Modified On September 5, 2010
The anonymous xtranormal vidster provocateur has posted the third in the series. This one is entitled “Stand Up Comedy is NOT Pretty– Part 3– Practice Makes Perfect!” The description: “An open mic’er practices his set in front of a fellow open mic’er.”
It’s a two-shot. The fellow who utters those timeless words, “Great. That sounds fair” in Part One is back, and this time, he’s accompanied by a fellow female comic. He does 1:15 of terrible material, then solicits (and gets) very positive feedback. Then he learns that she will be emceeing the weekend shows…
Part One (and, to a lesser extent, Part Two), were inspired and well-written. Not so much with Part Three. And we’re not sure this one has much of a clear point. Is the Anonymous Video Maker trashing open mikers? That’s like shooting fish in a barrel.
(We say, let’s check in our open mike friend in a year or so… he just might have a tight 8 or 9 minutes… and he’ll have lost that backwards cap and he’ll maybe have a clear point of view. Is that not what open mikes are for? And he just might get savvy enough to figure out that, though the “stanky cooch” bit may have “killed” last week, it’s probably the bit that’s keeping him from gigging on the weekends. In other words, we’re not so sure that trashing open mikers is a very fulfilling endeavor.)
Is his point that open mikers are insincere when they encourage their colleagues? Again, this wouldn’t be earth-shattering. Is he illustrating delusional comics? Frustration at progress that happens at an uneven pace? The Schadenfreude that might run rampant throughout an amateur community? Like we said, open mikers don’t make for satisfying targets. This installment might be satisfying to other open-mikers, but for us, it’s wince-inducing… and not in a good way.
We all committed some or most of the errors that Mr. GreatThatSoundsFair commits. But, somehow or another, we all (or most of us, anyway) make corrections– either through a mentor or advice from a colleague or through studying professional comics or through trial and error– and we end up being much better comedians. (And we look at old videotapes and wince! And we can’t believe how unpolished we were when we started… and this makes it hard to bring the hammer down on open mikers. And we much prefer to bring the hammer down on the folks who run the open mike stages– folks who wield the power– rather than the folks who struggle to find themselves on those stages– the powerless amateurs.)
Is the object of the video to trash “writers’ meetings?” Having never attended such a thing, we’re not familiar with what goes on there. (And we’ve never done our set in front of an audience of one, in a loft, in front of a bunch of musical instruments.) Maybe we’re missing something.
We got a cryptic message from the author (the “director?”) of the videos. Stay tuned for the “reveal.”