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PART ONE
Warm-upāIs There Any Hope for You?![]()
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
āWhen adults ask kids, āWhat do you want to be when you grow up?ā theyāre just looking for clues themselves.ā
āPAULA POUNDSTONE
There are a lot of ways to make a living from comedy. You can perform it, write it, draw it, or manage it. From the list below, check which ones youāre interested in or think you know youāre good at.
Performing Comedy
Depending on the quality of your act, you can work at comedy clubs, hotels, concert venues, colleges, or corporate meetings, on cruise ships, at open mikes, or at your aunt Thelmaās eightieth birthday party.
Sketch TV shows such as Saturday Night Live and Mad TV scout improvisers from improv troupes such as Second City (in Chicago and Toronto) and the Groundlings (in Los Angeles), as well as improv festivals (Austin, Texas, Montreal, Canada). Improvisers are in demand for acting and TV commercials as well as for voice-over work, feature animation, and game shows.
Funny people who can add sizzle to ad copy are cast in high-paying TV commercials.
Comedy timing and technique are required in this field, which needs comics to add funny character voices to cartoons, TV commercials, and feature animation.
Most TV shows hire a comic to warm up the live studio audience before and during the taping of TV shows and infomercials.
Funny song parodies turned unknown āWeird Alā Yankovic into a famous and rich man. Radio stations buy prerecorded song parodies, impersonations, and other comedy bits produced by small production houses that specialize in creating this type of material.
As more talk shows fill the AM and FM airwaves, radio producers are turning to comics to keep their listeners laughing and listening.
Imagine doing your act for your grandmotherāthatās the kind of act you need to work cruise ships. If youāve got four different twenty-minute clean sets and donāt mind living with your audience for a few weeks, then this could be for you.
If you can make people laugh with clean material, then entertaining at corporate events might be just your thing.
Writing Comedy
Customized stand-up material Some stand-up comics who perform supplement their income by writing for other comics. And then there are those funny people who have never done stand-up themselves but who write it for others, such as funnyman Bruce Vilanch, who writes for Bette Midler and the Academy Awards show.
Comics are hired to staff sitcoms or develop sitcoms for stand-up comics who have development deals. Many of the most successful sitcoms are based on stand-up comedy acts. Stand-up comics Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld became billionaires when they turned their stand-up acts into one of the most successful sitcoms everāSeinfeld.
TV and film producers hire comics for the important job of punching up, or adding laughs to, a script.
Screenwriting and directing Comedy directors often start their careers with live performances. Betty Thomas started in an improv troupe and went on to direct features such as The Brady Bunch Movie. Tom Shadyac, director of Patch Adams, Liar, Liar, and The Nutty Professor, actually started out in my stand-up workshop. Two years later, he directed his first feature, Ace Ventura.
āFunnyā can also translate into books, magazine articles, and newspaper columns. George Carlin turned his unused stand-up material into the book Brain Droppings. Comedy director/screenwriter Nora Ephron (Youāve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle) wrote short funny magazine pieces that later became a popular book, Mixed Nuts. Dave Barry expresses his āfunnyā in a nationally syndicated column and in books.
Development and producing Funny ideas often translate into projects for commercial TV and film. Paul Reubensās character Pee-wee Herman started out as a character in an improv show at the Groundlings. It turned into an HBO special, two feature films, and an award-winning childrenās TV series.
All major studios actively look for funny people to write and punch up their TV and feature animation projects. Irene Mecchi began as a comedy writer, writing comedy material for Lily Tomlin. Now she works for Disney animation and was the screenwriter of The Lion King.
Because a good laugh can stop an Internet surfer at a Web site, companies such as Excite, Yahoo!, and AOL hire comics to write catchy copy.
Many CEOs and politicians turn to comedy writers to provide sound bites so that they get noticed, win over their audiences, and donāt get stuck with their foot in their mouth.
āI know what they say about meāthat Iām so stiff that racks buy their suits off me.ā
āAL GORE, 1998, WRITTEN BY MARK KATZ
Marketing Comedy
Funny ideas can turn into funny products, such as Pet Rocks, screen savers, or greeting cards. Skyler Thomas, who started writing jokes in my class, put his jokes on T-shirts. They became major sellers and he now runs a multimillion-dollar T-shirt business called Donāt Panic, with stores nationwide.
Who do you think writes those funny bits in ads that get your attention? Comedy writers.
āMost relationships donāt last as long as the L.A. Marathon.ā
āL.A. BILLBOARD
Many agents and managers started by putting shows together for themselves and ended up booking others.
Right now, of course, you donāt need to make a commitment to any specific comedy field. Actually, no matter which field of comedy you are interested in at the start of this book,...
