Name: Is the Crowd Work Trend Causing More Heckling?
Uploaded: 2023-09-30T17:12:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the Crowd Work Trend Causing More Heckling?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Is the Crowd Work Trend Causing More Heckling?' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-09-30. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- But you don't want to.
That's the thing, it's like we've got to train people
to just not talk out loud.
Just like you don't do in the movie theater,
don't do it at a comedy club.
And don't talk to the comedians either.
Don't just talk at them.
- Well, do you think, I mean,
what do you think about all these crowd work clips?
Don't you think we're breeding this?
- 100%. - I feel like it's a very bad situation.
- It's not a bad situation,
'cause it's just how they do it.
Some people do it that way.
- But it makes the audience want more of that.
I was talking, my niece has just went to college
and she has a roommate who's like 18 years old.
She's like essentially a high school kid.
And she was like, what do you think of crowd work?
And I'm like, it's so crazy that like teenage kids
are like, oh, crowd work.
- Well, because those are the clips you can put online
because it doesn't burn your material.
- Right.
- 'Cause it's a unique moment.
- Right, but sometimes I feel like there's comics
going up there just trying to get those moments.
- They definitely are.
- And it's annoying and then the audience thinks like,
oh, I'll be part of this.
- Well, there's comics that'll trick you too.
It's your actual act.
And you know, the thing about crowd work is
it's always funnier when you're there.
- Of course.
- But it's always funnier because everyone knows
it's happening live and you don't know what's gonna happen.
And neither is a comedian.
They know it's completely improvised.
- Well, that's why it works.
'Cause obviously comedy is about getting everybody
to be like, oh yeah.
And if they're seeing it live, it just happened.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- So, but DePaulo used to always say that.
You know, I worked with Nick for years and he'd be like,
oh, you're funny off the cuff?
Yeah, that's called a fucking being funny.
That's easy.
Write some material, you fuck.
- Yeah, if you can do both, that's great.
- Right.
- But some people only do one or the other.
- Right.
- Yeah.
- But there gets, yeah, there's tricks to it, obviously.
- You definitely don't wanna encourage people
to interrupt people who don't do crowd work, though.
That's where it becomes a problem when people are drunk
and they think, I'm gonna get on a video.
- Right.
- You know, that kind of shit does happen.
- Now, how do you feel about MCs in New York,
which is the only city that does this,
where the MC goes up and just asks everybody
where they're from and does almost exclusively crowd work?
They never did that in Boston when I was starting,
and they didn't do it here in Austin, really.
- Why did they do that in New York?
- I don't know, it's a New York thing.
New York comics, they think that's what the MC does.
I think part of it is to find out where everyone's from
because there's so many tourists.
But most MCs in New York just do a lot of crowd work.
And I've heard people even be like,
I don't like hosting 'cause I don't do crowd work.
And I'm like, well, you don't have to,
just fucking go up.
- Does anybody not do crowd work?
Does anybody just go up and say,
hey, what's up, everybody, how you doing?
Let me tell you about my day?
- I don't think so.
- Really?
- I hosted this years ago
when Artie Fuqua got in the accident.
They needed hosts at the cellar, so I volunteered.
I hosted for like six weeks.
And I felt like I was the only one
that just went straight into material,
which I think is better because I find the audience,
if they're, you know, when they're settling in
and ordering and getting their drinks and whatever,
figuring out who's sitting where,
if you look up and the comic is talking to somebody,
they're going, okay, it hasn't really started yet.
He's talking to that lady.
But if you look up and they're in the middle of a bit,
you're like, shh, fucking quiet, the show started.
That's how I always felt.
- Hmm, yeah.
The problem with someone talking to the audience
is it does kind of encourage the audience
to talk to some of the future comedians
if they have a point that the person disagrees with,
or if they're getting to a point and you cut them off,
because you can say something.
You know how sometimes guys will mislead you with a bit,
and you're like, what is he saying?
Oh, ha, ha, ha.
But some people jump in in the middle of it.
- Right.
- And fuck it up.
- Exactly.
- And they think they can
because someone's been talking to them in the audience.
- Exactly, yes.
And they're like, oh, this is a dialogue.
I got it, perfect.
- Exactly.
Or it gives them an opportunity to be outraged,
and now this is kind of encouraged to give feedback.
It's encouraged to talk.
- Right.
- I also think that the audience needs to hear
the rhythm of a few jokes.
But to me, it's like if you do crowd work for five minutes
and then do 10 minutes of jokes,
but sometimes you have an MC where you're like,
I am, if you're going first, you're like,
I'm now the first one telling a joke, which is no good.
I think the audience needs to hear like, oh, okay, some bits.
- Yeah, I think that definitely would set everybody else up
for the rest of the night,
and that's really what the MC should be doing.
- But I remember Attel would get annoyed
'cause Attel always wants to know where everyone's from,
so he would ask me like, where are they from?
And I was like, I don't know.
And you could see that he was like, what?
And there's nothing worse than upsetting Attel.
- That's so New York.
That's so New York.
It's so weird.
- I know.
- That New York has this one thing
where everybody goes and asks the fucking audience member
where they're from.
- It's very strange.
And they're like, what do you do?
I've never seen a comic one time.
It made me laugh so hard.
The audience member made me laugh so hard
'cause the person was like, what are you doing?
And they were like, I'm at a show.
What do you mean what am I doing?
They're like, I'm on a date.
I don't get it.
I just never, to me it's like,
we're supposed to be doing a show.
I don't care what the audience is from
or what they're doing.