The Unfunny Truth
(An episodic look behind the scenes of the lives of Stand-Up Comics)
Crooked Views
By Joseph Anthony
These Blogs are “my truths!” I stake no logistical claims, nor research to support my opinions and experiences.
Part 1 — Comedians
I literally do not know where to begin this blog, as there is way too much to encompass after 31 years and just because I’m sitting on a metaphoric ledge as I think about this, you’re thinking, “jump and make it quick, I’ve got stuff to do!”
“You’re so funny — you should be a Comedian!” So, I did, and I was and I am. One of the biggest obstacles to this dream/career is that, unlike most other jobs, anyone can just decide to do this, and sadly, for the public and the truly gifted, THEY DO! Competition is relegated to so many factors, with talent, being typically the least of them. However, I have chosen to tackle constitutes more in Part 2 and talk mostly about my plight in Part 1.
It is so hard to write about what you are without writing about why and how you arrived there. I shot for as brief of a bio as possible in these next two paragraphs, so that I could get down to the juicier stuff!
My earliest calling (circa my impressive 5th-grade role as Scrooge) was to be an Actor. I always liked writing to express the many crazy emotions that were going on inside of me, because of what was going on around me, at any given moment. Forgoing all of that, I went into the deli business, straight out of High School. My curiosity for Stand Up was something I just wanted to try one day. When the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson was airing in the ’80s, I would ask my parents to call for me from my bedroom when the Comedians came on. I would just stand in front of the TV like some crazed Stalker, watching intently, and making some sort of mental notes of the moment/set. Then I would return to either my secret dark prose or counting coins for the next day’s cash register, in my room.
I was not happy with my long hours and days in the store. As a self-sufficient young man, under the age of 20, I had my own money (which was necessary for my home life), but something was missing. Frankly, at 51, I realize now that this is just a character flaw (never being satisfied). An incident with street fighting, baseball bats, the police, and separation from friends, led me to intense introspection and after several months of staring at the ceiling, I finally decided that I would pursue a career as a Writer. After about a year or so, when I grew tired of that, I found myself looking into my curiosity of Stand Up a little closer. After I got up on stage, I felt that I had discovered an avenue for all 3 of my passions — acting, writing, and comedy. Could I make a career out of my experiences of being thrown out of my school classes?
Humor was a defense mechanism for my family. It was not some happy environment, of people throwing jokes around, which made this a natural progression for me. Rather than, and always, it has been an outlet for our adversities — using extreme sarcasm heavily colored with realism. Regardless, I could always make people laugh (inherent to my father’s quick sarcastic wit and my sister Toniann’s wacky offbeat personality) and I would hone this, just as the great ones had before me. Not the joke tellers, but the Truthful storytellers! As I slaved over perfecting this, seven days per week, anyone who ever told a joke at a party, then went out and purchased a backdrop and a sound system, also becoming so-called Stand-Up Comedians.
If you paid your dues (i.e., wrote and re-wrote, got up on stage as many times per week as you could, took all the shit work that was handed to you), by the tenth year in the business you hit Comedy puberty. You feel like a Professional Comedic adult. You think you know what you are doing. You are confident that you are ready for what is next. But now, you are ten years older, and still do not have A REAL JOB. Sure, you have a job, maybe even a good one, but the unceasing mindset is that you will be leaving it any day now, to embark on your new life! By the way, the latter 3 statements on comedy puberty are all false bravado, much like real puberty. If you are a purist, your art is never finished!
Time marches on as you chase a dollar tied to a string and every time you go to pick it up, someone pulls the string, and it moves just out of your reach. You have a family. You have bills and responsibilities. But you cannot commit to a full-time job because you have to travel out of town on Friday. You make more money doing this on the weekend, then you do all week at your day job, so why would you ever want to stay at some job and be unhappy, or to be more specific, have fantasies of jumping out of the window on a regular basis? But then, you have no work for two weeks, or you take what they give you for a one-night gig and it just does not meet your budget, even though last week you felt rich.
Some Comics stayed the course. They stayed in it, through the Boom in the late ’80s and early ’90s. They never got married, never stopped renting, and lived right within their means. Did they miss out on the joy of a family or did you miss out on the opportunities available when Comedy is your entire life? That’s partly rhetorical, but for someone who knows that he swam in a bit of both of those oceans, it does cross your mind. It is a pendulum between lucky and cursed. Not cursed with a family — never. Cursed rather with the bills and obligations that come with that whole package. Feeling like a loser for following your dreams and putting your family in financial harm's way, but then, simultaneously feeling like a failure because you show up to work and are not following your dreams with full commitment. What? Yeah exactly! That is the mental Vietnam I have gone through.
Do you want behind the scenes? Let us talk about what is behind the eyes of that guy killing up there on that stage like a big star, seeming exactly where he is supposed to be in life. The tears of the clown — the duality of the funny man! The constant ebb and flow of the life of a Stand-Up Comedian!
Any Comic, worth his salt (as the expression goes), who can’t break through the ceiling of tangible success, will tell you that when the audience filed out and approached you to say things like, “why are you here, you should be on TV”, we cringed to the point that when we said thank you, we really wanted to punch you in the face, for reminding us of just how stuck we were! The car ride home is filled with hope, which progressively fades into an even louder voice telling you that this … is a bad choice. When it’s good it’s great, when it’s bad it’s terrible, has always been my response when people were fascinated with the fact that I was a Comedian and asked, “what’s that like?” I would never trade a minute of the freedom that it afforded me at times. Being the Dad who was available to go to his children’s parties at school in the morning hours, while others were at work, for example, was priceless. Being the Dad who wonders if he will lose his family’s home is terrifying!
Freedom and anxiety are a toxic potion that can drive you (at least it drove me) to some really bad choices! Any profession that allows you to drink, a lot, for free, while you are doing it, is never a good thing. There is a great Taxi (classic sitcom) episode where Bobby Wheeler, a struggling actor, had given himself a time limit to make it as an actor or he would quit the business. At the end of the final day, when he fails to get an acting job and comes to terms with the fact that he gave it his best shot and was done with the dream, along with the coaxing of his friends/coworkers, he ultimately says, “what the hell, I’ll give it another three years.” You get the taste of what can be, and you keep going. But with each passing year, the potential impossibility of what you were so confident was possible, haunts you. You move forward, as this stark reality keeps pushing you in the back (sometimes smacking you square in the face) like some punk ass kid in Junior high school.
Let us do a quick tally of the baggage that we are carrying, before we even walk into the door of that venue, TO BE FUNNY! We hate our day job. We have no shortage of Shaman’s, usually family members, telling us to quit our little dream. The ones who decide whether we work or succeed are a group — a breed, of primarily deceitful, bitter, jealous, narcissistic people, that requires a whole blog newsletter devoted to them alone …and it will be. Artistically, you want to do it (perform or say what you really want) this way, but you know you must do it that way, because either the event/crowd, or the buyer, or the owner, etc. prefer it as such (that way — that is). Else you resign that it will just work better to throw in the towel for the sake of the laughs, despite you hating yourself for selling out. You have just had another fight with your wife, and you are drowning in bills. Oh, and after far too many cups of inspirational coffee on the road, you must pee so bad, that you cannot even sit in your car long enough to convince yourself to let go of all this other stuff. You are burnt out and you have not even grabbed the door handle yet! Do you understand why the “Working Comic,” are the miserable lot that we are so often accused of being? This is no longer fun and YET, when I pull this door handle, I have to make these people laugh … when I find so little in my personal life funny! Sometimes I sit in the back of the room wondering what it would be like to be my audience. Decent relationship, decent occupation or business, security, sort of an even keel existence, just heading out for a little social time on a Saturday night, as opposed to (being me) wondering if it is too late to call out sick for work or most dramatically, stand up and shout, “I quit!”
I have been walking away from this career, in my head, for many years now, but there are so many reasons that I cannot. At one time, it was because I was hanging on to what was and could be. Then it was, where else am I going to go or do to make this money? That as crappy as it can be, or tough as it can be to get your hands on, IS in some weird way, easy money. Then 2020 comes along and now, whether you want to do it for the money, the dream, or just out of habit, YOU CAN’T and you’re like, “fuck, what do I do now?” Be careful what you wish for, I guess.
Next week, I am going to drag some very real people (without naming names), rightfully so, through the mud, so let me redeem myself now. I DO admire those that still enjoy getting up on that stage, despite all the stuff that makes me/some of us so miserable, depressed, and confused. For those of you that have latched on to some piece of the dream, if only financially, I may criticize your methodology or talent, but at the end of the day, the ends justify the means. So you (meaning me) ask yourself, is it more important to be successful or feel successful?
