Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy

By Michael P. Jeffries

Comedy is a brutal business. When comedians define success, they don't talk about money—they talk about not quitting. They work in a business where even big names work for free, and the inequalities of race, class, and gender create real barriers. But they also work in a business where people still believe that hard work and talent lead to the big time. How do people working in comedy sustain these contradictions and keep laughing?

In Behind the Laughs, Michael P. Jeffries brings readers into the world of comedy to reveal its dark corners and share its buoyant lifeblood. He draws on conversations with comedians, as well as club owners, bookers, and managers, to show the extraordinary social connections professional humor demands. Not only do comedians have to read their audience night after night, but they must also create lasting bonds across the profession to get gigs in the first place. Comedy is not a meritocracy, and its rewards are not often fame and fortune. Only performers who know the rules of their community are able to make it a career.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Release date: Aug 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781503602977

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Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

© 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jeffries, Michael P., author.

Title: Behind the laughs : community and inequality in comedy / Michael P. Jeffries.

Other titles: Culture and economic life.

Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Series: Culture and economic life | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017008538 (print) | LCCN 2017010957 (ebook) | ISBN 9780804798082 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602908 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602977 (e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Comedians—United States—Social conditions. | Comedy—Social aspects—United States. | Group identity—United States. | Racism—United States. | Sexism—United States.

Classification: LCC PN2272 .J44 2017 (print) | LCC PN2272 (ebook) | DDC 792.7/60973—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008538

Cover photo: Ghost light on an empty stage. Jon Ellwood, via Wikimedia Commons.

Cover designer: Rob Ehle

Typeset by Motto Publishing Services in 10/14 Minion Pro

BEHIND THE LAUGHS

Community and Inequality in Comedy

MICHAEL P. JEFFRIES

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

CULTURE AND ECONOMIC LIFE

EDITORS

Frederick Wherry

Jennifer C. Lena

Greta Hsu

EDITORIAL BOARD

Gabriel Abend

Michel Anteby

Nina Bandelj

Shyon Baumann

Katherine Chen

Nigel Dodd

Amir Goldberg

David Grazian

Wendy Griswold

Brayden King

Charles Kirschbaum

Omar Lizardo

Bill Maurer

Elizabeth Pontikes

Gabriel Rossman

Lyn Spillman

Klaus Weber

Christine Williams

Viviana Zelizer

For Keira and Alex

Contents

Acknowledgments

Lights

1. Chemistry of a Comedian

2. From Funny to Family

3. Succeeding at Not Failing

4. Celebrity in the Making

5. Privilege, Patriarchy, and Performance

Curtains

Appendix

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the people in comedy who took the time to think with me and talk with me about your lives and your work. Special thanks to those of you who trusted me and helped me find my way deeper into the worlds you inhabit. To those of you who let me sleep on couches and stay an extra night during research trips. To a small group of readers who read unfinished work and gave me notes and encouragement: Jennifer Lena, Ben Reiter, and Charles Finch.

Thank you, Yoon Sun Lee, for supporting me in every facet of my job at Wellesley College. Thank you to Andrew Shennan and the provost’s office at Wellesley for funding much of this work.

Thank you, Kate Wahl and Jenny Gavacs, for your support and dedication from the time this book was a proposal to the time it was printed.

I can write only because I am loved. Thank you, Sarah, Keira, Alex, Mom, Dad, David, Julia, and all the rest of my friends and family. I love you.

Lights

We pay our performers, just not with money.

—Matt Besser¹

THE GREEN ROOM at Zanies Comedy Club in Chicago is hardly a room at all. There are a few wooden couches arranged around a coffee table on the landing of the second floor, where Zanies management has their offices. The old-but-clean carpet, minifridge, and small, wall-mounted television provide an informal, relaxed atmosphere for performers as they wait their turn on the stage downstairs. Tonight, Zanies is hosting an amateur showcase, and the mood in the green room intensifies when manager and booker Bert Haas emerges from his office. Wearing glasses and a black Zanies polo shirt neatly tucked into his khakis, Haas is not here to have his time wasted. It is his job to prep the half-dozen aspiring comics for the stage and what lies beyond. Bert wants the best for his club and for the comedy business, and he readies them with a frank, tightly woven lecture on professional comedy.

Bert’s pep talk is a rarity in the comedy business, as he gives aspiring comedians an education that bookers and club managers are under no obligation to provide. He tells the comics that comedy is a legitimate career and that Chicago is one of its capital cities, but he also tells them that they’re not going to get rich in the local comedy scene. If you want to become a national star, it is better to think of Chicago as a training ground where you can get repetitions onstage and prepare yourself for the scrutiny you will receive from industry executives in New York and Los Angeles. Bert describes respect for the club, its representatives, and the comedians as mutually reinforcing phenomena, and he prides himself on creating a professional atmosphere. He models this respect by thanking performers for traveling and for the effort they have already put in, and he assures them that their hard work and professionalism will pay off. He tells the comics exactly how to follow up with him about their performance and advises them on how to handle success and failure. In the beginning, he says, you probably won’t be paid much and you don’t care because you love what you’re doing. But once you develop a skill set, and once there’s money to be made from your skill set, you have every right to be paid for it. And not only should you ask for money, you should demand money. The idea is simple: hone your skills and expect fair compensation.

But Baratunde Thurston, a former editor at The Onion, author of the uproarious How to Be Black (2012), and former head of digital content at The Daily Show, explains that this is impossible.

Stand-up as an industry is based on mistreating talent. It wouldn’t work any other way. You don’t get paid. That’s how it works. You generate economic activity for club owners. They have two-drink minimums and ticket prices, and if you have any economic understanding or you worked in the service industry, you know liquor is the biggest scam. Buy a bottle for fifteen dollars, you sell a drink for ten. You’re diluting it with water and ice and soda. What is that, like a 500 percent markup? It’s ridiculous. So exploitation is baked in for anyone in stand-up who pursues it.

Comedy is a brutal business. Performers are scarcely paid and often treated poorly. A run of good luck and financial rewards is no guarantee that the good times will last. Comedy workers stumble down dimly lit career paths without any assurances that they’re moving in the right direction. Along the way, they may be chided by their friends and parents, heckled by audience members, and occasionally stabbed in the back by colleagues looking to get ahead. It’s astonishing that so many keep going in these conditions. The people I spoke with gave a few explanations for their perseverance, including the obvious—that it feels good to make people laugh—and that the call of the stage is irresistible for those born to entertain.

This book focuses on an additional reason for comedians’ persistence: the feeling of belonging to a community. In Michele Lamont’s The Dignity of Working Men (2002), she asks how working-class men understand their labor and their lives in a context in which meritocracy and economic justice are myths. She finds that morality is generally at the center of these workers’ worlds. They find their self-worth in their ability to discipline themselves and conduct responsible yet caring lives to ensure order for themselves and others. These moral standards function as an alternative to economic definitions of success and offer them a way to maintain dignity and to make sense of their lives in a land where the American dream is ever more out of reach.² In other words, the significance of labor for these workers lies not in its economic value but in its use as the raw material for building honorable masculinity with clear ideas about right and wrong and about safety and danger.

Although the moral value placed on truth in comedy is an important piece of comedy workers’ collective identity, it does not fully explain the meaning of comedic labor for those who choose it. Comedy workers do not think their work is valuable because it makes them good people. They cherish their work because the labor of comedy produces community, and commitment to this community is socially rewarding. Comedy workers care for each other and are forced to build tight social bonds to navigate the labor market. In addition, the fun of hanging out with people who make you laugh makes work feel like play and becomes a psychological wage. Unlike dramatic acting (perhaps comedy’s closest relative), comedy performance is fundamentally driven by pleasure. To perform, follow, and consume comedy is to seek out laughter—to actively pursue an emotional and chemical reaction that makes us feel good. There is an instinctive force that can prevent comedy workers from fully grasping whatever suffering and discomfort might result from their peculiar labor context, because they are too busy having fun. Despite the conditions of their employment and the uncertainty of their careers, many comedy workers insist they have the best job in the world, and it is not hard to understand why. This pleasurable community-building does not protect comedy workers from exploitation, but it is a form of resistance that enables comedy workers’ survival and professional development.

There is, however, a dark side to the emphasis on community: it enables survival while solidifying the barriers that prevent more just distribution of rewards. Most comedy workers are exploited, and my interviews suggest that they all rely on comedy communities for support. But relationships with coworkers and experiences in the business differ dramatically along lines of race, gender, and class. In order to learn comedy and stay afloat financially during lulls in one’s career, it certainly helps to attend college, have extra money for training, and come from a family that has resources to fall back on. The necessity of having these advantages restricts entry into the comedy race before it begins. As competitors and coworkers move forward, sexism and racism shape performance expectations, experiences, and friendship groups. People from nondominant groups must figure out how to present themselves and work in a labor market dominated by white men, who set standards and dole out rewards.

These problems challenge some of the conventional wisdom about comedy, which is, in many respects, a populist form of social critique in which performers are celebrated for being outsiders. Given that women and people of color are viewed as outsiders and others in American public life and the culture industries, it is no surprise that so many historically marginalized groups draw such power and pride from comedy. This attraction and claim to comedy, however, does not prevent exploitation, stereotyping, and discrimination. Even as marginalized people claim their own spaces and speak in their own voices, they are subject to the institutional and cultural constraints of a straight-white-male-dominated industry.

The testimony in Behind the Laughs is important because it forces us to think about how the current system could be improved for both comedy creators and consumers. When the social and economic impediments to entry and survival for nondominant groups are so high, talented people leave comedy or never even try to make a career out of it. When the entertainment industry sticks with tired old models of production and marketing and unimaginative decision-making by executives without incentives to take risks, audiences suffer. New communications technologies and challenges to old rules about genre and format offer a promising alternative future for comedy. But to get where we are going, we must know where we stand.

The Comedy Business

Sociologist Richard Peterson dedicated his career to explaining how the symbolic elements of culture [the arts, for example] are shaped by the systems in which they are created, distributed, evaluated, taught, and preserved.³ To understand comedy and the people who make it, you have to examine the systems that teach, produce, and sell it. A close look at the comedy business reveals deep fault lines and contradictions. As in so many other cultural industries, working conditions for the average comedy creator, whether she is a stand-up, improv and sketch performer, or screenwriter, are grim.

All stand-ups would be wise to study the history of the business to get a sense of how quickly things can change, and Betsy Borns’s 1987 book, Comic Lives, remains one of the best resources on the subject. The great stand-up comedy boom of the 1980s was a revelation. In 1963, the New York Improv was the only showcase comedy club in the United States, and in 1980, there were roughly ten paying comedy clubs in the country. Less than a decade later, though, that number had swelled to somewhere near three hundred. In accounting for the explosion in both performers and revenue, Borns explains the cycle that led to the boom: Even if the money at showcase clubs cannot be held completely responsible for the tremendous growth in the stand-up industry, it can be held responsible for some increase in the number of comics—which created a greater supply of ‘product’ and led to the appearance of the road circuit—without which that growth would have been impossible.⁴

The birth of the road circuit was one major factor, and television was another. Before the advent of cable television in the 1970s, few televised comedy sets lasted longer than five minutes. But cable spurred a need for low-cost, no-hassle entertainment, and channels like Home Box Office (HBO) began televising stand-ups’ hour-long concert specials to meet their programming needs. This dramatically increased the popularity of stand-up as a genre as well as exposure for the performers themselves, who suddenly had national followings they could capitalize on through touring. According to Borns, the increasing consumer demand and profitability led to more mediocre comics, less risk taking, and less artistic engagement from club owners and managers, who did not always care about the product as long as the venues were full and the alcohol kept flowing.⁵

After the comedy boom of the 1980s ran its course and many of the fly-by-night comedy clubs closed up shop, a set of conventions emerged within the club scene. The Comedy Bible (2001), by Judy Carter, sets unambiguous financial expectations for those who are new to the game. Stand-up clubs make money primarily from food and drink sales. Ticket prices may vary slightly depending on a given headliner’s status, but each club usually has ballpark figures corresponding to the status of the performers. In the early 2000s, an opening act could expect no more than $350 per week, a middler (between the opener and the headliner) might make up to $750 in a week, and the headliner could make anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000 for a week’s worth of work (much more if she is a national celebrity). Performers at college shows and weeklong cruise-ship entertainers are paid on a scale similar to that of headliners, and corporate gigs can fall anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000.⁶

But the business of stand-up changes quickly, varies depending on the city a performer is based in, and is rarely the sole determinant of a performer’s financial status. Live comedy is once again in the midst of an incredible boom, generating $300 million annually,⁷ but counting on comedy as one’s livelihood means you have to hustle. A 2012 New York Times article profiled six working comics in New York. The most traditional stand-up of the bunch, Kurt Metzger, reported an annual salary of $60,000. He described his typical sources of income as follows:

$75—Weekend spot at the Greenwich Village club the Comedy Cellar, one of the premier clubs in the country right now;

$80—Weekend spot at the Broadway Comedy Club in Times Square;

$300—Weekday headliner at the Times Square club Carolines on Broadway; and

$3,740—Voice work for Ugly Americans, an animated television series on Comedy Central.⁸

Metzger also notes that his weekly schedule varies greatly; he might perform every day during a busy week, while a slow week might yield only one or two gigs. Metzger’s work in film and television is irreplaceable. It provides a steady paycheck and makes him more legitimate in the eyes of audiences and club bookers. The clubs on Metzger’s list are among the most reputable in the city, and the pay rates appear to be in sync with Carter’s estimates from the early 2000s. But because there are so many accomplished comics in New York, Metzger is more likely to be booked for individual spots than for weekly or monthly engagements. This means he is unlikely to approach the weekly estimates Carter provides in her book. For instance, headlining at Carolines is a major accomplishment for any working comic, and Metzger reports that a weekday headlining spot pays $300, an amount proportionate to Carter’s estimate of between $1,000 and $5,000 per week for a noncelebrity headliner. But comics like Metzger are unlikely to headline for five or seven straight days, and he would be lucky to clear $1,000 in a week from Carolines, let alone $5,000.

To complicate matters, performers will work for free or next to nothing if the venue is prestigious enough. In 2012, Metzger was at the heart of a major controversy in comedy circles. During a stand-up set at Manhattan’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB), one of three or four preeminent improv theaters in the country, Metzger publicly criticized UCB for not paying performers. Of course, Metzger knew he would not be paid for his set, because UCB has never paid stand-ups, but he got prickly when he found out how much money the theater was taking in at the door. His criticism ignited a firestorm, in part because he aired his grievances so publicly, first at UCB and later during a set he performed at The Stand, also in Manhattan. Metzger’s frustration was shared by many of his peers and is largely reflective of the different outlooks and expectations held by stand-ups and improv and sketch performers. Stand-ups are used to getting paid, although the pay is usually quite poor, and they can perform in all kinds of spaces, from plush theaters to dive bars. Stand-up comedy is relatively cheap and easy to produce, as there are generally no costumes, props, or special audio-visual effects.

But UCB defines itself as an experimental-comedy theater that produces high-quality shows with all the equipment and staff comedy creators might need; most of their shows are improv and sketch comedy. Improv and sketch players require actual theater space, even if it is just a black-box theater, and a production staff, so there are fewer venues that can accommodate their needs. UCB provides these resources, and it is not unique in this regard, as famous theaters like The Second City (Chicago) and Groundlings (Los Angeles) have a similar belief system and sense of purpose. Groundlings managing director Heather de Michele made this explicit during our interview. Comedy clubs are one thing, she said, but when it comes to what we do, we do theater. We produce shows. Getting a spot at a reputable, professional theater is a major coup, and improv and sketch players are more likely to view payment as a bonus rather than as a requirement. Both stand-ups and improv players jump at the chance to perform at UCB because it has established itself as a comedy hub and an impressive credential. As UCB cofounder Matt Besser explained to the New York Times, We pay our performers, just not with money.⁹

Besser replied directly to Metzger’s critique in a Huffington Post piece, explaining that UCB not only functions differently as a performance space but also adheres to a business model different from those at traditional comedy clubs. Besser downplays the role of profit in UCB’s mission. UCB’s founders, including Amy Poehler, have all made plenty of money and have multiple revenue streams, so it is difficult to discern exactly how much of their net worth is fueled by UCB. The theater was founded in 1999, and, according to Besser, the revenue generated from ticket and drink sales at UCB’s first theater in Chelsea was reinvested in the venue and staff. The real money didn’t start flowing in until they started turning a larger profit (thanks to their burgeoning improv training school).¹⁰ The founders undoubtedly enjoyed the profits, but they also continued to strengthen the franchise, opening new venues in Manhattan’s East Village and in Los Angeles. Customers have certainly benefited from UCB’s refusal to pay performers as well, as UCB has kept its ticket prices relatively low in comparison with the other landmark comedy venues in New York. Due to all these factors, comedy creators continue to perform at UCB because of the theater’s reputation, even though they can earn more elsewhere.

Metzger and Besser eventually discussed the incident, and neither party holds a personal grudge. Ultimately, UCB stuck to its guns, and performers remain unpaid. But the theater added other forms of compensation, including giving out drink tickets and listing stand-ups as official UCB performers, which increases the comedians’ exposure and access to shows.¹¹ Metzger has said that his chief concern is that other venues will follow the UCB model, which would intensify the already painful exploitation stand-ups live with.¹²

This controversy highlights two key facets of the comedy business. First, it illustrates that class privilege is a major advantage for those who aspire to be professional comedy workers. If a comic plans to stay in the business for a long time, she will have to survive financial dry spells. Comics who have access to extra cash even when they’re not working have a head start over those who do not. The business model of prestigious improv theaters such as UCB exacerbates inequality. UCB classes usually meet for three hours once a week for eight weeks. Fees are $400–$475 per class plus the cost of the UCB training manual, which students are required to purchase. Demand is high—twenty new classes are offered each week and the website reports that sessions frequently sell out only minutes after they are made available.¹³ Given that performers are expected to pay for several classes and essentially work for free during the early stages of their careers, it is no surprise that many who travel this route come from privileged backgrounds. The same holds true for aspiring comedy writers, who wait through long droughts in the hopes of selling a screenplay or latching on to a new show during pilot season.

Second, Metzger’s critique and his general attitude toward the improv scene hint at the cultural and institutional divide between stand-ups and improv and sketch players. Jennifer Lena explains that genre boundaries are not dictated by natural differences between styles. Instead, genres emerge as a result of the expectations and conventions that bind industry, performers, and fans together.¹⁴ As New York performer Ashley Brooke Roberts told me, In stand-up you get a whole range of high-school dropouts to Harvard graduates, whereas improv, it’s much more of a liberal, college-educated, upper-middle-class world. No one in stand-up ever asks me where I went to college. A simplified version of the rift from the stereotypical stand-up perspective goes something like this: stand-up is racially diverse, working- and middle-class comedy, performed by people (mostly men) who are courageous, cynical, sometimes self-destructive, and committed to hard work and real comedy. Their old-school idols are George Carlin and Richard Pryor, and their training comes in the form of mistreatment by club managers, bookers, and tough crowds full of drunks and hecklers. Improv, sketch, and alt(alternative)-scene comedy is nerd comedy for white people (again, mostly men), a frivolous, postcollege distraction for rich kids from the suburbs who will eventually get bored with comedy and move on to law school. Its schools are training centers like UCB, teeming with self-aware and self-satisfied wimps who grew up watching YouTube clips of Mr. Show and The State.¹⁵

This dichotomous perception of the comedy world certainly exists, and it is grounded in powerful socioeconomic forces that reproduce patriarchy, white privilege, and class privilege. The people I spoke with are well aware of these stereotypes, but despite the philosophical and labor divide between stand-ups and improv and sketch performers, the UCB controversy illustrates how these two comedy career tracks overlap, especially among those who are more financially stable. That is, if you do not have a college degree, you are unlikely to enroll in expensive sketch, improv, and screenwriting classes and more likely to try stand-up first. But if