Bill Hicks's Principles of Comedy

http://giantrobotlasers.com/post/176847959/via

by ivankirigin • 17 years ago

57 16 17 years ago

I particularly like #10 - "Play to the top of the room." This forces your audience into a race for the top, rather than forcing you as a comedian (business person, lover, whatever) into a race for the bottom (a.k.a 'Nutty Professor 2').

# 1 - "If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered." makes a heck of a mantra for life. If you try to be somebody else, at best you'll only ever come second.

apotheon• 17 years ago

You managed to pick out my two favorite list items.

patio11• 17 years ago

#1 works well for when people try to copy your business, too.

People warned me this would happen if I kept blogging about my business, and it turns out they were right. I think I have two dopplegangers now. Turns out that if you're concentrating on beating your own previous best performance beating the performance of knockoffs of your own previous best performance isn't all that hard.

bitwize2• 17 years ago

On the other hand, there's the Dennis Miller ratio.

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

Here's Bill Hicks being "funny"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdKpR9qNtg

The guy was a pure, pure, foul and vile juveline. "Fuck" "turd" "cunt" "toilet". That's his humor.

aerique• 17 years ago

No, he wasn't just that. Your comment says more about you than about Bill Hicks.

Bill Hicks has been quoted by more than one famous comedian as an example and inspiration. Among his repertoire was toilet humour, yes, but he also was a razor-sharp critic of society, beliefs, values. He wasn't just a comedian, he also tried to make people think.

bitwize2• 17 years ago

Do me a favor.

Grab a piece of paper. Draw four large squares on it in such a way that they form a bigger square.

Write "Clean" and "Dirty" alongside the squares on one axis and "Funny" and "Not funny" alongside the squares on the other axis.

Now, fill in the squares with the names of comedians who meet the criteria: clean and funny, clean and not funny, dirty and funny, dirty and not funny. I'm sure you can think of more than one for each square.

After this exercise is completed, consider that comedians make their money -- and like to be judged as comedians -- based on only one of these axes. I leave it as an exercise for the reader which axis.

drenei• 17 years ago

You've backed up your comment with one 2 minute long video - that is a response to a heckler?

Hicks performed for over 10 years - and covered a lot of ground during that time. If you see his performances as juvenile or foul, you've missed a lot of the brilliance, and humour that I have found in him.

For those curious about him though, here's a lazy link to youtube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&search...

mynameishere2• 17 years ago

First link's first joke,

"By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself".

Okay, that's a non-joke that you'd expect from a 13 year old. But he's setting the context, and maybe the best foot was not forward, so let's keep listening...

Okay, he keeps at that theme for awhile, repeating himself, and then uses the phrase "Satan's little helper" which I'm pretty sure he got off the simpsons, which he presumably was familiar with.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22satan%27s+little+helper%22...

(I could be wrong, as the vid isn't dated.) He then repeats himself a few more times and then says, "There's no joke coming" which I suspect is true. He then repeats himself a few more times adding the word "fuck" which is a word that stopped being daring on the stage right around Tennessee Williams' mid-career.

He then reiterates the past theme, as well as correctly stating again that there is no joke involved.

But then he gets to the first joke, about how the marketing people in the audience are probably interpreting his anti-marketing bit as in fact being pro-marketing. Okay, not funny, but at least it's a joke. He then performs several variations on that theme. End of bit.

.......

It doesn't do much good to critique comedy, but the point is: He's repetitive, he has an anti-establishment shtick that I find trite and unconvincing, his jokes are punctuated with gratutious vulgarities which are as informationally valuable as "hmm", "uh", "umm", "whu?", etc., and I sit there watching...and not laughing...ever. Which is the final test. It is possible to do blue comedy right, you know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H94jAkaTqQ

katamole• 17 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6yCinSlZk

Great interview for those who haven't seen it.

edw519• 17 years ago

10. Play to the top of the intelligence of the room. There aren’t any bad crowds, just wrong choices.

This is true for everything. I am constantly amazed at how many of my peers bitch about their customers and users while never doing anything to help them aspire to be what they can be.

jamesbritt2• 17 years ago

"I love my cracker roots."

Yes!

asdlfj2sd33• 17 years ago

I LOVE Bill Hicks, but I'm flagging this because it is absolutely not HN.

Bill Hicks's Principles of Comedy

Related Stories