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The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

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Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#21

Post by hguant »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #7

I have not seen a funny comic in such a long time. Maybe it my age, but I thought I had decent taste in comedy. I never thought Leno was funny. Seinfield was tedious. It just seems like the last two decades have been pitiful? I heard a convict being interviewed a few years ago. The interviewer asked him what he does all day. He said, "I try to figure out why Saturday Night Live is not funny, and ways to make it funny…

Most cities have comedy clubs; don't go to those. Go to the bars that do weekly standup, those are the places the comedy show folks go to try out new material, or where newer folks try to break into the scene. You get exposed to a lot of things that would never be allowed on any sort of broadcast medium, and are often uproariously funny.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#22

Post by nkingsy »

peakaboo wrote: post #15

Guess I'm old because there is nothing funny about what she does. Just awkward and embarrassing.

You saw her special? Everything else I’ve seen of hers was cringey, but baby cobra was solid work. If you don’t like it you likely don’t like most “good” stand up comedy these days. Awkward and embarrassing is a pretty good description of the art form.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#25

Post by dvt »

wonder_er wrote: post #18

I believe the humor and novelty and interestingness of this standup routine is related to the _density_ of information conveyance. I read this paper a while back, it was so good I wanted to make it more sharable: https://josh.works/driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-hu... The title is: Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestin…

> It argues that a common thread among many different domains (as listed in the title) is how much information can be compressed into the information stream, like the bit-rate. Higher bitrate, more interesting information.

Piet Mondrian, Philip Glass, Andy Kaufman would provide trivial counter-arguments to the idea that high-density = "better" (more interesting, funnier, etc.).

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#26

Post by dgb23 »

dvt wrote: post #25
wonder_er wrote: post #18

I believe the humor and novelty and interestingness of this standup routine is related to the _density_ of information conveyance. I read this paper a while back, it was so good I wanted to make it more sharable: https://josh.works/driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-hu... The title is: Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestin…

> It argues that a common thread among many different domains (as listed in the title) is how much information can be compressed into the information stream, like the bit-rate. Higher bitrate, more interesting information. Piet Mondrian, Philip Glass, Andy Kaufman would provide trivial counter-arguments to the idea that high-density = "better" (more interesting, funnier, etc.).

I only know of Andy Kaufman from your examples.

Wasn’t some of his work very much reliant on what he didn’t say directly? An argument one could make would be that the information density is still high in terms of what is perceived or experienced. That would still be a kind of compression but it involves the context and audience to a very high degree. I think he sometimes made his performances so intense, that it would be unbearable not to engage with them.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#27

Post by alanbernstein »

dvt wrote: post #25
wonder_er wrote: post #18

I believe the humor and novelty and interestingness of this standup routine is related to the _density_ of information conveyance. I read this paper a while back, it was so good I wanted to make it more sharable: https://josh.works/driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-hu... The title is: Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestin…

> It argues that a common thread among many different domains (as listed in the title) is how much information can be compressed into the information stream, like the bit-rate. Higher bitrate, more interesting information. Piet Mondrian, Philip Glass, Andy Kaufman would provide trivial counter-arguments to the idea that high-density = "better" (more interesting, funnier, etc.).

You might argue that work like Mondrian's implies additional information, in the form of implied commentary on centuries of art history (arguably necessary for his work to be considered interesting or "good"). You might then argue that this makes up for the lower explicit information density.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#28

Post by tptacek »

This is impressive. But, those poor frogs.

Snark aside, it also doesn't say that much; Ali Wong's biggest laugh comes in large part from the fact that all her bits are arranged to build up to it. Ok!

If you're interested in this stuff, a good listen is Mike Birbiglia's "Working It Out" podcast, which is a little bit like Marc Maron's "WTF", but with an emphasis on workshopping bits in progress. Part of what makes it interested in this context is that Birbiglia is working out his next special (something that apparently takes years, which I guess shouldn't surprise me), and so talks a lot about the themes he's building jokes around and what he's trying to say overall.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#29

Post by Yoric »

wonder_er wrote: post #18

I believe the humor and novelty and interestingness of this standup routine is related to the _density_ of information conveyance. I read this paper a while back, it was so good I wanted to make it more sharable: https://josh.works/driven-by-compression-progress-novelty-hu... The title is: Driven by Compression Progress: A Simple Principle Explains Essential Aspects of Subjective Beauty, Novelty, Surprise, Interestin…

As a practitioner of improv comedy (including a little clowncraft), I'd argue that you can produce laughs from essentially doing nothing, repeatedly.

So, I'm not really convinced. Maybe that principle can explain some cases of beauty, novelty, .... jokes. Definitely not all.

Re: The Structure of a Stand-Up Comedy (2018)

#30

Post by glxxyz »

Saying that some/all other standups "just [tell] 100 individual jokes" is a straw man. She demonstrates textbook Stand-Up Comedy:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_comedy : "Bits (linked jokes) and chunks (linked bits) are an arrangement of interlinked thematic units from within the set or routine. [...] Stand-ups structure jokes, bits, and chunks to end on climactic laughter. [...] A callback is a reference to a previous thing that was experienced by the audience during that set, designed to create an inside joke."

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