https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=svd7XPX_Gnk
When we were editing the special, I edited it with Mark and Shifty, who are absolutely brilliant, and we sat in there and we edited, it took us one day for each minute of the special. So for one 60 seconds, it took us a day of editing, and we did that until it was done. Now, nobody’s edited a comedy special like this, because usually the editor is so far removed from the comic, or it’s already with another production company, or it’s already at one of these streaming things. But for me, in order for it to be as good, and as nuanced, and as beautiful as it is, in order for me to take you into the room, we needed to edit it that way. Like, we were watching horror movies to see how they built tension and then released it, because that’s comedy. It’s tension and release. So if you have slow pushes while you’re building the tension, and then removal when it’s released, or like you zoom out when it’s released, it’s like, okay, let’s use that, let’s apply that. How can we make you feel the tension that you won’t feel because you’re watching it through a screen? How can we bring you into the room? So that’s something you do. So that’s interesting. So did you focus in while you were building the tension and then snap out? Sometimes. Yeah, well, why did you decide? That’s very interesting, because that actually corresponds to different hemispheric function. So the left hemisphere zooms in, and the right hemisphere zooms out, and the right hemisphere is responsible for insight and the left hemisphere for detailed processing. And so you seem to have intuited something like that in that editing process. That’s very cool. So you zoom in, and then when the punchline hits, you can snap to a broader perspective. We’ll often hit a punchline on a zoom in, but sometimes a punchline is a misdirection. And by zooming in, immediately we would be telegraphing it. So what we would do is leave it in, let’s say a cowboy shot or something like this, so we could catch you off guard. Because catching you off guard is very important, right? But maybe on a big laugh, we let the room breathe. We’re able to show the audience laughing as well. I think there’s a communal aspect. When you’re at a comedy club, you see other people laughing, and that’s beautiful. It’s cathartic. You’re like, okay, I’m free. I can let loose here. So we want to show shots where other people are laughing so you feel comfortable. You could get caught up in that momentum. So it’s like approaching the editing process with the same passion, love, and creativity that we approach writing the jokes and creating the show. Yeah, well, that definitely, definitely one of the things that stand-up comedians are doing is providing a communal theater for free play. And it’s definitely free because you can’t compel someone to laugh. You can’t even compel yourself to laugh, not genuinely. It has to be, it has to come from the source, right? It either strikes you as funny before you think, or it’s not funny at all. And there is something I think extremely stress relieving to be among a lot of other people who are laughing at the same thing, because it means you’re all being, you’re all playing spontaneously together without fear. And that’s almost like the definition of no stress. In today’s world, we sometimes lose sight of the Judeo-Christian beliefs that built our society. This is why it is so important to study scripture and develop a dedicated prayer life. There’s no better way to do that than with Hallow. Hallow is the number one Christian prayer app in the US and the number one Catholic app in the world. It’s filled with studies, meditations, and reflections, including the number one Christian podcast, The Bible in a Year. 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Now, the advantage of that is, and one of the things that I learned is I was going through standup and I like to make fun of everybody because I’m curious about everybody and I learn these things about people that I think are really funny, so when I organize them into jokes, I also like to talk about it. It doesn’t only have to be like me. I’m not very self-centered with my comedy, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but I like talking about topics, other people, cultures, et cetera. These things are all interesting to me. But what I realized is we were going through this very like woke time where a white dude, a straight white dude like me making fun of somebody from Ethiopia might be crazy, right? But what I realized is if that Ethiopian person was there and I’m talking to them and doing the joke to them and they’re laughing, nobody can be offended. Russell Peters does that very well. Brilliantly. He’s great at it, man, because he’s an equal opportunity offender and his audiences are, and it’s so interesting to watch his audiences because you can almost feel the tension in the different ethnic groups in the audience waiting for their chance to be made fun of. They want it. Well, yeah, it’s because I think at a deep level, they want to show that they can play along with the joke. Two things. They want to play along and they want to show they can, but they also like representation in a creative, clever way. So like, this is something I learned without realizing, but like I would do these jokes about random groups, right? The just knowledge that I picked up over the years. And then because the internet exists in these echo chambers, those jokes will go viral in those communities. Right, right. So the Bosnian community would hear about a joke I did about some Bosnians in St. Louis. There’s a big Bosnia community there, but it would go crazy viral, not only here, but in the Bosnian communities, but in like Bosnia. And the beauty of this is they felt represented not in a hacky way, they felt represented in a cool way. They didn’t know that people knew this about them. They thought it was just their community. And then they’re seeing it on a YouTube page with millions of views and the world is laughing at it as well, laughing at something they might be proud of and they’re cool with being represented in that way. When you do that, the community wants to share it. They want to be part of it. They feel like you care about them enough. It’s an invitation to the universal table in some sense. Right, it’s a place where everybody, and that’s what is so wonderful about standup comedy. It’s like a music concert, right? It’s the same sort of thing, is that people can go there and enjoy something spontaneously, communally and play together. And I’m really happy, by the way, about this insight about play. I think if you had to set the world up and you wanted to figure out what the best story you could possibly tell is, that would be an antidote to the depredations of power. It does seem to me that a story about play is the right one because there’s nothing more fun than that. What are we going to do this weekend? What are people around the world going to do this weekend? Exactly, they’re going to play with death. They’re going to play with the most terrifying thing in the world, right? The most offensive costumes, but also the idea of death is what spawned it. We need it. And I got to give Louis CK credit on this. Louis, he was talking about comedy and it’s like making offensive jokes has existed for centuries. It would have been weeded out if there wasn’t something that we needed, if there wasn’t some catharsis in it. The idea of Halloween, playing with death, is crazy if you really think about it, especially for earlier societies. The most terrifying thing in the world to just dabble with it and joke with it and scare people, we need it. We want that release. We want that play. Well, the alternative is to run in terror from it and hide. And all that does, the thing about that is all it does is make it worse. Yeah. And so I think, you know, here’s another way of thinking about it. So when I was training people who were agoraphobic to get back on elevators, let’s say, we basically did that by playing. And so the way it would work was, all right, I’m afraid of this elevator. I can’t get on this elevator. I’ll have a panic attack. My heart rate will go up to 150 beats per minute. I think I’m going to die. I’m going to make a fool of myself. It’s just, I’m going to want to go to the emergency room. It’s going to be humiliating and dangerous. It’s just a catastrophe. It’s death. I had a client who actually said when the elevator’s door is open, she said, that’s a tomb. And so she was afraid of dying in there. And so in a sense, what we would do is play because I would say, well, you can’t get on the elevator. She said, that’s right. And I said, well, you know, can you look at a picture of an elevator in a magazine? It’s like, well, I think I could do that. And so that’s on the edge of play, right? It’s like, well, it’s a bit challenging and it’s a bit threatening, but I could do it. And then maybe you have the person go out in the hallway and they can walk within 40 feet of the elevator. And so you find that line, it’s a line, right? Where the person is willing to walk up to that line and then one step farther. And that’s really, again, what you’re doing when you’re telling a joke. You’re finding that line and then you’re walking one step farther and you manifest that spirit of play. And it helps expose people to the things they don’t want to think about. In a safe environment, it exposes them in a safe way, because we all know that we’re playing. It’s just like, it’s honestly, it’s like flirting. You flirting with a girl or you flirting with a guy. Flirting is finding that line of what is polite and then being funny enough to go a little bit past it. And now everybody’s in that little naughty territory. It’s still safe because we’re playing. It’s not like you’re coming on too strong or like grabbing people or anything like that. You’re being naughty, you’re flirting. You’re like, yeah, what if we were married? Where would we go on vacation? And the girl’s like, what are you talking about? I just met you, what do you mean we’re married? And now we’re creating this hypothetical scenario where we’re both dancing the dance and it’s safe because it’s play, but we’re able to access- I think that’s also how women evaluate men while they’re dancing. Is like, well, can you play? Are you all hands? Are you too dead set on your instrumental goal or can you control yourself well enough to play? And it’s gotta be, to dance properly is to be in that flirtatious zone exactly. And that also indicates that you’re responding to the cues that the other person is putting out there in the most accurate possible way. Right now you’re gonna be pushing slightly because you wanna find out where the boundary is and that’s probably what makes it exciting. But if you’re just rampaging in past all the boundaries, then you’re just a dimwit. Yeah, exactly. That may be a dangerous one.