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Did you know that Chris D’Elia is a comic?
Back up… Who is Chris D’Elia? He’s the guy who co-stars in the (just renewed for a second season) sitcom Whitney.
Okay. Now… Did you know he was a standup comic?
Hold on… Let’s rephrase that. He does standup.
AVC: You were acting before you did stand-up, right?
CD: I was acting here and there as a guest star and stuff on different TV shows and I was a writer writing stuff, and having stuff optioned but never turned into anything. I got onstage just because I always wanted to do it, and I just kind of at a loss got onstage, because my career wasn’t going the way I wanted it to. Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I’d found my place in the business.
(First of all, didn’t the A. V. Club usta ask decent questions? A V. Club Chicago editor Marah Eakin seems to be phoning this one in.)
But back to Mr. D’Elia: We are disturbed. We get the 1992 Willies when we read the above paragraph. Anyone remember when desperate agents and managers were shoehorning their actor/actress clients into the standup world in a frantic and desperate effort to up their clients’ profiles? We remember. Standup was the hottest thing at the time… and it was all the rage for actors to wake up one day and proclaim that they were suddenly standup comics! And, as the standup industry started to sputter and shake and shrink (and as the competition for smaller and smaller pieces of the post-apocalyptic standup pie became fiercer), there was much resentment among the comics in New York and Los Angeles at these standup interlopers.
I got onstage just because I always wanted to do it, and I just kind of at a loss got onstage, because my career wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.
Oof dah! It’s happening again! The poor schnook comics who toil in the clubs for years, hone their craft, then forsake all the creature comforts to move to an efficiency apartment on one of the coasts and give The Dream a shot… get muscled aside for Actor Dude whose agent has decided that standup is the ideal way to get back the career mojo!
Of course, Mr. D’Elia may be a swell guy who is a deadly serious standup comic (you can watch a pair of clips embedded in the article and decide for yourself), but, like we said, it’s a bit unnerving. We suppose that it’s a sign that standup is so huge that folks think they can leech off its momentum. We suppose that’s further indication of the cache that standup comedy can confer on even the dilletantes. And we need not worry that it’s not necessarily true that some sort of Second Comedy Apocalypse will follow. But, we’re getting the 1992 Willies again.
9 Responses
Reply to: Did you know that Chris D’Elia is a comic?
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I suppose that actors feel the same way about comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Rosanne Barr, etc. who are comics who moved into acting. And it’s probably because of the TV success of comics that agents are suggesting that their actor clients try stand-up comedy.
Since the beginning of movies and since the beginning of television, both media have always tapped comedians to star in their various vehicles. And those comedians have, for the most part delivered and, in many cases, dominated any media they entered. Same goes for radio. It’s not a new phenomenon.
This is a false comparison. It could be said that Seinfeld isn’t so much doing acting as much as he’s doing television. Same with Roseanne and Ray Romano. No one really maintains that any of those folks are “actors.” Oh, sure, they act, but no one is going to give them awards. They act well enough to build an entertaining sitcom around the character and POV they’ve honed over years in the clubs. Some comics have gone on to become versatile, competent, well-regarded actors. Them we can call actors.
And some actors go on to actually master standup. Them we can call standup comics.
We’re not saying that actors can’t try or do standup. But we are somewhat skeptical when the neophytes are called (or call themselves) comedians
Yes, but, as we stated, Seinfeld, Romano and Barr didn’t really move into acting, as much as they moved into television (“She Devil” and “Mooseport” notwithstanding).
And, while we understand the reasons for the agents and managers pushing their clients into standup, we’re still not happy about it.
Chris is a standup comic. He’s been doing it for years. His name is up on the marquee of clubs all over LA whenever I am in town, and he entertains people wherever he goes. With standup.
He makes the point in that article that when the Laugh Factory posts videos of his sets, he always asks for them to not post material he might be working on for TV, which is why they end up full of a lot of crowdwork sometimes.
But he’s done standup for years. I saw him in Montreal several years ago, before he was doing tons of TV, and he was a great performer who seemed like he had been at it for a while then. He’s not a neophyte.
I would agree that actors who turn to standup only to further their acting career don’t always make the best standups, if they’re only focusing on it as a stepping stone. But that’s not what Chris does. He works at his standup and he’s great at it.
Shecky folks, you check him out live or watch a standup set of his on TV. He might not be your style, but he knows what he is doing and is most certainly a standup. A good one, I would say as well.
Hmmm… now we have a different problem…
As we said, “Of course, Mr. D’Elia may be a swell guy who is a deadly serious standup comic…”
But we’re unnerved because his weak explanation of how he got into standup now reads to us as though he’s almost apologizing for doing it!
“I just kind of at a loss got onstage, because my career wasn’t going the way I wanted it to.”
It gives us the shivers!
(We’re being facetious, sorta.)
I will agree with the overall point that it’s VERY annoying to have wannabe actors and tv personalities clogging up stage time because their manager told them stand-up would beef up their resume. But Chris is in no way the poster child for this problem, he’s the opposite of that.
Chris is one of the hardest working stand-ups in LA – when he’s not on the road, he performs every night, multiple times – even while he was filming on Whitney during the day. He also kills 99% of the time. His style’s not for everyone (by which I mean some other comedians, not anyone actually paying to watch comedy) but that’s another kettle of fish. Last I checked putting the work in + making audiences laugh was exactly what defined a “real” comedian.
As to his lukewarm explanation, I hope I get successful enough one day to say I started because of a series of events that depend mostly on the fact that I moved into an apartment that’s walking distance from The Comedy Store. Not everyone who is serious about this art now had some kind of clear vision quest path since they were 8 years old.
And I hope the facetiousness goes all the way back to this being some kind of harbinger of the great boom & bust. It’s very common for comedians in LA to also act and write. The real boom-bust cycle we’re in now is nerd comedy, so you’ll find your boogeyman somewhere there in the sea of “adorkable” quirky girls and dudes in thick glasses and skinny jeans.
The responses have been somewhat reassuring.
We are understandably fretful when we see what might be a “harbinger of the great boom & bust.”
We are hyper-aware. (Understandably so, since we lived through the Great Bust of 1993.)
We said that when we read responses like D’Elia’s, we get the willies… but we also allowed that he might be the real deal.
Just keeping a watch for rocks, icebergs and other dangers while steering The Goodship Standup into the future. (Or at least shouting in the captain’s ear and freaking out on occasion.)
The Actor Who Also Does Standup angle for the story merely gives us pause. It’s a double-edged sword– an indicator that comedy is huge (and, we hope, healthy), and a possible indicator that it might be exploited by unscrupulous pretenders. Judging from the testimony, it seems that it’s the former. We remain vigilant.
I’m confused by your rewrite of the line from Chris is a comic?… to Chris does stand-up. For the last few years I don’t think Ihave been to the Comedy Store once and not seen Chris there. The first time I saw him perform was about midnight on a Monday after half the crowd had thinned, he killed by the way. This guy is a comic. He also introduced himself to me after the show and gave me his card, don’t begrudge him for hustling. It seems like hes onstage every night. Maybe if more comics worked as hard as he does you would see more of them on TV.
All right! All right! We get it!
Chris D’Elia is a REAL COMIC!
Although… we wonder if our readers would expend this much energy defending the notion that Dan Whitney or Scott Thompson or Dane Cook is a “real comic.”
And, after re-reading the post again (and again… and again), we reiterate that we allowed that Mr. D’Elia may very well be a real live, legitimate comic. And we also note that, after reading his interview answers, we got the “1992 willies.” Notice that we didn’t condemn him. We merely said that we were getting the willies.
And we advise any dilletantes or near-dilletantes that they had better stress their standup comedy bona fides before they issue such lukewarm answers as Mr. D’Elia gave.