Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy Read Online Free
Author: Judd Apatow
comedy to be the things nobody else talks about. Not necessarily things people don’t want to talk about, but just things that everybody else missed. That’s what I like.
Judd: What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?
Jerry: What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it’s an easy joke or an obvious joke, it’s less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don’t want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don’t have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they’re watching: We’ll listen to you go with it. You know. We’ll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it’s enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it’s a different type of performance. It’s much more instructive because they don’t know where the laughs are in my act because it’s not “Two men walk into a bar—bum bum bum, punch line.” And if the audience doesn’t know where the punch line is, you can’t get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I’m doing because to them, I’m like Andy Kaufman. They’re not used to my kind of comedy.They’re used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don’t understand.
Why is he talking about socks?
Judd: Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?
Jerry: Some people do; I don’t. There’s a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don’t want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that—the tips of the icebergs.
Judd: How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?
Jerry: See, that’s something I’m really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I’ll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I’ll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I’m doing new material, I’m always ad libbing.
Judd: What is the strangest experience you’ve had doing comedy in a club?
Jerry: Strange? Um. I mean, I’ve played places where people didn’t know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year’s Eve. And they’re screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don’t think anybody even knew I was onstage.
Judd: Anything else like—
Jerry: Bombing is a riot. The looks on people’s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came for a show, and you’re the showand I don’t understand you. You seem normal but you don’t make any sense.”
Judd: You did a show the other day that didn’t go that good. That still happens to you?
Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different—a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an
Judd: What is the difference between an audience at the Improv or a local club, and Atlantic City or Las Vegas?
Jerry: What they came to see. Basically, the audience at the Improv is interested in comedy, and if it’s an easy joke or an obvious joke, it’s less appealing to them than a really clever, original observation. The reverse applies in Atlantic City. They don’t want to hear a comedian. They want to hear the main act. If you are a comedian, do something that we don’t have to pay too much attention to. You see, at the Improv they’re watching: We’ll listen to you go with it. You know. We’ll listen. Try that. Let me see how far you can go with that idea and if you can make it work. And at Atlantic City it’s enough if you can just get them to listen to you. I do the same act, but it’s a different type of performance. It’s much more instructive because they don’t know where the laughs are in my act because it’s not “Two men walk into a bar—bum bum bum, punch line.” And if the audience doesn’t know where the punch line is, you can’t get laughs. So I have to really slow it down and explicate exactly what I’m doing because to them, I’m like Andy Kaufman. They’re not used to my kind of comedy.They’re used to an older style. Traditional jokes. Polish jokes. They don’t understand.
Why is he talking about socks?
Judd: Do you have to change your act in different parts of the country?
Jerry: Some people do; I don’t. There’s a central core of what I do that pretty much works everywhere, and the only variable is the way I perform it. I do the same jokes, but I do them differently. Little lines that some people come to hear. They love the little stray thoughts that you throw in. That makes the pieces interesting for people that know comedy and are beyond the very basic level of it. But in places where they don’t want to hear you, you can only do the stuff that—the tips of the icebergs.
Judd: How do you handle improvisation and talking to the audience in your act?
Jerry: See, that’s something I’m really getting into a lot now, having a lot of fun with it. When I do my act in comedy clubs, where I get to do like an hour, I’ll take questions at a certain point and just, you know, ad lib. It depends on how much I can get the audience to accept me. If I can get them to accept me, a lot of times I’ll take off on routines that I do normally and change them and take them a different way. Whenever I’m doing new material, I’m always ad libbing.
Judd: What is the strangest experience you’ve had doing comedy in a club?
Jerry: Strange? Um. I mean, I’ve played places where people didn’t know I was on. I did a disco one time in Queens on New Year’s Eve. And they’re screaming, yelling, and screaming and yelling and they sent me out on the dance floor to do my act, and I stood there but the screaming and yelling never diminished by even a couple decibels and I just stood there for thirty minutes, and walked off and I don’t think anybody even knew I was onstage.
Judd: Anything else like—
Jerry: Bombing is a riot. The looks on people’s faces is just priceless. They look up to me going, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I came for a show, and you’re the showand I don’t understand you. You seem normal but you don’t make any sense.”
Judd: You did a show the other day that didn’t go that good. That still happens to you?
Jerry: Oh, yeah, all the time. Every show varies and there are very, very few shows that go just right. Because every audience is completely different—a completely different group of people with a completely different personality. And you have to shape your act to their personality. Every set is an
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