting outsiders to joke about it so disrespectfully

I’m torn because:

• I love roasts and believe those who participate know they’re consenting to boundary-pushing jokes - that’s the agreed purpose of the event
• Some jokes made me wince (not offended but more like ‘whoah, that’s brutal’ … and more shock value than humour.
• I believe no subject should *necessarily* be off limits but it’s about how comics handle the subject to make it funny. Pure shock-value edgy jokes aren’t clever, they just force a reaction, requiring no real comedic skill. Some of Shane Gillis’ jokes (lynching from a bonsai tree, Aladdin’s monkey) sound like the witless things a 14 year old says to his bros to be edgy. And I really like Shane.

Overall I enjoyed lots of the jokes but many felt like they were simply seeking to push the discomfort to extremes for the sake of edginess rather than for the sake of smart humour. It felt desperate to shock.

I understand roast culture but this event had an edge I haven’t seen before and there seemed to be an air of discomfort amongst some people.

IMO white comedians roasting black women for dark skin, weight, looking like an animal may technically be ‘fair game‘ in a roast but feels like dangerous territory. Does the context of ‘roast comedy’ literally permit anyone to say anything or are there still limits to respect?

Race jokes can absolutely be funny but it’s a thin line and several here missed IMO - but I’m wondering how this landed for you?

Roasts have sucked for a long time, and if you're just now coming around to talking about it because of the roast of Kevin Hart, I don't know what to tell you. You've either never watched a roast until the hue and cry about this one was raised, or you have shit taste.

Roasts are supposed to be by, for and of friends and colleagues. What you watched was hired writers making fun of a guy they don't know, delivered by other strangers who aren't funny. No shit it felt bad.

>Um but the racism

Yeah? That's what you get for watching a fucking roast in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty six AD anno domine.

Quite new to standup but I would love to hear some suggestions for female comedians that were well revered in the past. Most of the women that are recommended are quite new and modern which I have no problem with, but I do want to dig deeper.

With the success of the Tom Brady and Kevin Hart roasts, I’m curious who Netflix will want to do next? I feel it has to be someone that’s been an icon for over a decade and to me Adam Sandler seems like an ideal choice for them. He already has a relationship with Netflix, he has a lot of very funny people he’s worked with in all of his movies that would be hilarious to see roast him (Kevin Nealon, Nick Swardson, Kevin James, David Spade, etc). The thing I don’t necessarily think he’d do it. He definitely doesn’t need to and he seems comfortable just doing his own thing.

Another option would be The Rock. While I don’t think it would be as entertaining, I think a lot of non-comedy fans would tune in for that.

Rogan deserves to be roasted but I don’t think he’d ever do it.

Who do y’all think would be a good candidate?

Attell*

I saw him at The Wilbur theatre last night in Boston. I've never been to a comedy show of any kind. I only listen to podcasts. The openers were good.

But then Dave gets onstage, and it's an absolute slaughter. Non-stop laughs until they pop the doors to leave for the night. I can't believe just how good a veteran comic can be. I'm hooked.

Call me ignorant but I had no idea that most of the so called comedians had other people writing their jokes for these specials

But this roast was the absolute worst for me because they all kept shamelessly referring to the prompter and how they didn’t even write the jokes

So my question is, does anyone know who wrote their own jokes?

I'm an academic geographer in the early stages of research on a book about the geography of comedy. I had a similar question recently when I visited San Francisco and several people were very generous to help out. So now I'm reaching out to L.A.

This week, I'm hoping to hit up as many clubs as possible and I hope to talk with as many comedians as I can while I'm there. So my question is where should I go? Any LA based-comedians I should see between tomorrow and Sunday? Any comedians willing to talk with me? Maybe I can take you out for coffee or a beer! I'll be happy to explain more in a DM if you want, but it's a project I'm pretty excited about.

But I'm also interested in what clubs or shows I should see. I have a good idea of the famous ones of course, but are there particular shows at those places. Also in your opinion where should I go to see local working comedians putting on a showcase? Working new material? Are there any underground comedy shows I just wouldn't know about? Things like that.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!