This is me doing a guest spot on Sunday Night Live
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfWW01bTgGU
0m03s The waitress was doing a last call as I was coming up
0m32s The music stopped a little too abruptly
0m40s I should’ve gone into the letter falling in more. Any time I improvise an opening observation, I need to improvise three observations in case someone misses hearing the first one or it’s not funny.
0m50s There’s talking but I decided to ignore it because it’s last call
1m50s I finally got the whole crowd listening and into it
1m56s I learned two nights earlier that if I take a pause after “I signed up” I’ll get an extra laugh
2m04s The mic kicked out for a second and I didn’t fully make it clear
2m32s That new line didn’t hit at all, never doing it again
3m35s The first part of the family material didn’t go over as well as I would’ve liked, I shouldn’t have gone into more family material since it wasn’t working that well
4m42s It should be “no have doctorate” instead of “not have”
5m11s Not sure why this joke completely missed
5m59s The delivery needs improvement
6m23s I didn’t pause for long enough and the “you must love sweaters” line missed completely for the first time in a while
8m09s This line doesn’t warrant an “oh god” reaction
8m26s This line does
8m48s At least I ended on a laugh
Overall: I sucked. I had one good laugh with the jdate joke but everything else was atrocious. I watched most of the show and this was a great crowd for everyone but me. I should’ve done more crowd work and worked my way into my jokes instead of just doing material and material. I should’ve also addressed the last call coming around as half the room wasn’t fully listening to me my first minute and a half on stage. Reviewing the tape it’s clear I’m not talking to the audience, but instead I’m talking at them. I think seeing how good of a crowd it was made me forget to be conversational because I was thinking “my material is gonna kill”.
You smile, laugh, and pull your head back after your own jokes too much. It is very odd
Hey Rick, thanks for the feedback.
When I started I also didn’t want to laugh or smile at my own jokes but I’ve found that with most jokes the smile is needed so that the audience “gets” the joke quicker and laughs harder…
For example, when I deliver the punch line of “Mom, I remember being on the plane,” I’ve found that if I don’t smile within half a second after saying it, I get way fewer laughs on the line.
Cheers,
Ben
So if you don’t smile then the audience doesn’t get the joke as much?
Wouldn’t that mean the joke needs to be stronger?
Does zach galifianakis or patton oswalt use that tactic (or any popular comic)?