Men of Comedy: Guest Blogger Graham Chittenden

GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT

I get jealous of successful people. It’s hard to avoid. As a comedian, I have a lot of time to hate people. I spend between one and two hours per week on stage, zero hours working out, and about forty hours weekly checking other performer’s Twitter accounts and Facebook pages for shows that I “should have been asked to do”, and opportunities for which I feel I would have been “better suited.” It’s a level of resentment that doesn’t exist in other jobs. Runners don’t stop during a race and just say, “Well, look at that guy, obviously his longer legs are going to carry him faster.” I’ve been trying to keep this in mind lately when I get in the mood to hate the industry.

This also applies to television. I still dislike a lot of reality television shows. The breakthrough: I no longer hate them on behalf of other people. I used to get upset and proclaim, “this is not entertainment.” As it turns out, entertainment is anything that entertains you. This has helped me enjoy phenomenons like Jersey Shore. Things can be entertaining without being clever. Nobody seems to mind this fact as it applies to the monkeys at the zoo.  Who cares if I want to watch two apes throw their poop at each other while the little one in the corner fondles himself? Or who cares if I want to go to the zoo?

Perhaps money complicates the issue. I'd be as upset to find out that the masturbating monkey at the zoo made ten times what I made last year as I was when I found out Snooki makes thirty grand per episode. But still, to whom else would you give the money? Give the people what they want, and pay the people who are giving it to them.




If you think your stuff is brilliant and nobody is into it, you’re in front of the wrong people. If it keeps happening, you might be ahead of your time (or behind it.) A hundred years ago people would line up to get into a movie theatre to see grainy footage of Egypt. Now that I can circle the globe on Google Street View, the allure of the motion picture newsreel is dead. Doesn’t it then make sense that the general public has seen enough self-proclaimed intellectuals make smarmy comments about their last trip to the mall?

Don’t forget the exception: If you are very good at anything, people will enjoy it. Good sitcoms have become retroactive hits through DVD sales, BBC’s Planet Earth is essentially just newsreel footage, and Louis CK is just another guy in his forties telling jokes about his kids, but at the same time he’s not just another one of them.

What have we learned here? Don’t stop working just to complain. Work harder and find your audience. Comedy is subjective, except for poop-throwing. Throwing poop is timeless.


Graham Chittenden