Wednesday, March 21, 2007

BURNING THE NEGATIVES

Recently a stand-up superstar, Richard Jeni, passed away after apparently committing suicide. I don’t know much about him besides the fact that he was about as successful and respected as a stand-up can be. I don’t know his medical history or details of his death. But people are citing him as another example of the “sad clown”, someone who brought laughter to millions while happiness somehow eluded him. It’s hardly unprecedented. Being a comedian can be hard on the soul.

Last Saturday about two hundred comedy hopefuls lined up in Montreal to audition for NBC’s “Last Comic Standing”, the “American Idol” of stand-up comics. At last Monday’s open mike I heard several comics sharing tales of unceremonious rejection. The experience was made worse by judges who were essentially there to play for the cameras, amping up their ruthlessness to maximize the drama ‘cause, you know, that’s good tv. I didn’t participate in the process and I must say, I don’t regret that decision one bit.

It was sad to hear some of the guys feeling really down after their day of judgment. But it’s the most natural thing in the world. Comedians are hit with negativity on a regular basis. There are lots of positive aspects as well, but we don’t absorb them in the same way. If good feedback is a bowl of scrumptious pudding that we enjoy as a pleasant treat, an unkind word can act as a single shard of glass in that same pudding. So tiny, and yet damaging enough that it’s the one part of dessert that we remember, and may leave scars long after the pudding is just a memory.

(My thanks to the writers of the prison-drama “Oz” for inspiring a frankly bizarre analogy).

Fact is, over the last year, I have found that all it takes is one guy with his arms crossed and his face indifferent, a guy I don’t know, someone whom I don’t even want to know. Just one of those people can trump the praises of a dozen comedy masters (and I’ve received support from several of the best acts in the country). Furthermore, if one of those arm-crossers actually says something to me, well, those encounters stay with me long after the laughter and applause has died away in my mind.

It shouldn’t be this way. Because those individuals shouldn’t matter, certainly not to the extent that they do in my head. Because there have been more people applauding what I do than I can count. Which is a real problem with so many comics. We don’t count the happy faces. We just notice the negative ones, so that at the end of the night, that’s all we’re remembering.

I’d never advise comics to strap on rose-colored goggles and forget about the bad shows outright, to never acknowledge when we hit a rough patch. We need to critique ourselves, to look for concrete reasons why a joke or a set didn’t work that night. But when we let some stranger’s judgment of a single point in time and space override the cumulative experience of years of shows, then we’re selling ourselves short. I’ve done over 1800 shows. I still have bad ones. But when you see it as 1/1800th of your career, it takes some of the edge off.

Lately I’ve been making a more concentrated effort to remember the positive faces in the crowd. The pregnant couple that lit up as I recounted my “Who” bits, the gentleman who approvingly confided, “I like smart comedy”, the people who have stopped me in the street to compliment my CTV special, the ones who bought my cd, all the folks who have shaken my hands and thanked me after a show. As globs of pudding, they are much less distinct in my mind than the bits of glass, but remembering enough of them makes those hard bits a little easier to swallow.

It’s possible that I’m just getting too soft on myself. Maybe the suffering and self-loathing is what makes a good comic great. Maybe that’s what made Richard Jeni great. But when that suffering is trumping all that’s good in your life, well, greatness doesn’t sound so great. Goodness, by comparison, seems really good.

I know many of those people dejected by Saturday’s auditions have had crowds laughing and cheering in the past. I’ve seen them do it firsthand (as recently as last Monday). Only a fraction of people in the universe can do that. And those comics shouldn’t doubt that they’ll do it again. The proof is in the pudding. Eat it up.

Just put it through a strainer first.