Modified On June 4, 2008
Just what in the name of Red Skelton is going on here? A Scripps-Howard News Service piece by Terry Morrow, entitled “Cleaning up their acts,” quotes heavily from LCS host Bill Bellamy and Morrow spouts such nonsense as:
In recent years, stand-up comedians worked “blue” or “raw” for quick laughs– rough language, crude stories and a no-holds-barred approach. The style was shocking but effective. It got customers to comedy clubs– until many comics started doing it.
Then “raw” lost its zing.
1. In recent years?! Tell that to Redd Foxx, Pearl Williams, George Carlin, Andrew Dice Clay, etc. It’s been one of many approaches for decades.
2. Quick laughs? Working blue without well-written, well-delivered material is not a route to laughs, quick or otherwise. Working dirty (without material and skill) has never been a route to quick anything, except maybe quick ejection from an open mike.
We’ll say it again: Standup comedy is difficult when you work dirty; standup comedy is difficult when you work clean. Standup comedy is difficult.
3. It got customers to comedy clubs? News to us. Good comedians get customers to comedy clubs, raw or otherwise. Famous, well-promoted comedians get customers to comedy clubs. Provocative comedians, comedians on sitcoms, comedians who have a hot YouTube clip, comedians who appear on syndicated radio shows– get customers to comedy clubs. Comedy club patrons are not so unsophisticated that they merely show up at the club because they want to hear “fuck.” Does it happen? Sure. Is it an overriding trend? Certainly not.
Is one of the attractions/thrills of seeing standup live (in a club, a theater, an arena) that you might see/hear something that you can’t hear on Comedy Central? To be sure. But Morrow’s hypothesis is hinky.
4. Raw has lost its zing? It may well be that, with YouTube and uncensored satellite radio snippets and pay per view and Howard Stern, the case could be made that standup fans don’t have to go to their local club to see the nastiest of the nasty. But the numbers represented by the above audiences are so small as to be negligible. Raw, done competently, witnessed live will always have zing.
Bellamy and NBC are fixated on clean comedy. Odd, to say the least.
Bellamy, who does dozens of club dates a year, says he sees the “clean” trend giving way to more honest material.
Say what? Aren’t we always told that raw comedy leads to honesty? And that clean comedy is unnecessarily sterile and inherently dishonest? What manner of propaganda is this?
Bellamy goes further:
Working cleaner material opens stand-up shows to larger audiences, even families, he says. Many comics felt the social– and sometimes FCC– pressure of going with cleaner jokes after the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl halftime debacle in 2004.
“It was like a throwback to conservatism,” Bellamy says.
On what planet? We felt no such thing. This is myth, pure and simple. Nor did Bono yelling “fucking brilliant” on an awards show the year before lead to any pressure– “The FCC refused to fine NBC because the network did not receive advance notice of the consequences of broadcasting such profanity and the profanity in question was not used in its literal sexual meaning.” (Wikipedia)
With regard to that imagined pressure, Morrow says Bellamy, “doesn’t see that as a bad thing.”
“Clean is way better,” Bellamy says. “It draws in more people. More people can watch you.”
Perhaps in 1988. But, with the explosion of satellite radio, YouTube, downloads, DVD’s, PPV and other modes of communication and distribution (and with the explosion of standup into theaters, arenas, alt venues and elsewhere), it ain’t necessarily so that “more people can watch you” if you’re clean.
Of course, NBC has standards. And, it seems, LCS is telling the media that those standards will be enforced on this season’s show:
Last Comic Standing is even working the nicer angle. In earlier seasons, the show relished showing comedians working against each other, with some “roasts” of contestants turning ugly and personal.
“The whole core of this show is to give people opportunities,” Bellamy says. “That’s the ‘feel good’ of it.”
We’ll see.
Having met Bellamy, we can attest that he just might be one of the nicest, most genuine people in the business. The feel-good policy might be trickling down from him.
In 2006, we posted about Morrow here, when he said some less than nice things about standup comedy (“We all know that most standup is not very funny”) and about Last Comic Standing (“It has given airtime to hacks who rely more on their dry delivery than good material…”). Apparently, Morrow (and his syndicator Scripps-Howard) have made nice with the show’s producers… probably part of their “feel-good” approach this season and their “nicer angle.” This season, it’s a love fest!
(A tip of the hat to reader Aaron Ward for pointing us in the direction of this article!)