13 May 2024, Los Angeles, USA
The rules of the Webby Awards is that acceptance speeches have to be 5 words long:
Listen to old ladies motherfuckers!
Pete Davidson: 'But sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy', Saturday Night Live, Cold Open post Gaza attacks - 2023
14 October 2023, New York City, USA
This week we saw the horrible images and stories from Israel and Gaza. And I know what you’re thinking, who better to comment on it than Pete Davidson?
Well, in a lot of ways I am a good person to talk about it because when I was 7 years old, my dad was killed in a terrorist attack. So, I know something about what’s that like. (Scott Davidson was a New York City firefighter who died on Sept. 11, 2001)
I saw so many terrible pictures this week of children suffering, Israeli children and Palestinian children. It took me back to a really horrible, horrible place. No one in this world deserves to suffer like that, especially not kids.
After my dad died, my mom tried pretty much everything she could do to cheer me up. I remember one day when I was 8, she got me what she thought was a Disney movie, but it was actually the Eddie Murphy stand-up special, Delirious. We played it in the car on the way home, but when she heard the things Eddie Murphy was saying, she tried to take it away, but then she noticed something. For the first time, in a long time, I was laughing again.
I don’t understand it, I really don’t, I never will, but sometimes comedy is really the only way forward through tragedy. My heart is with everyone whose lives have been destroyed this week. But tonight, I’m going to do what I have always done in the face of tragedy, and that’s try to be funny.
Remember, I said try.
And live from New York, it’s Saturday night!
Sammy J: 'An actual life here on Earth beats a fictional life on Mars', 29th Annual Melbourne International Comedy Festival debate - 2018
7 April 2018, Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne, Australia
Magda:
I don't want to put pressure on the next person, but the J in his name stands for joke machine. Please welcome the captain and first speaker for the negative, the sparkling, Sammy J.
Sammy J:
Well, thank you so much, Magda. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you to all my fellow human beings who are watching this right now, here on this beautiful, vast, mysterious planet that we call Earth. The same planet that created every person you've ever loved, every song you've ever sung. Every kebab you've ever regretted, every grain of sand on every single beach, as the sun shines down on the dolphins, as they play in the waves and yet somehow this planet is still not good enough for the affirmative team who would rather escape to a barren wasteland then stay here and frolic in our own garden of Eden. Course, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, but that's the behaviour that Charlie is putting forward today. After all, he was once a proud citizen of another blue planet in his past.
And tell me my friends, What did Charlie do once he'd made a mess there on that planet? Once he sniffed the winds of insolvency and sold the share price plummeting? Did he stay and defend? Hell no. He jumped on a taxpayer-funded spaceship and made his way to the dusty red plains of the ABC. And now he's stuck there, left wandering alone, looking for signs of life, forced to participate in gruelling experiments to see how much the human body can endure in such a harsh environment, like hosting the New Year's Eve telecast for seven hours straight.
Well, the affirmative team might condone such behaviour, but we on the negative side take a different view. Round of applause for my teammates Dulcé Sloan and Rich Hall. Together we will be attempting to convince you that an actual life here on Earth sure beats a fictional life on Mars. We may indeed have screwed up one planet, but that does not give us permission to screw up another one. My friends, we must stay here and clean up our mess.
I will never forget when I was in my bedroom one day playing and my mother walked in and opened the door and her face just dropped. She was aghast, and it was just chaos in there. I've got to say, there was just Jurassic park figures flying around, the Spice Girls music was blaring, all spices. There were Lion King soft toys strewn across the carpet, just fluff hanging out. It was chaos, it was bedlam and my mother said, "Sammy, you've got clean up your room." This was like two weeks ago, so she had a point. I was going through a rough patch and I don't know about you, but when I'm stressed, I just need to visualise a velociraptor disembowelling Simba. It really helps me. Or any Lion King character. Nala or Zazu or Timon or Pumbaa or Mufasa or Scar or Sarabi. Sarabi for those who don't know is Simba's mother in the Lion King, not that you can tell from the lack of screen time they give her, despite the fact she's the only character to consistently stand up to Scar from the beginning while her useless piece of shit, son, Simba runs away at the first sign of trouble. But that's women in Hollywood for you!
And the point is when my mother told me to clean up my room, did I say, "Oh, don't worry, I'll do a Simba and run away? Did I say, "Don't worry, mom, just build me a new bedroom up the hall. That'll be clean." No, I stayed up. I tidied up my mess. Because what example are we sending to our children if we say, Earth is ruined. Let's move to another planet"? That's not the circle of life. That's the oblong of death. It's avoiding responsibility for a problem that we created.
Now, Charlie talked about the first words on Mars. I want to talk about some words right now. I want to talk about the word, must that is in this topic, that we must go to Mars. Look at that word. It's a fascinating little word, isn't it? I mean M and U are not natural bedfellows yet there they are snuggled up side by side with the S viewing on like a creep and the T pleasuring itself in the carpet. I mean, it's just, it's a creepy little word. It's a four letter word and yet I struggled to think of another four letter word that has done as much damage to mankind as the word must — except maybe tofu, or tuba or Trump, which to be fair, it's a five letter word, but let's not let facts get in the way of our argument now. It's what he would have wanted.
Point is my friends, the word must has been responsible for some of the history's worst abuses. We must conquer that land. We must fight that war. We must dedicate seven days straight media coverage to a bit of sandpaper and a cricket ball despite the fact that indigenous life expectancy is 10 years lower than the rest of us, but don't worry about that because the boys in the baggy green have brought shame on our nation. Real shame, not that silly life expectancy shame, real shame.
"Oh Sammy, don't. No, don't make fun of the boys in the baggy green. Oh, they've had a hard time. The boys in the baggy green. Oh little boys in the baggy green, [baby talk] I just want to gobble you up. Oh, now I'm pooing out the boys in the baggy green. Oh, put them in a little bag and throw away the boys in the baggy green." The boys in the baggy green, they'll be okay, don't worry. They've got an extra 10 years to get over it. They'll be fine.
We must go to Mars. I'm not done with this statement yet. I want to keep drilling down, okay? Because when I'm told I must do something I inspect that something a little bit more closely. What is it I must do. Why must I do it? Why must I do it and who might I ask is dishing out the must in the first place? Well, in this case, my friends, the man dishing out the must for Mars is none other than Musk. That's right. You heard me, Elon Musk. Entrepreneur born in 1971, founder of PayPal, Tesla, and other nonsensical words that would make our grandparents roll in their graves.
But it's most ambitious plan ever has been the creation of the company SpaceX. SpaceX made history in 2012, when it became the first private company to send cargo to the International Space Station. I understand the cargo included seven crates of original flavoured Pringles, the first three seasons of Masterchef on DVD and much to the relief of the astronauts stationed there, the Wi-Fi password.
Anyway, SpaceX got a bit cocky after that first interplanetary home delivery service because now Elon Musk plans to put a human colony on Mars in just six years. That's right. Six years. Humans, Mars. It was an inappropriate use of fingers. I failed my Auslan auditions, so ....
So let's get this straight. Okay. A private company is planning, as Charlie said, to call dibs on Mars. That means there is no rules here. This is uncharted territory. The private company is going to claim ownership of Mars. That means Elon Musk will become the self-appointed CEO of Mars. Although it would surprise to nobody if after a brief cooling off period, he updated his title to Lord of Mars or perhaps Glorious Supreme leader of Mars. And at that point did any of us put our hands up and say, "Oh, sorry, Mr. Musk, sir, I beg your pardon. Just thought maybe Mars might belong to all of us." He would simply laugh and say, "Well then dickhead, build your own bloody rocket ship. P.S., I killed Mufasa."
The fact is you can't argue with a man who is worth over $20 billion. Well, you could, but he would probably destroy you with one of his flamethrowers. Now that sounds like a joke, except for the fact that Elon Musk recently sold 20,000 flamethrowers on his website just for fun against the advice of all safety experts. This is completely true. And that is the man you want in charge of a foreign plant. Of course, I shouldn't be too harsh on Elon Musk. I mean, after all he did recently instal the world's largest battery in South Australia, so he's had experience in bringing new technology to empty lifeless barren lands. Am I right?
Why don't we send all of Adelaide to Mars? Who's with me? Let's do it. Interesting. Interesting response. Let's see what just happened then. I mean, clearly I was joking. I've got relatives in South Australia. I visit oft, and yet interstate rivalry is alive and well here in this country. We delight on hanging shit on each other across state borders. In fact, the history of human experience tells us that distance plus people will equal conflict. And can you imagine what an Earth-Mars rivalry would look like? I mean, they're football fans would probably be super obnoxious and pronounce a handful of words slightly differently like 'castle' instead of 'castle. I constantly bitch about how we stole the spaceship Grand-Prix from them even that was 20 years ago and they should just get over it.
See what no one seems to be asking is who is the, we, in the statement that we must go to Mars? It's not you. It's not me. It's not anyone on this stage. Not even Elon Musk is volunteering. And you know why? Because it's a one-way trip. You're not coming back from Mars. But has that stopped anyone from volunteering? No, it hasn't because right now hundreds of people are on a short list waiting to see if that will be part of the first colony going to Mars. And they're all from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, but it's safe to assume that one thing unites them all and that is that they must have done some seriously disturbing shit here on Earth if their best option is getting off the planet. I would've loved to see the sea of applicants the day they opened the office doors. Just a whole crowd of middle-aged men in trench coats going, "One-way ticket off the planet? Sign me up, yeah. Oh, yes, will there be animals on board?"
Don't groan. When your argument is weak insert a beastiality reference. So I learned that from Cory Bernardi. And even these volunteers aren't evil, okay. Let's just assume even if they do truly believe that they're helping humanity evolve through their sacrifice, it wouldn't stop the rivalry occurring and we know how it would start, don't we?
"Mars to Earth, we are out of fresh milk."
"Earth to Mars, copy that. Did you look in the second fridge?"
"We're storing Gary's body in the second fridge. He died on arrival."
"Sorry to hear that. What about the soy milk?"
"The soy milk is what killed Gary."
"Righty-oh. We'll send fresh milk. That will take 300 days and cost $230 billion dollars. Over and out."
And we'll all be sitting right back here on Earth, going, "We could probably spend that money on hospitals and public transport and slowly the seeds of discontent will be sown my friends before the people on Mars start to be viewed by the rest of us as somehow different, a different race, if you will. Almost, dare I say, less than human. And when you dehumanise someone, you make it easier for people to ignore their suffering. So suddenly when someone says let's invade them and take over the planet, we'll all be like, "Yeah, damn straight. Let's invade Mars." Only one problem though, the people on Mars will have flamethrowers.
Ladies and gentlemen, we must not go to Mars. We must stay here. We must get along and we must clean up our mess. In the words of David Attenborough, "Earth forever." Thank you.
John Cleese: 'Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating', Video Arts - 1991
23 January 1991, Grosvenor House Hotel, London, United Kingdom
You know, when Video Arts asked me if I'd like to talk about creativity I said “no problem!” No problem! Because telling people how to be creative is easy, it's only being it that's difficult.
I knew it would be particularly easy for me because I've spent the last 25 years watching how various creative people produce their stuff, and being fascinating to see if I could figure out what makes folk, including me, more creative.
What is more, a couple of years ago I got very excited because a friend of mine who runs the psychology department at Sussex University, Brian Bates, showed me some research on creativity done at Berkley in the 70s by a brilliant psychologist called Donald MacKinnon which seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions that I'd had over the years.
The prospect of settling down for quite serious study of creativity for the purpose of tonight's gossip was delightful. Having spent several weeks on it, I can state categorically that what I have to tell you tonight about how you can all become more creative is a complete waste of time.
So I think it would be much better if I just told jokes instead.
You know the lightbulb jokes? How many Poles does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the bulb, four to turn the table. How many folksingers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: five, one to change the bulb and four to sing about how much better the old one was. How many socialists does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: We're not going to change it, we think it works. How many creative art–
The reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained, it's like Mozart's music or Van Gogh's painting or Saddam Hussein's propaganda. It is literally inexplicable.
Freud, who analyzed practically everything else, repeatedly denied that psychoanalysis could shed any light whatsoever on the mysteries of creativity.
And Brian Bates wrote to me recently “Most of the best research on creativity was done in the 60s and 70s with a quite dramatic drop-off in quantity after then,” largely, I suspect because researchers began to feel that they had reached the limits of what science could discover about it.
In fact, the only thing from the research that I could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had, which is of limited help to you at this point in your lives.
However there is one negative thing that I can say, and it's “negative” because it is easier to say what creativity isn't.
A bit like the sculptor who when asked how he had sculpted a very fine elephant, explained that he'd taken a big block of marble and then knocked away all the bits that didn't look like an elephant.
Now here's the negative thing: Creativity is not a talent. It is not a talent, it is a way of operating.
So how many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: thousands. Only one to do it but thousands to say “I could have done that.” How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Don't mind me, I'll just sit here in the dark, nobody cares about… How many surgeons —
You see when I say “a way of operating” what I mean is this: creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have.
It is, for example, (and this may surprise you) absolutely unrelated to IQ (provided that you are intelligent above a certain minimal level that is) but MacKinnon showed in investigating scientists, architects, engineers, and writers that those regarded by their peers as “most creative” were in no way whatsoever different in IQ from their less creative colleagues.
So in what way were they different?
MacKinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood — “a way of operating” — which allowed their natural creativity to function.
In fact, MacKinnon described this particular facility as an ability to play.
Indeed he described the most creative (when in this mood) as being childlike. For they were able to play with ideas… to explore them… not for any immediate practical purpose but just for enjoyment. Play for its own sake.
Now, about this mood.
I'm working at the moment with Dr. Robin Skynner on a successor to our psychiatry book Families and How To Survive Them we're comparing the ways in which psychologically healthy families function (the ways in which such families function) with the ways in which the most successful corporations and organizations function.
We've become fascinated by the fact that we can usually describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed.
So what I can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed mode.
Ok, so how many American network TV executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Does it have to be a lightbulb? How many doorke–
Let me explain a little. By the “closed mode” I mean the mode that we are in most of the time when at work.
We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all.
It's an active (probably slightly anxious) mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable.
It's a mode which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves.
It has a little tension in it, not much humor.
It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative.
By contrast, the open mode, is relaxed… expansive… less purposeful mode… in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and, consequently, more playful.
It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.
Let me give you an example of what I mean.
When Alexander Fleming had the thought that led to the discovery of penicillin, he must have been in the open mode.
The previous day, he'd arranged a number of dishes to that culture would grow upon them.
On the day in question, he glanced at the dishes, and he discovered that on one of them no culture had appeared.
Now, if he'd been in the closed mode he would have been so focused upon his need for “dishes with cultures grown upon them” that when he saw that one dish was of no use to him for that purpose he would quite simply have thrown it away.
Thank goodness, he was in the open mode so he became curious about why the culture had not grown on this particular dish. And that curiosity, as the world knows, led him to the lightbulb — I'm sorry, to penicillin.
Now in the closed mode an uncultured dish is an irrelevance. In the open mode, it's a clue.
Now, one more example: one of Alfred Hitchcock's regular co-writers has described working with him on screenplays.
He says, “When we came up against a block and our discussions became very heated and intense, Hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had nothing to do with the work at hand. At first, I was almost outraged, and then I discovered that he did this intentionally. He mistrusted working under pressure. He would say “We're pressing, we're pressing, we're working too hard. Relax, it will come.” And, says the writer, of course it finally always did.
But let me make one thing quite clear: we need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.
For example, if you decide to leap a ravine, the moment just before take-off is a bad time to start reviewing alternative strategies. When you're attacking a machine-gun post you should not make a particular effort to see the funny side of what you are doing.
Humor is a natural concomitant in the open mode, but it's a luxury in the closed.
No, once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it, and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback rising from our action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful, or whether we should continue with the next stage of our plan. Whether we should create an alternative plan to correct any error we perceive.
And then back into the closed mode to implement that next stage, and so on.
In other words, to be at our most efficient we need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two modes.
But here's the problem: we too often get stuck in the closed mode.
Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view.
This is particularly true, for example, of politicians. The main complaint about them from their non-political colleagues is that they become so addicted to the adrenaline that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis that they almost completely lose the desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode.
And that's it. Well… 20 minutes to go… So, how many women's libbers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: 37, one to screw it in, and 36 to make a documentary about it. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer: only one, but the lightbulb has really got to want to change.
Oh, there is one, just one, other thing that I can say about creativity.
There are certain conditions which do make it more likely that you'll get into the open mode, and that something creative will occur.
More likely… you can't guarantee anything will occur. You might sit around for hours as I did last Tuesday, and nothing.
Zilch.
Bupkis.
Not a sausage.
Nevertheless I can at least tell you how to get yourselves into the open mode. You need five things:
Space
Time
Time
Confidence
a 22 inch waist
Sorry, my mind was wondering. I'm getting into the open mode too quickly. Instead of a 22 inch waist, you need humor. I do beg your pardon.
Let's take space first: you can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode.
So you have to create some space for yourself away from those demands. And that means sealing yourself off.
You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.
Next: Time. It's not enough to create space, you have to create your space for a specific period of time. You have to know that your space will last until exactly 3:30, and that at that moment your normal life will start again.
And it's only by having a specific moment when your space starts and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the every day closed mode in which we all habitually operate.
And I'd never realized how vital this was until I read a historical study of play by a Dutch historian called Johan Huizinga6 and in it he says “Play is distinct from ordinary life, both as to locality and duration. This is its main characteristic: its secludedness, its limitedness. Play begins and then (at a certain moment) it is over. Otherwise, it's not play.”
So combining the first two factors we create an “oasis of quiet” for ourselves by setting the boundaries of space and of time.
Now creativity can happen, because play is possible when we are separate from everyday life.
So, you've arranged to take no calls, you've closed your door, you've sat down somewhere comfortable, take a couple of deep breaths and if you're anything like me, after you've pondered some problem that you want to turn into an opportunity for about 90 seconds, you find yourself thinking “Oh I forgot I've got to call Jim… oh, and I must tell Tina that I need the report on Wednesday and not Thursday which means I must move my lunch with Joe and Damn! I haven't called St. Paul's about getting Joe's daughter an interview and I must pop out this afternoon to get Will's birthday present and those plants need watering and none of my pencils are sharpened and Right! I've got too much to do, so I'm going to start by sorting out my paper clips and then I shall make 27 phone calls and I'll do some thinking tomorrow when I've got everything out of the way.”
Because, as we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.
And it's also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about.
So when I say create an oasis of quiet know that when you have, your mind will pretty soon start racing again. But you're not going to take that very seriously, you just sit there (for a bit) tolerating the racing and the slight anxiety that comes with that, and after a time your mind will quiet down again.
Now, because it takes some time for your mind to quiet down it's absolutely no use arranging a “space/time oasis” lasting 30 minutes, because just as you're getting quieter and getting into the open mode you have to stop and that is very deeply frustrating. So you must allow yourself a good chunk of time. I'd suggest about an hour and a half. Then after you've gotten to the open mode, you'll have about an hour left for something to happen, if you're lucky.
But don't put a whole morning aside. My experience is that after about an hour-and-a-half you need a break. So it's far better to do an hour-and-a-half now and then an hour-and-a-half next Thursday and maybe an hour-and-a-half the week after that, than to fix one four-and-a-half hour session now.
There's another reason for that, and that's factor number three: time.
Yes, I know we've just done time, but that was half of creating our oasis.
Now I'm going to tell you about how to use the oasis that you've created.
Why do you still need time?
Well, let me tell you a story. I was always intrigued that one of my Monty Python colleagues who seemed to be (to me) more talented than I was {but} did never produce scripts as original as mine. And I watched for some time and then I began to see why. If he was faced with a problem, and fairly soon saw a solution, he was inclined to take it. Even though (I think) he knew the solution was not very original.
Whereas if I was in the same situation, although I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out, and finish by 5 o'clock, I just couldn't. I'd sit there with the problem for another hour-and-a-quarter, and by sticking at it would, in the end, almost always come up with something more original.
It was that simple.
My work was more creative than his simply because I was prepared to stick with the problem longer.
So imagine my excitement when I found that this was exactly what MacKinnon found in his research. He discovered that the most creative professionals always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it, because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem.
You know I mean, if we have a problem and we need to solve it, until we do, we feel (inside us) a kind of internal agitation, a tension, or an uncertainty that makes us just plain uncomfortable. And we want to get rid of that discomfort. So, in order to do so, we take a decision. Not because we're sure it's the best decision, but because taking it will make us feel better.
Well, the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer. And so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.
Now the people I find it hardest to be creative with are people who need all the time to project an image of themselves as decisive.
And who feel that to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence.
Well, this behavior I suggest sincerely, is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth.
But please note I'm not arguing against real decisiveness. I'm 100% in favor of taking a decision when it has to be taken and then sticking to it while it is being implemented.
What I am suggesting to you is that before you take a decision, you should always ask yourself the question, “When does this decision have to be taken?” And having answered that, you defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time, which will lead you to the most creative solution.
And if, while you're pondering, somebody accuses you of indecision say, “Look, Babycakes, I don't have to decide 'til Tuesday, and I'm not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then, that's too easy.”
So, to summarize: the third factor that facilitates creativity is time, giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.
Now the next factor, number 4, is confidence.
When you are in your space/time oasis, getting into the open mode, nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
Now if you think about play, you'll see why. To play is experiment: “What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?”
The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen. The feeling that whatever happens, it's ok. So you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be “wrong” — something you “shouldn't have done.”
Well, you're either free to play, or you're not.
As Alan Watts puts it, you can't be spontaneous within reason.
So you've got risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong, and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the break-through.
And now, the last factor, the fifth: humor.
Well, I happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.
I think we all know that laughter brings relaxation, and that humor makes us playful, yet how many times important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed to solve important problems, but where humor was taboo because the subject being discussed was {air quotes} “so serious”?
This attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between ‘serious' and ‘solemn'.
Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or the meaning of life (and I'm not talking about the film), and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious.
Solemnity, on the other hand… I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor, and it somehow freed us all, and made the services inspiring and cathartic.
But solemnity? It serves pomposity, and the self-important always know with some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor — that's why they see it as a threat. And so dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial, when it only makes them feel bigger.
No, humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how ‘serious' they may be.
So when you set up a space/time oasis, giggle all you want.
And there, ladies and gentlemen, are the five factors which you can arrange to make your lives more creative:
Space, time, time, confidence, and Lord Jeffrey Archer.
So, now you know how to get into the open mode, the only other requirement is that you keep mind gently 'round the subject you're pondering.
You'll daydream, of course, but you just keep bringing your mind back, just like with meditation. Because, and this is the extraordinary thing about creativity, if you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious, probably in the shower later. Or at breakfast the next morning, but suddenly you are rewarded, out of the blue a new thought mysteriously appears.
If you've put in the pondering time first.
So, how many Cecil Parkinsons does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: two, one to screw it in, one to screw it up. How many account executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Can I get back to you on that? How many Norwei— Oh, sorry, how many Yugoslav— how many Malt– how many Dutch— I'm out of jokes.
Oh! One thing! Looking at you all reminds me, I think it's easy to be creative if you've got other people to play with.
I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own. But there is a danger, a real danger, if there's one person around you who makes you feel defensive, you lose the confidence to play, and it's goodbye creativity.
So always make sure your play friends are people that you like and trust.
And never say anything to squash them either, never say “no” or “wrong” or “I don't like that.”
Always be positive, and build on what is being said:
“Would it be even better if…”
“I don't quite understand that, can you just explain it again?”
“Go on…”
“What if…?”
“Let's pretend…”
Try to establish as free an atmosphere as possible.
Sometimes I wonder if the success of the Japanese isn't partly due to their instinctive understanding of how to use groups creatively.
Westerners are often amazed at the unstructured nature of Japanese meetings but maybe it's just that very lack of structure, that absence of time pressure, that frees them to solve problems so creatively. And how clever of the Japanese sometimes to plan that un-structured-ness by, for example, insisting that the first people to give their views are the most junior, so that they can speak freely without the possibility of contradicting what's already been said by somebody more important.
Four minutes left… How many Irish– sorry, sorry
Well, look, the very last thing that I can say about creativity is this: it's like humor. In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way.
Example: there's the old story about a woman doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him, amongst other things, when he last had sexual intercourse. He replies “Nineteen fifty eight.” Now, knowing airline pilots, the researcher is surprised, and queries this. “Well,” says the pilot, “it's only twenty-one ten now.”
We laugh, eventually, at the moment of contact between two frameworks of reference: the way we express what year it is and the 24-hour clock.
Now, having an idea, a new idea, is exactly the same thing. It's connecting two hitherto separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning.
Now, connecting different ideas isn't difficult, you can connect cheese with motorcycles or moral courage with light green, or bananas with international cooperation. You can get any computer to make a billion random connection for you, but these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only if they generate new meaning.
So as you play you can deliberately try inventing these random juxtapositions, and then use your intuition to tell you whether any of them seem to have significance for you. That's the bit the computer can't do. It can produce millions of new connections, but it can't tell which one smells interesting.
And, of course, you'll produce some juxtapositions which are absolutely ridiculous, absurd. Good for you!
Because Edward de Bono (who invented the notion of lateral thinking) specifically suggests in his book PO: Beyond Yes and No that you can try loosening up your assumptions by playing with deliberately crazy connections. He calls such absurd ideas “Intermediate Impossibles.”
And he points out the use of an Intermediate Impossible is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be right at each stage.
It doesn't matter if the Intermediate Impossible is right or absurd, it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right. Another example of how, when you're playing, nothing is wrong.
So, to summarize: if you really don't know how to start, or if you got stuck, start generating random connections, and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting.
Well, that really is all I can tell you that won't help you to be creative. Everything.
And now, in the two minutes left, I can come to the important part, and that is, how to stop your subordinates {from} becoming creative too, which is the real threat.
Because, believe me no one appreciates better than I do what trouble creative people are. And how they stop decisive, hard-nosed bastards like us from running businesses efficiently.
I mean, we all know, we encourage someone to be creative, the next thing is they're rocking the boat, coming up with ideas, and asking us questions. Now if we don't nip this kind of thing in the bud, we'll have to start justifying our decisions by reasoned argument. And sharing information — the concealment of which gives us considerable advantages in our power struggles.
So, here's how to stamp out creativity in the rest of the organization and get a bit of respect going.
One: Allow subordinates no humor, it threatens your self-importance and especially your omniscience. Treat all humor as frivolous or subversive.
Because subversive is, of course, what humor will be in your setup, as it's the only way that people can express their opposition, since (if they express it openly) you're down on them like a ton of bricks.
So let's get this clear: blame humor for the resistance that your way of working creates. Then you don't have to blame your way of working. This is important. And I mean that solemnly. Your dignity is no laughing matter.
Second: keeping ourselves feeling irreplaceable involves cutting everybody else down to size, so don't miss an opportunity to undermine your employees' confidence.
A perfect opportunity comes when you're reviewing work that they've done. Use your authority to zero in immediately on all the things you can find wrong. Never, never balance the negatives with positives, only criticize, just as your school teachers did.
Always remember: praise makes people uppity.
Third: Demand that people should always be actively doing things. If you catch anyone pondering, accuse them of laziness and/or indecision. This is to starve employees of thinking time because that leads to creativity and insurrection. So demand urgency at all times, use lots of fighting talk and war analogies, and establish a permanent atmosphere of stress, of breathless anxiety, and crisis.
In a phrase: keep that mode closed.
In this way we no-nonsense types can be sure that the tiny, tiny, microscopic quantity of creativity in our organization will all be ours!
But! Let your vigilance slip for one moment, and you could find yourself surrounded by happy, enthusiastic, and creative people whom you might never be able to completely control ever again!
So be careful.
Thank you, and good night. Thank you.
Joel Creasey: 'My first date Harry Styles cancelled tonight', GQ Comedian of the Year - 2018
15 November 2018, GQ Awards, Sydney, Australia
Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled to be the first award tonight so that I can drink. There are so many handsome men here tonight. I feel like a bogan at a Nickelback concert. Or a lesbian at Bunnings. My first date Harry Styles cancelled tonight - he says restraining order. So I'm here with my dad as my date. …
When I was fifteen I stormed into the kitchen and told my parents I was gay. Sorry ladies! And they said cool, we're having pasta for dinner. And I said, you didn't hear me, I said I'm gay - I can't eat carbs!
Julia Louis-Dreyfus: 'The really ridiculous thing is that I am just as good at drama', Mark Twain Award - 2018
18 October 2018, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, USA
Thank you. Thank you very much, thank you very much. Thank you so much. Stop, okay sit. Thank you. Thank you very much.
When Mark Twain first emailed me about the Mark Twain prize, I have to admit I totally misunderstood. I assumed that I was being asked to honour somebody else who was receiving the Mark Twain prize and I thought, oh my God what a hassle. I mean seriously, who would put me through this to have to go all the way to Washington D.C. which no offence, is a nightmare and make up flattering things to say about how funny someone else is. No fucking way.
And then I reread the email and I realised oh, it's me. They're giving it to me. I get the prize and my attitude about the whole thing changed. It really did. I don't know, honestly. I really don't know what I was thinking, this is a great night and a great honour and in beautiful Washington D.C. no less. Anybody would be lucky to be a part of a night like this honouring somebody like me, right?
As a great fan of the work of Mark Twain I was so sorry when I recently learned he was dead. My thoughts and prayers go out to the whole Twain family, especially the wonderful Shania. Unfortunately the President of the United States couldn't make it tonight either, even though he lives in the neighbourhood Mondays through Wednesdays.
I am so lucky to have been on television doing comedy for more than 35 years, isn't that ridiculous? The really ridiculous thing is that I am just as good at drama. Yeah, I'm going to tell you a little story, it's a little trivia. The very same week that I got cast in Seinfeld I was being considered for the juicy little part of Portia in director Sir Peter Hall's Broadway production of The Merchant of Venice. Apparently I didn't get the part since someone else eventually played the role on this stage and of course I'm happy that I didn't get that part because if I had I would have never have played Elaine on Seinfeld and without Seinfeld I would not be here today. So it worked out great, totally fabulous no regrets here, none at all. None whatsoever.
Anyway I think it's time for me to get into some serious thank yous. Abbi and Ilana thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. Just to be completely clear, I gave an excellent audition for Merchant of Venice, okay? I mean just objectively speaking now. I nailed it, okay? So I'm just a little confused as to why Peter Hall didn't cast me. That's all, that's all. I'm not upset obviously because I love comedy and I love my career. So, where was I? Oh, yes, yes, yes. Keegan oh, my god Keegan-Micheal Key thank you so much for being here on my special night …
Look Sir Peter Hall might have made a mistake, okay. My audition was Portia's speech about mercy. You all probably know the scene. I mean obviously I am not gonna perform it right now because that would be a pretty weird tangent to hear Shakespeare intelligently and energetically performed in a middle of a comedy tribute to me, so.
Camille thank you for being here. It is so inspiring that you were able to co-opt your wife's harrowing medical ordeal for an Oscar nomination. Bryan Cranston you are a truly incomparable talent and a pleasure to work with. When I think of us on Seinfeld …
Look I'm just gonna do it. You want to hear it, right? I can do Shakespeare, okay.
The quality of mercy is not strained, it dropeth as a gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed, it blessed of him that gives and him that takes.
Thank you. Thank you. And Stephen Colbert, my fellow Northwestern alum, thank you so much for being here. You are my every night hero when at 11:35 a nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo, woo, woo.
Stephen used to play a manic conservative and now he plays a depressed liberal - that is range ladies and gentlemen. It is so great to see Lisa Kudrow here, setting me up just like in the old days when Friends would set up Seinfeld and just like in the old days Jerry's got all the money. And my darling dear, sweet Tony Hale. If I weren't already married and Bryan and Keegan weren't already married and if you weren't already married then I'd definitely get your opinion about any guy I was dating before marrying him.
And Tina Fey you are a comedy genius whom I admire above all humans. Tina was honoured with the Mark Twain prize too before they got real serious about who they give these things to. And thanks to my wonderful neighbour Jack Johnson. I was going to make a joke about Jack Johnson but for the love of god can't something remain sacred this evening?
And finally to my wonderful friend Jerry Seinfeld. I learned a lot from Jer over the years, principally the importance of hard work. Jerry killed himself to make Seinfeld good. He and Larry David worked so hard it is actually it is impossible to describe and they didn't just do it to make the show successful because once it was successful they worked even harder. And I hope a little of that rubbed off on me.
I grew up here in Washington D.C. back during the quaint old fashioned rule of law period. Being funny was a big part of my growing up. My great grandmother Bessy was the first person I remember telling jokes. She was in her 90s and I was really little and she would do these extremely repulsive impressions of her first grade teacher having life-threatening seizures. At least I think it was an impression. Anyway, either way I realised now that it was offensive and she was way, way out of line. But when I was five years old, hilarious stuff.
My mom and dad got divorced when I was three, also hilarious. My mom is actually here tonight with 80 of her closest friends. Last year I was lucky enough to get an Emmy Award for my performance on Veep which was an incredible thrill and it set some kind of a record for the most Emmys by somebody for doing something or other and then about twelve hours later I was diagnosed with cancer, another hilarious turn of events. I'm only half kidding, of course cancer isn't at all funny, but a big part of dealing with it has been finding the funny moment. The old cliché about laughter being the best medicine turns out to be true which is good because that's what the current administration is trying to replace Obamacare with.
When I was getting my hideous chemotherapy I'd cram a bunch of family and friends into this tiny treatment room with me and we really did have some great laughs. Of course I was heavily medicated and slipping in and out of consciousness so I was probably a pretty easy audience. But my point is, is that laughter is a basic human need along with love and food and an HBO subscription. There's no situation, none that isn't improved with a couple of laughs. Everybody needs laughs so the fact that I've had the opportunity to make people laugh for a living is one of the many blessings that I have received in my life. Okay.
According to Wikipedia I have two sons Charlie and Henry. When you're a working mother, oh, you really worry about the time spent away from your kids. You try your best to be there as much as possible, but the truth is, is that you miss stuff and you worry that they're gonna get all screwed up and suffer all kinds of angst and neurosis when they grow up and then you get the Mark Twain prize. I got to say it's worth it.
I'd also like to acknowledge my cherished husband Brad Hall who I didn't just marry because his name sounds like Peter Hall and it kind of felt like I was getting the part, no. Brad never fails to show up at events like this, this very one he puts on a suit, he puts on a smile and is the most supportive and present spouse in the world. No, nope, no. Yes thank you.
Thank you so, so much dear Brad. Thank you. And finally thanks to Mark and Mrs. Twain and to everyone who has participated in this exhausting evening. Thank you so much and good evening and thank you.
Related content: Tina Fey, Mark Twain Award Acceptance, 2010
“I never dreamed that I would receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour. Mostly because my style is so typically Austrian.”
Hannah Gadsby: 'This is not normal', Emmy Awards - 2018
Ah this is … this is …this is not normal.
The world has gone a bit crazy.
For somebody like me, a nobody from nowhere, gets this sweet gig. Free suit. New boots.
Just because I don’t like men! It’s just …
That’s a joke, of course, just a joke fellas, calm down, hashtag not all men, but a lot of them.
Um … it is just jokes, but what are jokes these days? We don’t know, nobody knows what jokes are.
Especially men.
Am I right, fellas? That’s why I’m presenting alone.
Another speech? Try Steve Martin’s tribute to Gene Kelly, American Film Institute Life Achievement special, 1985.
“Gene said, ‘But Steve, what’ll I do when I get to the lamppost?’
I said, ‘swing around it a couple of time, make it like a big deal.’”
Jerry Seinfeld: 'I love advertisting, because I love lying', Clio award acceptance - 2014
1 October 2014, New York City, New York, USA
I am excited to win this. This is the award they give you when they don’t think you can actually win one, but they think you’ve done a pretty good job and seem to have been around for quite some time, and that’s how I got it.
I would like to thank Ogilvy & Mather and American Express for getting me into this business. That was the first time I did it. I would like to thank my manager George Shapiro, my incredible wife Jessica, and Ammirati for keeping me going.
I love advertising, because I love lying. In advertising, everything is the way you wish it was. I don’t care that it won’t be like that when I actually get the product being advertised, because in between seeing the commercial and owning the thing, I’m happy, and that’s all I want. Tell me how great the thing is going to be. I love it. I don’t need to be happy all the time. I just want to enjoy the commercial. I want to get the thing. We know the product is going to stink. We know that, because we live in the world, and we know that everything stinks. We all believe, hey, maybe this one won’t stink. We are a hopeful species. Stupid but hopeful.
But we’re happy in that moment between the commercial and the purchase, and I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy. Because a brief moment of happiness is pretty good.
I also think that just focusing on making money and buying stupid things is a good way of life. I believe materialism gets a bad rap. It’s not about the amount of money. Nothing’s better than a BIC pen, a VW Beetle, or a pair of regular Levi’s. If your things don’t make you happy, you’re not getting the right things. This will all be in my new book, Soulful Materialism, which is in the planning stages at this moment.
I have always wanted a Clio. I don’t know much about it, but I know it’s a good award, because in 1991 they screwed up this whole presentation, and there were a bunch of awards left over, and all of these ad people here climbed up onto the stage and tried to grab them. To me, that says this means something. That really happened, and it’s my all-time favourite award show occurrence because it was so honest.
People just said, I want a damn Clio, and they went for it, and that is why I am happy right now. I got this. I didn’t really win it, but I got it. And tomorrow, I don’t know where this is going to be. It’ll be somewhere. Eventually I’ll be dead. Someone will just take it or sell it or throw it out. That’s fine. I’m happy now. The same way those executives were in 1991 when they ran onto this stage and grabbed trophies that weren’t theirs. But it trumped up their phoneycareers and meaningless lives.
Thank you all for this great honour and for all your great work. I hope it makes you happy as you have made me happy for this five minutes of my life, which will last until I get to the edge of this stage, and it hits me that this was all a bunch of nonsense.
Thank you, and have a great evening.
Will Ferrell: 'I decided to accept this award because of the prize money', Mark Twain acceptance - 2011
23 October 2011, Kennedy Center, Washington DC, USA
Oh, boy, okay. Um, wow, thank you, thank you, so much for that warm ovation. As I stare at this magnificent bust of Mark Twain, I’m reminded of how humbled I am to receive such an honor and how I vow to take very special care of it. I will never let it out of my sight. I will find a place of honor in my house for this magnificent bust. If my children try to touch it or even look at it, I will beat them. It means that much to me. In fact, I told my wife that maybe I should buy it its own seat for the plane right home, and no, no I’m not done, I’m not done, I’m not, I’m not, no. No, I just started the speech, why would you think I’m done?
I want to sincerely thank the Kennedy Center for this prize and this – and the fine folks at PBS for airing this special. I am the 14th recipient of the Mark Twain prize. And you’re probably asking yourself, why did it take so long? Well, for 13 consecutive years, I have been begged by the Kennedy Center to accept this award and for 13 consecutive years, I have emphatically said, no. For years, I had many questions about this Mark Twain, the first being, who is he? It’s been donned on me that, since I was a small boy I have thoroughly enjoyed his delicious fried chicken.
Then my wife informed me that I was thinking of Colonel Sanders not Mark Twain. It turns out that he is considered America’s finest author and humorist, but that his real name is not Mark Twain, it was Jerry Goldman. Before that, it was Judy Blume, and before that of course, we all know the name, Samuel Langhorne Chimmins. Despite my failings to grasp the importance of Mark Twain and what exactly he did, I decided to accept this award because of the prize money, $1 billion dollars, paid out over the next 10,000 years. To say that I’m thrilled to be here is a complete understatement, and to make this evening even more thrilling, I have just been informed that, I’m only the 11th Caucasian to receive this prestigious award.
Pretty cool, I can’t tell you enough how special it is to stand here on this stage at the Kennedy Center, in front of this amazing audience, while being watched on PBS by hundreds of people. It’s very surreal, you have to understand as a kid growing up in Irvine, California, where I would sit in my room and listen to records of Steve Martin and the original Saturday Night Live Cast or stay up late and watch Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show to see what comedians he would have on. I had one dream, one singular focus even at the earliest stage, I can remember wanting to do one thing and one thing only, sell insurance.
So to be standing here, feels somewhat odd, whether it was auto, home or life, fire, flood or earthquake, I just wanted to make people feel safe. Do you have enough inland marine insurance or business overhead expense disability insurance, these are the things I thought when I was a kid. But the insurance game didn’t happen for me. So I fell back on comedy, and here I am now. There is so many people I need to thank for helping me make tonight possible.
First off, I would like to thank all the wonderful people who spoke or performed tonight on my behalf, an amazing line-up, all of you taking time out of your busy personal and professional schedules to be here means the world to me and if any of you ever needs me to speak on your behalf, for any reason, just know that I sincerely mean this, I’m probably unavailable. But thank you and I’m sorry ahead of time.
One of the people you saw tonight to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude is Mr. Adam McKay. Together Adam and I have created Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Stepbrothers and The Other Guys, a Broadway show and a comedy website. I would also not be standing here, if it weren’t for Saturday Night Live Executive Producer, Lorne Michaels.
Thank you, Lorne for taking a chance on me and giving me the opportunity to be on Saturday Night Live, the show I always dream to being on. And finally what makes tonight truly special is that I can share it with my family. I am so grateful to all of you guys for your continued support and love for the things that I do. But mostly I would like to thank my lovely wife, Viveca.
Before I do that, however, I should really thank my first and second wives Donna and Julie. Donna, what can I say, we were just too young, when we got married. I mean literally too young, we were 13. Ah, heck, you were 13, I was nine. You know. I was in the third grade and it wasn’t right or legal, but I hope you’re well and I thank you for your support. As for Julie, you left me for Gary Busey and I will never blame you for that ever.
Finally, Viveca, all I can say is thank you, and thank god I found you. You’ve given us three beautiful boys and we have a wonderful life together. But I do have to say sometimes you get a little lippy, okay. You got a big mouth and you like to run it. Now I’ll tell you one thing, and one thing only, okay tonight is my night, all right. I love you, but I’m really sick of that big mouth of yours okay? And I won’t stand it, okay? Do you hear me? You look at me when I talk to you.
I mean tonight, if I after the show, if I want to go on a bender with Gwen Ifill and buy a couple of spearguns and try to scale the Washington Monument, I’m going to do it, okay? And there is nothing, you can say to stop me. I love you.
So once again, I thank you for this magnificent night and this amazing honor and I want to thank the Kennedy Center for being one of the few places that upholds comedy, as what it truly is an art form. Thank you and good night. Now, you can play it, now you can play the music.
Stephen Colbert: Response to Trump's Address to Congress - 2017
1 March 2017, CBS Ed Sullivan Theatre, New York, USA
I am Stephen Colbert and we are live from the Ed Sullivan Theatre. Right after Donald Trump's address to Congress. Now technically this was not a State of the Union, because I think in this timeline, the Confederacy won.
I've never seen this movie before, but I think that's how this one ends.
We've got to get back to the interdimensional portals as quickly as we can.
There was a lot of anticipation tonight - it's a huge evening for the President and for everybody in Washington, and the nation.
Before it even began, CNN trolled the nation with the caption, 'Trump Leaves White House Soon'.
'DON'T TEASE! Not cool CNN! Not cool!
What's next, covering the President descending a staircase with the caption 'Trump Steps Down'.
And as he was leaving the Whtie House, cameras caught President Trump as he was apparently rehearsing his lines in the back of the limo.
Now obviously, CNN's powerful microphones picked up what he was saying.
'AH, I'll have the clams casino,. and the side of steak' And the lady will have a coke no ice, and I will have her steak'.
CNN. Powerful microphones.
Of course it's a really big night, and some in Congress dressed for the occasion. The female members of the House Demorcratic Caucus all wore white, in honour of women's suffrage.
While the Republicans were white, in honour of who elected them.
You gotta give back.
You gotta give back. You gotta dance with the girl that brung ya.
Then, at long last, the big moment came.
Any chance there is a mistake and 'Moonlight' is the President?
And there he was, at long last, the moment we'd been waiting for. He was there in the chamber, being President and all. Trump entered the room and did the traditional handshakes with everybody, so many handshakes, such little hands.
When he took to the podium to deliver the speech, as usual, behind the President were the Vice President, Mike Pence, and the Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, who immediately showed their commitment to fiscal responsibility by purchasing a buy one get one free suit and tie combo.
I mean men wearing a blue suit with a blue tie, that's ridiculous. [adjusts own blue tie]
Now the theme of the speech was ‘renewal of the American spirit,’ which, I’ve got to say, really just sounds like a Chinese bootleg of ‘Make America Great Again,’ And to begin the evening, Trump spoke in uplifting terms.”
Trump: Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice — in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.
Colbert: Then he extinguished that torch with a coconut and asked the Democrats to leave the island.
Trump on curtailing government: We have begun the commitment to ending government corruption by imposing a five year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials. And a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.
Colbert: Adding, obviously, yours truly excepted. I got your back Vlad. I got your back.
Trump on plans for small government: We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job crushing regulations, creating a deregulation taskforce inside of every government agency.
Colbert: Yes, a new taskforce, in every government agency. We're going to reduce government, by adding people to the government. It's like how the key to not getting hung over is to never stop drinking.
Trump: We have withdrawn theUnited States from the job killing Trans Pacific Partnership
Colbert: Yes, the Trans Pacific Partnership is just one of the trans this administration is withdrawing it's support from.
Trump on his Executive Orders: We have placed a hiring freeze on non military and non essential federal workers.
Colbert: Non essential Federal workers? So Kellyanne Conway is out?
Trump on his immigration plan: Bad ones are going out as I speak tonight and as I have promised.
Colbert: “Bad ones out, good ones in'. This nuanced policy comes from Trump’s immigration director, Secretary Incredible Hulk. bad. Hulk. Smash.
Trump on his standards for immigrants: “It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially.”
Colbert: Just like the Statue of Liberty says, 'Give us your tired, your poor, but not so poor they can’t afford a two-bedroom apartment and, like, a Mitsubishi. We got standards.
Trump on terrorism: We have seen the attacks in France, in Belgium, in Germany and all over the world.
Colbert: And just because we haven’t seen the attacks in Sweden doesn’t mean they did not happen, all right? Invisible terrorists are everywhere.
Trump on the future: Tonight, as I outline the next steps we must take as a country, we must honestly acknowledge the circumstances we inherited.
Colbert: Honestly, I don’t know what we inherited; you inherited, like, $100 million dollars. Let’s be honest.
Trump on what to do next: So to accomplish our goals, we must restart the engine of the American economy.
Colbert: And in the spirit of bipartisanship, Trump then allowed Nancy Polosi to restart that engine.
[video GODFATHER SCENE, CAR BLOWS UP ON IGNITION]
Trump on government spending: With this $6 trillion we could have rebuilt our country — twice. And maybe even three times if we had people who had the ability to negotiate.
Colbert: Maybe even rebuild it 10 times if we had people who refused to pay their contractors.
...
Trump: Tonight, I am also calling on this Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare … [applause].
Colbert: I’ve got to say, that must have been hard on Trump: People got so excited just hearing Obama’s name.
Trump: Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Every problem can be solved.”
Colbert: Well, there’s one problem we can’t solve for four years, but, other than that, I agree with you.
And this surprised me. This next thing I did not expect at all. Trump came out as pro-choice when it comes to schools.
Trump: These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.
Colbert: Wait, you can choose a different home school? Then I choose your home — it seems really nice. Do I bring the kids over? Who teaches them? Maybe Eric teaches them.
Trump on law and order: And we must support the victims of crime.
Colbert: Unless they are plaintiffs against me. Those women are lying.
Of course, his goal is to make America great again, and for everybody wondering, the time Trump thinks America was 'great', well he gave his answer, the 1886 World's Fair.
Trump: Alexander Graham Bell displayed his telephone for the first time, Remington unveiled the first typewriter, an early attempt was made at electric light. Thomas Edison showed an automatic telegraph, and an electric pen. Imagine the wonders our country could know in America's 250th year.
Colbert: Who knows, maybe a cordless pen? That's not fair. When Trump says electric pen, he means where he plans to keep the immigrants.
Then he laid out a vision for the future
Trump: The time for trivial fights is behind us.
Colbert: Adding just one more thing: Suck it, Nordstrom.
So, as we come to end of tonight’s address to Congress, I think we can all agree on one thing — one down, seven to go.
Jerry Seinfeld: 'All award shows are stupid,' HBO Comedian Award - 2007
2 April 2007, California, USA
At moments like this I would like to quote my good friend Carl Reiner, who has often said to me: “You don’t give awards to comedians”. First of all, comedians don’t need awards, awards are for people that are looking for work, we’re not looking for work. If you’re any good as a comedian, you’ve got tons of work. We’ve all got wrinkled suits and smelly shirts from packing and unpacking and schlepping all over the goddamn country doing 10 million different kinds of gigs.
And secondly and even more important is your whole career as a comedian is about making fun of pretentious, high minded, self-congratulatory B.S. events like this one. The whole feeling in this room of reverence and honoring is the exact opposite of everything I have wanted my life to be about. I – I – I really don’t want to be up here. I want to be in the back over there – somewhere over there saying something funny to somebody about what a crook this whole thing is.
And I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I don’t want you to think that I’m not honored by this, because I’m, I feel very, very honored, and it’s – but it’s just that awards are stupid. Every real estate office has some framed, five-diamond president’s award thing by the desk, every hotel check-in has some gold circle service thing; every car salesman is a platinum jubilee winner. It’s all a big jerk off. It is, the hotel sucks, the real estate person is stupid, and the only thing the car salesman is good at is ripping you off.
And why? Because awards don’t mean a goddamn thing. It’s stupid, they’re all stupid. All of the award shows on TV. Honestly, it’s beyond me that we feel the need to set aside a night to give out these jaggoff bowling trophies six times a year, so all these people can pat each other on the back about how much money they’re making; boring the piss out of half the world. And if I hadn’t already won all these awards, I would not be talking like this.
(applause)
The truth is that the comedians should be the only one getting awards. We’re the only ones that have to actually think of something original and funny, and interesting to say, you know, how hard that is? Do you know how hard it was just to write what I’m saying to you right now? It was hard, this took a long time, but we can do it, we can do it.
(applause)
I’m just you know, sick of all these actors and you know, I don’t know why we’re so fascinated with actors in this culture. They haven’t got a thought in their stupid bed-head hairdo mini brains. Why are – we must honor this man, why? He pretended to be Bob Johnson. He is a genius, I tell you, it’s genius what he is doing, playing dress up and pretend is not genius ladies and gentleman, it’s not genius.
Roll the cameras, put on these clothes, stand there ready? Say what we told you to say! Fantastic, he did it! Give this man a huge golden trophy, he is a goddamn genius, walking down the red carpet in these ridiculous outfits like they are senators from Krypton, it’s just so stupid, but what can I do, I have to thank HBO, I have to.
All comedians, every, these three guys and me, oh, HBO, we owe them, that’s why they are here. You think these guys want to do this, they don’t want to do this, they owe. They gave me a one-hour HBO special, they were the first people that ever thought I should be on TV for more than six minutes. And I was introduced on that show by Carl Reiner.
And I don’t, you know, so that’s it, what can you say about it. And I’m very proud of this and it’s a thrill, I hope they do it again next year, this could be it, I don’t know. But this is a great, important, incredibly, you know, sweet thing and meaningful thing in my life. Thank you very much HBO and thank you all for coming.
Barack Obama: 'Ellen has a way of making us laugh about some thing rather than at someone', for Ellen de Generes, Presidential Medal of Freedom - 2016
22 November 2016, Washington DC, USA
Ellen has a way of making you laugh about some thing rather than at someone.
Except when I danced on her show, she laughed at me.
It’s easy to forget now, when we’ve come so far, where now marriage is equal under the law, just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago. Just how important it was not just for the LGBT community, but for all us to see somebody so full of kindness and light. Somebody we liked so much, somebody who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister challenge our own assumptions. Remind us that we have more in common than we realize, push our country in the direction of justice. What an incredible burden it was to bear, to risk your career like that. People don’t do that very often.
But it's like Ellen says, 'we all want a tortilla chip that can support the weight of guacamole'. Which really makes no sense to me. But I thought I would break the mood, because I was getting choked up.
And she did pay a price. We don’t remember this, I hadn’t remembered it. She did, for a pretty long stretch of time–even in Hollywood,
And yet today, every day in every way Ellen counters what too often divides us with the countless things that bind us together and inspires us to be better, one joke, one dance at a time.
Betty White: 'We all know Shatner's nuts', Comedy Central roast of William Shatner - 2010
Aired 23 July 2010, Los Angeles, USA
Oh!
And thank you so very much and good night.
Oh, Jason Alexander, you are such a treat.
You know, I was expecting you to be just dreadful.
Well, in all fairness, I was basing that on everything you've ever done, but-- But isn't this just wonderful?
I mean, all you youngsters getting together to tell naughty jokes.
Oh.
It's like the great roasts I went to in the good old days.
Of course, you wouldn't have been allowed in, Nichelle.
Sorry.
Oh, we had our fun.
You know, I've been a huge Trekkie ever since the show first aired.
And that's why I'm so thrilled to see Nichelle and George Takei here tonight.
'Cause, let's face it-- we all know Shatner's nuts.
But George has actually tasted them.
Whoo!
Oh, it always makes me laugh when I see Artie Lang onstage, knowing I'm gonna outlive him.
Oh, no, no.
No.
Oh, but you know who I love.
Look at that Patton Oswalt.
So adorable.
He's like a plump little troll.
Backstage I caught him going up on Farrah Fawcett.
Oh, Farrah, you know I don't mean any of this.
I feel such a special connection to you, Farrah.
I'm in my 80s, and that's the last decade you mattered.
And who else is here tonight?
Uh, where's Spock?
And James Spader?
And Bones and Scotty and...
Oh, Bill, all your friends are either dead or they hate you.
To be fair, I'm a little of column A and a little of column B.
But you look great.
You know, they make 1% milk now.
Darling, you were supposed to explore the galaxy.
Not fill it.
All joking aside, Bill can be quite a charmer.
I'm not ashamed to say that I once had sex with Bill Shatner.
[cheering] Oh, you should have seen him sweating and grunting and so red in the face and wheezing.
Finally, I said, "Bill, you better hurry up and finish.
In two minutes, they're gonna start the roast." Of course, I'm still joking.
Bill is a happily married man.
I caught the bouquet at Bill's wedding.
And I hope I'm still around to catch the cock ring at Sulu's.
Bill, the truth is, I dearly love you.
I've always admired you as an actor.
I think you're funny and smart and kind.
And I was so excited when I found out I'd be working with you onBoston Legal.
Till I worked with you onBoston Legal.
Good night!
Groucho Marx: 'He’s a complete stranger, and not even a close one at that', Friars Club Roast - 1968
20 October 1968, televised NBC, California, USA
Friars and guests of honour, when I was asked to appear here tonight, on the crack musical to honour Johnny Carson, my immediate reaction was to give up my citizenship and move to Czechoslovakia.
Gee I thought they’d yell at that.
Deadly silence came over half of Maddox.
Frankly I cannot live in a country that will honour a man whose only claim to fame is that from the side he looks like Audrey Hepburn.
Actually when you’re commanded to appear at this kind of a turkey, you will naturally feel privileged and honoured, but in my case it’s ridiculous.
I hardly know the man.
He’s a complete strangler, no a stranger.
He’s a complete stranger, and not even a close one a that.
True, I’ve heard a few stories about Johnny Carson, but a man’s private sordid life is his own.
Nevertheless I have done some research on little Johnny.
I went back to the scene of his childhood, Nebraska. Isn’t that true, Nebraska. You keep shifting around the middle west, I don’t know where you’re from.
I went to Nebraska to talk to Johnny’s mother. I’m happy to report she remembers Johnny. She doesn’t remember his father, but she remembers Johnny. Then I called on his old high school teacher, and I asked her, what kind of a student was Johnny Carson? But she didn’t remember Johnny. However, she did remember Johnny’s father.
You know I try to watch Johnny, I’ve tuned in three times. One time Jerry Lewis was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The second time Harry Belafonte was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. The third time, I was the host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. I've never known Johnny Carson to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
We’re honouring a man who doesn’t show up for work.
He could be the mayor. (Mayor John Lindsay was one of the other speakers]
Let me give you an idea of the friendship Johnny Carson and I have for each other.
I was on Johnny Carson’s very first Tonight Show, six years ago. I’ll never forget the first night I met him. And heaven knows I’ve tried. I was in my dressing room, at least that’s what they said it was. It was the only dressing room I ever saw with twelve sinks.
He rushed in dropped some change in the machine, bought a comb, a nail clipper, had a sprite of perfume and left
The last time I saw him was about forty minutes ago.
I had the same dressing room .
Two sinks had been removed.
He came in and said, ‘Boy am I glad you’re here ... the nail clipper doesn’t work.’
Well for your information, Mr Carson, the perfume’s worn off too.
Phyllis Diller: 'Nothing is impossible if you don't know you can't do it', 92Y Talks - 1992
4 October 1992, 92nd Street Y, New York City, USA
I want to tell you that I am delighted to be here. Of course, I'm delighted that you are here, and at my age, I am delighted to be anywhere. You know you are old when your favourite drink is Metamucil. That darling Elizabeth Taylor has a perfume out called Passion. I have one out called Regularity. You know you're old when you have sexual fantasies that involve Jessie Helms. The question that people always ask me is how do I manage to stay in business after 38 years, because some people come and go. Well, I just came. I don't intend to go, ever. All during dinner tonight with Susan and some friends, we talked about death, and what it's all about, and all that sort of thing, because I'm terribly interested in it, but first I'm interested in old, and I did a show at an old folks' home. I have some advice about visiting those places. Don't ever set a drink down, because every time I did, somebody dropped their teeth in it.
Milton Burl visited an old folks' home. The one out in Hollywood is very chic, and he was upset. He has a massive go, and he got upset because nobody remembered him. He went up to one lady and he said, "Do you know who I am?" She said, "No, but the lady at the desk will tell you." I have another tip. Be kind to your children because they will be choosing your rest home. I've already chosen one for Fang's mother, the Charles Manson Healthcare Centre. That old bitch. She went to the doctor with a pain under her left breast. Turned out to be a trick knee. People, that is a question I am constantly asked. How do you manage to stay in the business? Number one, I try very hard ... I shouldn't say try. I've taken that out of my caveat. You never say, "I'm trying to do this." You say, "I'm doing this." You say, take out every word that sounds like you might have a doubt. You have to always sound absolutely positive. I keep it up to date. That's what I'm going to say. I keep my act up to date, plus I work on it every day.
Trying. Putting in new lines about new people, and sometimes you find that in this life, a soap opera, you can call it life ... It is a soap opera, believe me. When you consider it. Say, take Elizabeth Taylor's life alone. She's been married eight times. If that isn't soap opera, I haven't watched, and I always wonder what goes through that eighth groom's mind on that wedding night. Is this passion or Memorex? Elizabeth Taylor, see, she's endlessly interesting. That's why she goes on forever. She's cover story work always, because she's ... Number one, she can do remarkable things like get fat and then get skinny. That's remarkable. Some people either get fat and stay ha or get skinny and stay skinny, but she gets fat and skinny, fat and skinny, fat and skinny, and they are going to do a TV mini series of her live. Her role will be played alternately by Cher and Roseanne Barr. Oh, I do enjoy my work. Oh, that's another thing. People say, "Why do you laugh?" I can't help it. I just can't help it.
I like to laugh, and I want to tell you, it is terribly healthy to laugh, so it will do you a lot of good if you find a place to laugh, because it shakes up the liver bile. While you're laughing, your entire body is in a state of healing. That's true. It's people who worry themselves into illness. That's true. I'm very much into psychosomatic health. If you've ever read that book, The Anatomy of an Illness by Oz ... What's his name? Norman Cousins, yes. Yes. Oh, god. What a wonderful book. He cured himself with comedy, and I sincerely believe that you can keep yourself healthy. Look at George Burns. He's about 108, and goes out dancing, has two martinis for lunch, two martinis for dinner. Maybe that's what's doing it. Maybe he's just pickled. He eats sparingly, too, but do you see, I think that people who deal in comedy are always looking at the funny side of everything. Of course, my what do you call it? Just a slight touch of Al Simmons.
Definition. That's the word I want. My definition of comedy is tragedy revisited. That is what comedy is made of, and of course it has ... If it's a serious tragedy, you have to give it time before you talk about it, but small tragedies, that's what comedy's all about. It's the old banana peel. When you think of someone who's just [inaudible 00:06:43] beautiful, like Bo Derrick, or Liz Taylor, or those classic beauties, like Grace Kelly. They are not funny. Poor darlings. When you see beauty, it isn't funny. It's something else, but comedy is a wonderful defence, and it's a wonderful, oh, it's a wonderful way to get through life, to always look at the funny side. I remember whenever I have been in the hospital, have had a double room, whoever was in the other bed always went home early because they were afraid they would blow their stitches, because I always found operations very funny. In fact, I have found operations very helpful when it comes to my face.
I'm an authority, of course, on plastic surgery. I got into it early, and have done a lot. I've had so many things done to my body, when I die, God won't know me. There are no two parts of my body the same age. That's true. If I have one more face lift, it'll be caesarian. I had to do something. I was so wrinkled I could screw my hats on it. One night I answered the door with a broom in my hand. A guy tried to sell me flight insurance. My face has been pulled up more times than Jimmy Swaggart's pants. Oh, we were discussing at dinner about heaven and hell. Is there one, or two, or aren't there, or are they, and different religions, of course ... Of course, a lot of religious wars that are still going on are sort of based on religions and differences in religions. I'll have to tell you about my belief, and I don't ask anyone to join me in my belief, because I started working on it when I was about four years old.
Because I was born to elderly parents ... I don't know how they did that, but then I was, because all the relatives, aunts and uncles, were terribly old, they kept dying, and I was taken to funerals as a young child, a lot of funerals. They were conducted in the home. It was just a nice day in the country, and they would put these old people in these beautiful boxes, all gift wrapped on up, and I had never seen my aunts and uncles look so good, or so dressed up and peaceful. I started thinking about death seriously as a child, and I touched them, and realised they were cold, hard, like cement. I realised they were definitely not alive, and I thought a lot about that, and started thinking about it early in life, because I wanted to decide. I find that if you have a lot of unresolved questions in your mind, it ties up a lot of your energy that you need for creative work, and for creatively handling your own life problems.
In order to handle your life problems, the whole idea is to solve them so that you don't have any. That's why another thing that I have written is that a good divorce is better than a bad marriage, because my theory is that you should get everything out of your life that isn't working, even if it's a dress, pair of shoes, or a husband. It's all the same, but for myself, I've decided that about that thing where you die and you go to heaven or you go to hell, one or the other, I decided that didn't make too much sense for me. The way my mother described heaven, and she believed that she would definitely go there, was that the streets were made of silver and gold. Number one, I thought that'd be awfully cold and slippery, and then you see these angels with wings, and I knew I couldn't handle that, so I wouldn't want to go there. I don't like heat enough to go to hell, because in Hollywood, we have automobile heaven. That's the automotive town of the world. Everybody from the driving age of 16, everybody has a car. That's why we have the smog. That's why you have to come to New York to get a breath of fresh air.
You probably think you have smog. Oh, you don't. No. If you want a breath of fresh air in LA, you have to find a car with an out-of-state licence and open a tyre. There are people who go to simply automobile heaven, and there were three men who died in the same auto accident, and they all went there simultaneously. Saint Peter asked them, they were asked questions. Had they been true to their wives, and the first fellow was a realtor. He said that he had actually had an affair, and that was it, but other than that, he had been true, so they gave him a Buick to drive around heaven in. The next guy was a travelling salesman, and he had a worse record. He had had not only an affair, but various little people on the road. Then there was another man who had had two mistresses, and many one-night stands, and he was given the piece of junk, an old Volkswagen Bug with no fenders and half an engine and a door hanging on it to drive around it. He was sorry that he had been such a stud. Then he saw his wife go past on a skateboard.
I personally decided years and years ago, as I guess a teenager, that this life is it, because I believe in nature, and I'm a naturalist. That's why I believe that in nature, in more ways than that. I think nature cannot be gone against. I don't think you can go against nature. I think nature is of the law. For instance, I am against taking the pill because it's sort of like holding back the tide, which I wouldn't want to try that. I think it's wrong to go against life's cycles, and try to manipulate them, and I think it's playing with fire. Another thing. For instance, they just recently came out, and of course the dairy farmers are going to go nuts. They're saying that the dairy products are not good for adults, and of course, I would agree because of my feeling that all mammals are weaned, and then they don't ever have milk again. That to me would be nature's way.
I learned something recently. I was playing in a gambling town, and I was paying for something I'd bought. The lady at the cash register has a, get ready, pet tarantula. It's a mammal. Can you feature a tarantula nursing its young? I had no idea. I love to find out those strange things that you don't know about, but we were talking about ... Oh, anyway, so I feel that when I die, now I don't know when you're going to go, but I'm just going to be dead. I will regret my death, I know that, because I know I'm going to miss me. I don't have to have the promise of anything more. This life has been so wonderful. It is so wonderful. Life is so wonderful, and it's good to be alive. You see, if all those people who put all that money into these evangelists' coffers, they are all afraid of dying and going to hell, which gives you an idea of the kind of life they're leading. They're having a lot of fun, but these people, they offer them eternal life, meaning going to heaven, and having a great time up there, and getting them out of hell.
They won't go to hell if you give them money. That's what the promise. How about that? Jim Jones, who took 900 people down to where he thought he'd never be found, and they gave him everything they had, just to get into heaven and not go to hell. They gave him everything mortal, physical things that they had, property, money, whatever they had, just to be taken care of. In other words, they want a daddy. They want someone to take care of them. They don't want to do it themselves. See, life is a do-it-yourself kit, and the minute you find that out, you're on your way, because people who are just beginning things, they want help, and they're always begging for help, and asking for help. There will be help if you don't ask for it, but asking for it almost repels the help. It's sort of like being [inaudible 00:17:00], begging, and you don't like to look at those people. You like to help people who actually probably don't need it. It's the way you get a loan at the bank. Don't need it.
When you need it, you can't have it. I think there's a line in the Bible. To him that hath, it shall be given. From him who hath not, it shall be taken away, so you got to act rich. Where was I? Oh, god. I do ramble. Oh. Oh, those people who take all the money. That Jim Jones, my god, so then they all drank the Kool-Aid. 900 dead people. What a horrible thing. That's a mass suicide. That to me is the sad, sad, and these evangelists like Jimmy Swaggart. What a nasty man. He just does a lot of crying, cries, and cries, and cries. He sins, and he repents, and he cries, and ugh. I haven't seen a face that wet since Jacques Gusto came up for air. That Tammy Fay Bakker. What a ugly little bitch. She looks like a Pekingese. She looks like a little dog that was running too fast, hit the wall. Then she cries, and runs all down, and then she looks like an Exxon oil spill. All that black stuff on her.
There was a funny moment in the Exxon trial when they tried Hazelwood. The judge said, "Order in the court," and Hazelwood said, "I'll have a Harvey Wallbanger." Of course, this was a year when television to look at was mostly trials with Clarence Thomas, and Willy Smith, and all those people. Ted Kennedy starred in most of those trials, and John Kennedy Jr., he's a lawyer. I think he could make a very fine living just defending the family. Think of all the money that could be saved if they didn't give it to these evangelists, and ask Swaggart, "If you ever flip the dial," and he always pulls the Bible out here, and I know he's looking for loopholes to cover him. Tammy Fay's husband, that Jim Bakker, he probably put two Ks in his name so it would balance Swaggart with two G's. Probably went to a numerologist. Numerology, they're always telling you how to spell your name? Anyway, he set any religion back years, and gave a whole new meaning to the term missionary position.
Of course that Oral Roberts started that. He's another one. What a terrible name to give a little boy. You remember four years ago, when he walked up into his prayer tower and spoke with God, who spoke English. Then he came down and spoke with his flock, whom he is fleecing, and he said, "If you don't send me $8 million by March, God will take me." Of course, now, I have had doctors like that, especially doctors out in Hollywood are very strange. This one doctor said, "Take off your clothes." He put them on. There's another doctor out there, if you want a second opinion, he goes out, comes back in. Friend of mine went to the doctor, and she said, "One of my breasts is longer than the other one." The doctor says, "That is not unusual." She said, "But ... " He wanted to know if she knew why one of her breasts is longer, and she said, "Well, I think I have an idea. It may be because my husband likes to sleep with one of them in his mouth." The doctor said, "Well, that isn't unusual either." She said, "We have twin beds."
Doctors ask these dumb questions like, "How old are you?" I said, "You mean now or when I came into your waiting room?" Boy, they do make you wait. While you're waiting, you get a lot sicker reading those germy magazines. People cough in there, and spit in there, and all that. Just breathing those magazines is enough to make you sick, and they ask these stupid questions. One doctor asked me if I had any running sores. I said, "No." He said, "Do you have a rash?" I said, "No." He said, "Do you have herpes?" I said, "No." He said, "What are you doing Friday?" Of course, the main thing is to not get into the hospital. Don't let these doctors stick you in there, because that's when they are through with you, and nurses are overworked, underpaid, and they hate sick people. The last time I was in I had this great big butch thing, nurse thing. Oh. She had one eyebrow went all the way around her head. Small animals were trapped in the hair on her legs.
She came into the room with a needle. I said, "I hope that's an umbrella." If you complain about anything, you get the Velcro bedpan. It may never come off, and I told her if I pass on, I'd like to be cremated. Hell, she set the bed on fire, and I met the dumbest woman I have ever met in the other bed. I had a double room. This woman should marry Fang. They would be very happy together, because he is the dumbest man in the world. There is no doubt in my mind, whatever. Oh, God, just the other day, I said, "Look at the dead bird." He looked up. He was reading the obituaries, and he said, "Isn't it just amazing how people die in alphabetical order?" This woman had twins and the doctor brought them both in. She thought she had a choice. I wish I had ever had a choice. In my day, there was no pill. It was trick or treat, and we had far too many kids, far too many kids. At one time in our playpen, there was standing room only. It looked like a bus stop for midgets.
Used to get so damp in there we'd get a rainbow above it, because housekeeping is not one of my long suits. In fact, it's not any of my long suits. I hate it. I just hate it. One time I asked Fang, "What could I do in the bedroom to thrill you?" He said, "Clean it." He's always threatening. He says, "Housework never killed anybody." I say, "Why take a chance?" That woman and Fang and our dog, his dog is stupid, too, they would make a lovely family, and then I'd be rid of him. What a lovely thought. The happiest day of my life will be the day I open that refrigerator door and see his face on a milk carton. After 50 years with Fang, Claus von Bülow looks good. That's the way, but of course, I can't begin to tell you how stupid he is. I asked him to spell Mississippi one day. He said, "The river or the state?" He thinks Roe vs. Wade is about two guys in a canoe. Oh, god. He is dumb.
He read in the newspaper where 75% of all accents happen within 25 miles of your own home. Now he wants to move. And add to that, a new thing he's got. Paranoia, and he caught this at the mall. That's where he caught paranoia. He went up to one of those maps, and it said, "You are here." He wants to know how they know. He checked all the maps. They always knew. Of course, this is the same man who drove downtown, came to a flashing red light, and stopped 13 times going through the intersection. This is the man who every time he drives over the house at the gas station, he answers the car phone. Somebody gave him a camera for his birthday, just got back his first roll of film. 12 shots of his right eye. He's afraid of everything. He's a coward. He's afraid of his own shadow. He says it isn't his. Can't get him on an aeroplane because I can't get him past the bar. He's a terrible drunk. My god, oh, and besides, he said he's never read of two bars colliding in midair.
Oh, what a drinker. You ought to see him in the morning with a hangover and the shakes. He can thread a sewing machine while it's running, and then the idiot tries to shave with a straight razor. One morning, he lost so much blood his eyes cleared up. He's scared to death of everything, and once I tricked him. I got him on an aeroplane to London, and it's a long trip. It's 15 hours from where we are, and we lost an engine, and the captain's voice came over the loudspeaker. He said, "Now don't worry about a thing. Relax. It just means we will be one hour late landing at Heathrow," and then we lost another engine. He comes on the loudspeaker again. He says, "Now relax. This is a fine aeroplane. There's nothing to worry about. It just means we'll be two hours late landing in London." We lost another engine and Fang said, "Jesus Christ. We lose one more, we'll be up here all night." After we got to London, we had to do all those sites, so those wonderful, red, double decker buses that you sight see.
Oh, they are so cute, and I rode downstairs, and he went upstairs. When he got off, he was white as a sheet. He'd had a couple of heart arrests. He was hardly walking. He was shaking. I said, "What is wrong with you?" He said, "Ha ha. You had a driver." Everybody asks, "Is Fang real?" He's every man. He isn't real. I'm a single person, and I have been married twice. These are some of the questions you might ask, and of course, before I got married before I had been done over. You see, I was always very ugly. I don't know how to tell you this. On our wedding night, I said to Fang, "Let me hear those three little words." He said, "God, you're ugly." For you to be an ugly girl to have a beautiful sister is the pits. Oh, that was it. My complexion was the pits, and hers was peaches. She had all the boys. She was a cheerleader. She had pom poms. I had no pom poms. How can you have a cleavage when you have no cleaves?
They want me to talk a little bit about the technical part of being funny. It helps to be somehow dysplastic in some way, dis ... By that, I mean away from the norm. For instance, Martha Ray had a big mouth, big, big, big mouth, and oh, it comes down to us from the age of kings and medieval times when it was the court jester, who had turned up boots, and wore gloves. All clowns wear gloves, even Mickey Mouse, and they usually had a big hook nose. You've seen them. The court jester always looked the same. He was often a hunchback. Of course, that bring us to Dolly Parton, who's a hunch front. He was sometimes a dwarf, but anyway, in comedy, it helps to be in some way not ideally beautiful, because that tends to make you grow up not funny. Having something to defend yourself about makes for a comic. Comics are made in childhood, and because I've done a great deal of analysis of what makes a comic, my theories are that it's a child who is a hypersensitive child, who is very bright, who is somehow - feels - maybe it isn't even real - feels some sense of abandonment or lack in childhood, emotionally.
It often creates a comic. It's often an only child who doesn't have other children to play with, so they tend to have a wild imagination, and that would ... I think I'll start that sentence again. I had about 18 syllables and no words. Someone asked me what I thought of current comedy as opposed to older comedy. Oh, I want to go back to Martha Ray. Carol Burnett used to have sort of teeth that stuck out, and then less chin than one would want. She's my idol. She's had it fixed, though. She's had everything fixed. She's rich, but the thing is, Martha was ... She always did that teeth commercial. These are very lucrative deals. What's her name. What was that. McLaine. Shirley McLaine does a commercial for cat food, nine lives. Martha had that commercial for the teeth, and then after she couldn't do it anymore because she was ill, they offered it to me, and do you know that I couldn't have it because I have my own teeth, and I didn't think it was worth having them pulled.
That means that June Alison wets her pants. There's this new thing about truth in advertising. The other day, my manager called and he said, "Do you have rheumatism?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, there's this commercial." I said, "Yes, I have it very bad." I can get it. Anyone can have it, but in the old days of comedy, there was a time when I was really the only standup comic. I want to tell you about three categories of comedy, for females only. I won't go into the male. There's comic, which is what I am. That means you just stand up on a bare stage, or all alone. You work in one, meaning that's it. You are responsible for your own material. A comic actress works ensemble. That would be Lucy Ball, Carol Burnett, and that's a comic actress, or movies, sketches. They work always with other people, and things are written for them mainly. Then there is comedian, which is a lighter form of comedy. They sing. They dance. They might work with dancing boys, and they might change costumes. In other words, it's lighter and they're not necessarily responsible for their own material, so there's three categories of female comedy.
Before me, there were practically no female standup comics, and I didn't know that, or I probably would've thought it was impossible. Nothing is impossible if you don't know you can't do it. Anything is possible, if you believe that you can do it. I'm sure that's in all the good books. The main thing is believing. There's a friend in the audience tonight, Donald Wild, who wrote a play which I put on the boards. I loved it so much. It was called "What Are We Gonna Do With Jenny?" It was about a reverse generation gap. In other words, the children were horrified at the mother, because she was living with an old man, and not married to him, and having a ball. She painted nudes all day long, and sipped champagne, and was happy as a lark, and her daughters were quite upset about that. I loved the play, and it went very well. We did it in Chicago, and then it travelled in Europe, and South Africa, I guess, but anyway, Donald is here tonight, and I am so thrilled that you are here, Donald.
I have no idea what I was setting up there. See, I don't do lectures. I just didn't do this one. I have no idea what I'm talking about. I think this would be a very good place to throw this open to discussion, and we'll do what Joan Rivers, my dear friend ... Oh, I know what I was talking about. That brought it all back. She always said, "Can we talk?" I love her. I'll tell you, for 10 years, I had this field all to myself. Then along came Joan Rivers, whom I adore. She's Phi Betta Kappa, bright broad, and then after we had it all to ourselves for another 10 years. 20 years of just the two of us, and now, I got to tell you, there are 250 female comics, and many of them are extremely, extremely talented. There are 500 new male standup comics, young men, middle-aged men. Of course, everybody to me is young. Imagine three quarters of a century. Oh, my god. Anyway. It took me that long to solve all my problems, and to reach a plateau of happiness I didn't know existed. One, the pinnacle of it is right here tonight with you, and it's wonderful to be happy.
On the question of craft, Phyllis Diller also famously kept a gag file. See clip below.
Russell Brand: 'And the Nazis did have flaws, but they did look fucking fantastic, let’s face it'GQ Men of the Year - 2013
4 September 2013, London, United Kingdom
Fanks! Fanks for this lovely award and accompanying bag. John, that’s really kind of you to be sincere and sweet, particularly in this context. Cause this is not designed for sincerity, this environment, you realize. We will struggle if we bring sincerity into the situation.
Thank you for the Oracle award, which sounds like to me something that’s been recently made up. “Fuck, just ‘Oracle Award’? Will you come?” When I was a kid it was a type of teletext: Oracle and Ceefax, and they were reliable sources of information, so I’m very grateful to be considered in the same vein as that pixelated news source.
Also, glad to grace the stage where Boris Johnson has just made light of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, meaning that GQ can now stand for “Genocide Quips.”
I mentioned that only to make this next comment a bit lighter, because if any of you know a little bit about history and fashion will know that Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis. And the Nazis did have flaws, but they did look fucking fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality.
Genocide quips are OK. No, it’s OK. [Points at Boris Johnson] It’s already been sanctioned, it’s all cool. The fellow who does our trains says it’s cool.
They literally all do go to school together: Ed Milliband, no fucking difference. Wicked. Might as well vote for one class of really, really rich people. Oh, Rob! Rob, you’re getting paid enough money to take it seriously? Oh fuck. I’m so sorry!
I am actually grateful to get any award, particularly because...I used to just get awards for shagging people and that, from The Sun. And I was extremely grateful for them. As I am for this. Whether it be for the lower hip activity or the more cerebral activity of writing, I’m very grateful to get this thing.
[...]
It’s my job to make jokes about fings. So Hugo Boss, like, it’s fair enough. Like, he might not’ve known. “WE’RE SELLING A LOT OF THESE FUCKING ... THEY’RE FLYING OFF THE SHELVES! We had a lot of clients in the 30s and 40s, I can’t remember all of them.” Did you make a lot of elasticated crotches, Hugo? [Does Nazi goose step] Ring any bells?!
Justin Heazlewood (The Bedroom Philosopher): 'Painter John Brack has asked 40 Melbournians to stand pefectly still during busy peak hour', response to 'Collins St, 5pm' - 2015
August 2015, Wheeler Centre, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Justin Heazlewood (The Bedroom Philosopher): 'University: discuss', HERDSA Conference - 2015
6 July 2015, Melbourne Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia
Justin Heazlewood (aka The Bedroom Philosopher) is the author of Funemployed (Affirm, 2014), a magnificent book on the struggle to make a living in the arts. He delivered this to the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia national conference.
Hey thanks. Thanks for having me here this morning. It's sort of taken me back to my uni days. Already I've heard the word 'disseminate', and 'module' this morning and I am having a small anxiety attack as we speak and I will have to have an extension of some kind.
Just on life.
How many uni students does it take to change a light bulb?
When’s it due in?
Three uni students walk into a bar ...
Discuss.
And the last ticket on the laughs train [toot toot] to Comedysville ...
Knock Knock
Who’s there
Your HECS debt ...
Great. If you found that funny, we’re going to be great friends. If you didn’t find that so funny, you may have to leave immediately.
I haven’t seen this many academics in the one room ... since my last gig, actually. I started a band in Canberra, sort of matching educational policy to the songs of AC/DC, I dunno if you guys heard of us, Acca-dacca-demia? We were sort of well known for a while.
We had some hits: ‘It’s a long way to the office if you want to re-enrol’
You Took Me All Night Long (Ode to my media ethics essay)
Information Superhighway to Hell
So I’m originally from Tasmania but I did university in Canberra. And there’s a saying, you can take the man out of Tasmania, and then it’s just ‘Tasia’.
I grew up in Burnie, sort of a small town, and when I got to Canberra, you know, whne you come from Tasmania, Canberra’s sort of like New York with roundabouts.
And I remember my first day , I did Professional Writing and I think I had Journalism as my first lecture. Just this pretty surly lecturer, just kind of screaming at us about theimportance of deadlines, 'if you hand your assignment in five minutes late, doesn't matter, instant fail! No excuses, we tend to get a lot of dead of dead grandmothers round exam time.' That was her exact quote on the first day of university. So I'm just sitting there, with this image of these nans, just sort of piled up, cardigans and glasses askew, this unncessary slaughter.
If you look at journalistic grammar, and the safety of grandparents, there is a connection there because if you take the sentence 'Let's eat nan,' for example, and you put the comma in the correct place, the sentence is, "Let's eat, nan'. But if you ignore that comma it just becomes 'Let's eat nan. [pauses] Oh no, I've eaten my grandma'
Bad gramma is bad for gramma.
H'yeh. It's an illness.
So as far as the actual degree went. The core creative writing subject was great.It made me write, that was pretty much why I was there I think. We were told how to pursue work as a freelance writer – but looking back in retrospect , having tried to make a career out of this, I find it bemusing that in three years nobody told how to write an invoice or to fill out a tax statement, or that you're really running your own small business.
But they certainly found time for subjects like Culture, Identity and Post coloniality. Oh please, can I sign up to that one.
In media studies we watched Road Runner for its narrative structure. You know they say it's best not to over analyse things. So given my epic 9 cotnact hours a week, I basically assignedmyself my own side degree. Cutting my teeth on a spachelor of arts in the school of soft knocks.
I joined the theatre society where I starred in Psycho Beach Party where I was told I’d have to pash another boy on stage. I was like, 'yeah alright ... now it's starting to feel like uni'.
I wrote for the uni magazine Curio, mostly so I could scam free CDs and do an interview with Powderfinger that I still need to type up. Is that too late?
I started my own band, The Harmonica Lewsinskis. Yeah, people had heard of us but never seen us.
So between the shy Asian students and sports science hoons blaring Shania Twain I sort of had room to swing my freelance sword and develop my sense of innovation, arguably the most important attribute to an artistic career. Even if I couldn’t write an invoice. I guess that okay.
And I graduated, and I guess I found that BA sort of stood for bar attendant, and I got a job as a bar attendant. As far as how I became an artist, I sort of had to make it up as I went along. And a lot of what I learned, I put into my book Funemployed: Life as an artist in Australia, which I'll probably be flogging at the end of this talk.
So perhaps we'll go to the next slide if I may.
I know how much you like Venn diagrams.
At their best our universities are the finishing schools for our soul, shaping skill sets and ideologies and fostering the kind of intelligence you want leaked all over this wide brown country of ours.
I should have thought about my metaphors.
At their worst universities are expensive daycare centres for trainee alcoholics , with resepct – one big snooze button for adulthood.
As a student I sometimes felt I was too naïve to learn, while my lecturers were too jaded to teach.
In the words of captain Picard, however, there is a way to “engage.”
They say the average Gen Z student will have fifteen jobs in their lifetime. Perhaps course outlines and the way we package university degrees should take this into account. And I'd just like to propose the patented Justin Heazlewood 'Variety pack' (shows Kellogs pack) approach to education. So maybe Corn flakes could be Law. Coco Pops could be Arts. Sustain could be Business ... 'you gotta sustain yourself in life. Justin, you know, you gotta be able to afford a house', Special K, that'd probably be medicine. Maybe women's medicine?
Just go on to the next graphic here, how an artist spends their time.
I've become a professional artist. A lot of thinking, a lot of worrying, not a lot of maths. Some bitching, we are living in a very hyper competitive world, networking, not working, it's all there.
Students have to face a complex and uncertain future – yes, uncertain whether they’ll end up primary or high school teachers.
It is a complex world though, no doubt. Complex in the way that in World War I & II, there were like literal minefields for people to wade through. Today, students are faced with like metaphorical minefields - oh man! - take the situation of thirty philosophy graduates all going for the same advertising job. Oh what a minefield. Or the irony of being a qualified engineer from Sudan, with a career driving one.
Despite the desperate pleas of my family and Centrelink to simmer down and 'find a nice office job for the love of God Justin' - I’ve established a career as a writer slash comedian slash wrists. 14 years and counting ... my credit card debt.
Last year I released my book Funemployed, it was my own personal PHD crash course self-help tell-all. You’re not alone, was the takehome message – the arts are a satellite industry and we’re all but orbiting the same sun.
If I knew at uni what I know now, I’d be one of those creepy mature age students answering every question. No one likes them. Uni for me was about time richness, it was aboutexperimentation. Having the space to fail. Sometimes not knowing what you’re doing, is the best way to learn.
Thank you for having me. I'd like to leave you now with a video called 'I Don't Know What I'm Doing With My Life'. It's about not knowing what I'm doing with my life.
Video from 11:12
You can hire Justin for conferences, debates, MC roles through Speaking Out agency.
Justin Heazlewood's depressingly uplifting arts bible, Funemployed features the thoughts on working in the arts from many of Australia's creative luminaries. You can buy it here.
George Carlin: 'I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium', Mark Twain award acceptance - 2011
5 November 2005, Beacon Theatre, New York City, New York, USA
I’m a modern man, a man for the millennium. Digital and smoke free. A diversified multi-cultural, post-modern deconstruction that is anatomically and ecologically incorrect. I’ve been up linked and downloaded, I’ve been inputted and outsourced, I know the upside of downsizing, I know the downside of upgrading. I’m a high-tech low-life. A cutting edge, state-of-the-art bi-coastal multi-tasker and I can give you a gigabyte in a nanosecond!
I’m new wave, but I’m old school and my inner child is outward bound. I’m a hot-wired, heat seeking, warm-hearted cool customer, voice activated and bio-degradable. I interface with my database, my database is in cyberspace, so I’m interactive, I’m hyperactive and from time to time I’m radioactive.
Behind the eight ball, ahead of the curve, ridin the wave, dodgin the bullet and pushin the envelope. I’m on-point, on-task, on-message and off drugs. I’ve got no need for coke and speed. I've got no urge to binge and purge. I’m in-the-moment, on-the-edge, over-the-top and under-the-radar. A high-concept, low-profile, medium-range ballistic missionary. A street-wise smart bomb. A top-gun bottom feeder. I wear power ties, I tell power lies, I take power naps and run victory laps. I’m a totally ongoing big-foot, slam-dunk, rainmaker with a pro-active outreach. A raging workaholic. A working rageaholic. Out of rehab and in denial!
I’ve got a personal trainer, a personal shopper, a personal assistant and a personal agenda. You can’t shut me up. You can’t dumb me down because I’m tireless and I’m wireless, I’m an alpha male on beta-blockers.
I’m a non-believer and an over-achiever, laid-back but fashion-forward. Up-front, down-home, low-rent, high-maintenance. Super-sized, long-lasting, high-definition, fast-acting, oven-ready and built-to-last! I’m a hands-on, foot-loose, knee-jerk head case pretty maturely post-traumatic and I’ve got a love-child that sends me hate mail.
But, I’m feeling, I’m caring, I’m healing, I’m sharing-- a supportive, bonding, nurturing primary care-giver. My output is down, but my income is up. I took a short position on the long bond and my revenue stream has its own cash-flow. I read junk mail, I eat junk food, I buy junk bonds and I watch trash sports! I’m gender specific, capital intensive, user-friendly and lactose intolerant.
I like rough sex. I like tough love. I use the “F” word in my emails and the software on my hard-drive is hardcore--no soft porn.
I bought a microwave at a mini-mall; I bought a mini-van at a mega-store. I eat fast-food in the slow lane. I’m toll-free, bite-sized, ready-to-wear and I come in all sizes. A fully-equipped, factory-authorized, hospital-tested, clinically-proven, scientifically- formulated medical miracle. I’ve been pre-wash, pre-cooked, pre-heated, pre-screened, pre-approved, pre-packaged, post-dated, freeze-dried, double-wrapped, vacuum-packed and, I have an unlimited broadband capacity.
I’m a rude dude, but I’m the real deal. Lean and mean! Cocked, locked and ready-to-rock. Rough, tough and hard to bluff. I take it slow, I go with the flow, I ride with the tide. I’ve got glide in my stride. Drivin and movin, sailin and spinin, jiving and groovin, wailin and winnin. I don’t snooze, so I don’t lose. I keep the pedal to the metal and the rubber on the road. I party hearty and lunch time is crunch time. I’m hangin in, there ain’t no doubt and I’m hangin tough, over and out!
Source: www.pbs.org/mark-twain-prize/
Ben Pobjie: 'Shock is a huge and fundamental part of what makes comedy work', In Defence of Offence, Wheeler Centre - 2011
24 March 2011, Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, Australia
Speech was adpated into article for Meanjin. Text below is article rather than transcript.
What are we allowed to laugh at? This may seem like an odd question – we’re “allowed” to laugh at anything we want to, surely? In this country nobody’s going to arrest us for laughing at something. We’re free to indulge our own personal tastes.
But…there is a but. Nobody’s going to arrest you, but that doesn’t mean there are no consequences for laughing at the wrong thing. Laugh at a major car crash, and you’re going to attract, at the very least, some disapproving looks. Laugh at the wrong joke at the wrong time, or in the wrong company, and ostracisation awaits. In truth, we all find ourselves on guard against our own senses of humour lest we inadvertently laugh at something that’s racist, sexist, homophobic, or seen on Two and a Half Men. What we are allowed to laugh at is always relative to the situation – the rules are different at a suburban barbecue than at a Green Party fundraiser, or at a late-night stand-up show than your grandmother’s birthday party – but no matter where you are, there are going to be some unwritten rules about what you should or should not be finding funny if you want to fit in.
Of course, for those of us who are attempting to make a living by making others laugh, the stakes are higher. If laughing at the wrong thing can result in a social faux pas, trying to convince people to laugh at the wrong thing might mean risking your job and seeing your family starve. As somebody who, in the second week of my stint as a radio presenter, received a phone call from a listener which began with the rather blunt question, “are you the guys who think rape is funny?” this was brought home to me with a certain clarity. Fortunately it was only community radio, and the only real consequence of the affair was to give me a bit more spare time in the evenings, but it did demonstrate just how dangerous a business it can be, taking the thoughts in your head that you think are funny, and transmitting them to a wider world that may not only find them unfunny, but sickeningly offensive.
For the record, the answer to the listener’s question was, no, I don’t find rape funny. But yes, our show had just broadcast a joke which featured the word “rape” in it. Some people would find that reason enough to ban someone from the airwaves, and indeed some people did. But there are two issues here: whether jokes about a certain subject ought not be made, and whether jokes about a certain subject indicate that the joker thinks the subject itself is funny.
Let’s start with that most dangerous of comedic grounds – the rape joke, or perhaps more accurately, the joke about rape. Jokes about rape, incidentally, are neither new, nor all that uncommon in popular culture – in fact in many cases they pass by with barely a raised eyebrow: prison rape, for example, is practically a time-tested family comedy staple. So too is the old convention so beloved of British comedies of a certain era: that of the man “chasing” the object of his desire – often in a very literal sense – with the aim of claiming his unwilling quarry, should he manage to be quick enough on his feet. In those scenarios, rape was not so much a crime as a sort of sport: if the woman wants to reject a fellow’s advances, let her get her skates on, and good luck to her if she can get away. The supposed inherent unwillingness of women to have sex, and the dogged determination of men to overcome their resistance, is one of the oldest comedic concepts in the book.
Beyond such ancient tropes as these – which probably are not even recognised as “rape jokes” by many – references to rape in comedy are abundant. From Monty Python, to Family Guy, to Arrested Development, The Office, to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, comedy has been wrought out of this horrific crime. And undoubtedly there are many who think that it shouldn’t have been. But do those people actually believe that the writers and performers of these jokes “think rape is funny”? That they would witness a rape, and laugh? Or chuckle their way through a rape trial?
The question is important, because it actually goes to the very heart of why comedy exists. Whenever a controversy flares up about comedy that is seen to have gone “too far”, there is a cry that is taken up by the morally outraged: “So you think X is funny, do you?” (for “X”, substitute rape/paedophilia/domestic violence/genocide/sick kids/train timetables) And the implication behind this cry is clear: that when we make jokes, we are making them about things that are inherently funny. That is, that to create comedy, what you do is look around you, see what’s funny, and then point that fact out to the world.
And on the face of it, that seems perfectly reasonable: isn’t that what comedians do? Find the “lighter side”? Obvious, isn’t it? If you make a joke about something, it’s because that something is funny.
Except…it’s not actually true, is it? Comedy’s not actually about showing us what’s funny: it’s about making things funny. And that’s what should be obvious. Look through the history of comedy and it’s littered with jokes, comic scenes, and entire films and TV shows based on the most deadly serious of topics. Comedies about murder, about war, about Nazis, about organised crime. Should we assume that the creators of Dad’s Army thought World War 2 was hilarious? Or the creators of MASH, about Korea? What about the classic Ealing film The Ladykillers? Was it made by men who thought criminal gangs murdering old ladies was giggleworthy?
I suspect the answer to all of these questions is no. The reason these topics were chosen for comedy was not because they are, or were, funny in real life, but rather because the art of comedy is finding a way to create humour out of situations, not depicting life as it is.
This is not just about the grim and potentially offensive subjects. Barely any comedic situations are funny in and of themselves. There is, in fact, nothing particularly funny about running a hotel. Or an office. Or being a psychiatrist. To be perfectly honest, and from personal experience, there’s not even anything particularly funny about the life of a stand-up comedian. Practically any comedy you care to name could have been a drama, or even a tragedy, with the same plot, played differently.
In fact, if we were only to make jokes about things that were funny in real life, what would be the point of comedy in the first place? If comedians were, in fact, to be restricted to that which makes us laugh already, why have comedians? The popular phrase is “it’s funny because it’s true”, but the more accurate cliché is “it’s the way that you tell ‘em”. Anyone can tell a story about something funny that happened to them today: we watch comedies because they tell us stories that are funnier than what happened to us today.
But even so, one might say, why be offensive? There’s plenty of serious, real-life subjects to make light of, without delving into the sort of grim, dangerous territory that sparks angry talkback and furious editorials. Is there really a need to offend, to make comedy out of the very darkest corners of life?
Well, that’s a vexed question. In a literal sense, of course there isn’t. In the world of comedy – in fact, in the world of entertainment and art in general – there isn’t a need for anything in particular. The world won’t end if offensive comedy disappears from it; comedy itself will carry on without offensiveness; we could stick with nice, polite, kindhearted comedy designed not to upset anyone, and everything would, it seems likely, be fine. Nobody would be upset, people would still have a few chuckles, life would go on. So why be offensive?
There are a few reasons. First of all, it can be said, upfront: some people just think the subjects are funny, in and of themselves. Yes, there are people who think rape is funny. Yes, there are genuinely racist and misogynist and homophobic jokes. To argue that so-called offensive comedy can be a good thing isn’t the same as claiming there is no “bad” offensive comedy. There surely is, and it should rightfully be censured. But apart from what one might call the imperative to err on the side of free speech, it’s very important – if sometimes difficult – to distinguish between those who make racist, misogynist, homophobic or otherwise offensive jokes, and those who make jokes about these subjects for reasons other than promoting racism, misogyny, homophobia, et al.
One of these other reasons – and to some this may not sound like much of a defence, but here we go – is shock. The simple fact is that shock is a huge and fundamental part of what makes comedy work – not “shock” in the sense of moral outrage or hysteria, but shock simply in the sense of surprise, of the unexpected. While not wanting to lay down any blanket rules as to what comedy is, at the very least a big slab of it works via that jolt to the brain that comes from an unexpected punchline, an abrupt sight gag, a conversation suddenly taking a surprise twist. Humour works, in large part, through shock – not to our delicate sensibilities, but to our neurons. And the bigger the shock, the bigger the laugh. The sharper the left-turn, the more surprising the punchline, the more out-of-the-blue the pratfall, the funnier we’ll find it. Therefore, in searching for a bigger laugh, the comedian will frequently go for the most “shocking” conclusion to the gag. And so extreme references will find their way into jokes, not out of a desire to offend, and often not even because the sensitive subject is what the joke is about, but simply in an attempt to provoke the greatest spontaneous explosion of laughter. And so, in seeking to make a joke about, say, the Prime Minister, one searches for the most extreme juxtaposition possible, out of nothing more than a wish to be funny. And thus was how we arrived at the aforementioned “do you think rape is funny” call to the radio station.
Now as I said, to many, this reason for being offensive is unlikely to represent a convincing defence. “I only said it because I wanted to shock people” may not absolve the comedian from blame in the court of public opinion – in fact it could inflame matters. But it is to be hoped that when a little insight is given into the construction and function of comedy, more thoughtful observers will at the very least concede that an attempt to shock is not necessarily an attempt to offend, and that even something that offends someone grievously may not have been intended to. Many comedians are happy to be accused of being offensive: few are as happy with being seen as being deliberately hurtful, although both of these are likely to be an occupational hazard. Is it worth facing any such accusations for the sake of a bigger laugh? Each can decide for him or herself, but surely if we’re going to have comedians, we can hardly expect them not to look for every opportunity to be as funny as they possibly can. Isn’t every artist expected as a matter of course to use all tools at their disposal to be the best artist they can be?
But there is another reason why “offensive” jokes may find their way into public, which might be called the more “noble” reason. This involves the use of comedy as release, challenge, and catharsis. It can be useful for us to deal with difficult issues by finding ways to laugh at them. It can demystify them, break down taboos, and challenge us to think in different ways. Often, once we laugh at a subject, we are better able to talk about it. Frightening things like disease and death become less frightening because they have been laughed at. And just as importantly, frightening people become less frightening too. It’s why dictators hate being ridiculed so much: when you’re made ridiculous, it’s a lot harder to scare anyone. The perpetrators of violence in our own society loom less large if they’re figures of fun. Furthermore, jokes can challenge our own preconceptions, and force us to reconsider just what we think about an issue.
In this sense, comedy can be used as a weapon against oppression, but this will necessitate that it deal with sensitive issues. If you want to ridicule a dictator, you have to make jokes about dictators. If you want to ridicule racism, you have to make jokes about racists. And if you want to ridicule rapists, you have to make jokes – deep breath – about rape.
Are these jokes “necessary”? Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a purpose. And that doesn’t mean the comedians making these jokes are taking an immoral position, or in some way making a statement that the real-life consequences of these issues are themselves “funny”.
However, no matter the intentions, the purpose, or even whether or not the comedian is on the side of the “angels” on a given issue, there will be plenty whose protest against a joke is on the grounds that, there are things that just should not be joked about, full stop.
So, given that the comedian’s job is to perform the base-metal-to-gold trick of making the serious business of life funny, are there any aspects of life that we just shouldn’t even try to make funny? Are there subjects that are simply too serious, too sensitive, too likely to upset and offend, to even mention in a comedic context? Certainly there are few, if any, subjects that haven’t, at some point, been the subject of comedy, but does that make it right? Is it possible to determine the morality of comedy simply by what it’s about, rather than what it contains?
I’ve been asked before, “Is there any subject you would never make a joke about?” and it’s a difficult one to answer. What constitutes a “subject” in this context? If you ask me whether I’d be willing to make a joke about paedophilia, I’d be forced to say yes, I would, and I have. If you ask me whether I’d be willing to make a joke about the little girl who was abducted by a paedophile yesterday, I’d say no. People are going to be offended by both of these jokes, but only one of them will involve the factors of specificity and timeliness that can turn an “offensive” joke into a “cruel” one. And significantly, only one of them has even the slightest chance of being funny. Even allowing for the extreme subjectivity of humour and the impossibility of determining in an absolute sense what is or isn’t funny, there are some jokes that, made at the wrong time, have no chance of succeeding with any but the most bizarre of sense of humour.
But leaving out the specific tragedies that defy humour entirely, I can’t say there is a subject which I would leave completely off-limits. Why should there be? It’s broadly accepted that other art forms should be able to tackle the most difficult of topics – the depraved side of human nature is a constant theme of the “serious drama”, and though the squeamish might avoid such depictions, few argue that a dramatist commits a sin just by addressing it. Why should comedy be any different? It’s just as valid an artform as drama, and can be just as powerful, if not more so, when done well. Comedy, like the other arts, is a means of exploring the universe we find ourselves in, and there’s no reason it should either hold itself to different standards than the other arts, or deny itself the possibility of exploring the full scope of human activity.
It’s also important to recognise that avoiding all possibility of offence is near-impossible. How can anyone be sure that a joke they make won’t upset someone in the audience? The potential for offence in jokes about racism and sexism is obvious, but you could make a joke about crashing your car, not knowing that a member of the audience had lost a family member in a car crash last month. You could make a joke about church not knowing that an audience member had been molested by a priest. You could make a joke about dogs and cats not knowing someone’s beloved pet had died that morning. If we rule out any subject that could conceivably upset someone, we rule out pretty much everything. Which illustrates a crucial point: “that offended me” is not the same thing as “that is offensive”. The former is a subjective statement that cannot be argued with. The second is an objective judgment that will always be damnably difficult to get consensus on.
That doesn’t mean comedians shouldn’t be careful in how they frame their material, of course. You’ve always got to consider the purpose of your joke, the audience, and who your target is; although sometimes, it’s wise to remember, a joke may not have a target at all. Just as a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, sometimes a joke is just a joke.
That’s the crux of the matter: comedians may have many aims: to provoke thought, to stir up anger, to raise important issues, or even to infuriate people. But the vast majority of them want, above all else, to make people laugh as hard and as long as possible. It may be an unfortunate part of the job that once you’ve made a joke, it’s out there, and you can’t control how people are going to take it. But the great comedy figures will risk that, will not be put off mentioning something just because someone might be offended.
In the end, everyone has a perfect right to take offence at anything, and I’ll defend that right, but nobody has a God-given right to go through life without being offended. Which means that if you want to stop me making the jokes I want to make, you better have a more substantial reason than “that’s offensive”. Otherwise, with the greatest respect, my answer will simply be, “So what?”