Transcript for:
Comedy Mastery Tips

have your hot breath water that's great hot breath that's cool that you have that nobody's branded like that that's great yeah branding you know yeah you bet so uh had you heard of the show before no I had not okay so when I saw it I was like oh cool this is great yeah is it's all comedy mastery um so I know we have a lot of like parallels I didn't know if it it enter your sphere yet well yeah it doesn't it hasn't yet but it's good that it's good to see it because you know it's I think synergy is so much more effective than comedian yeah you know what I'm sayin so Queens are always so insecure they're like I'm not telling anybody anything these are my secrets yeah you know so you still got to do the work yes I mean you know I've interviewed almost 200 comics and some have been more hesitant than others about like I don't even wait a sauce I'm like I mean they lit they still have to cook it like right right and you can give them the recipe but it's gonna turn out different because it's a different chef absolutely so it's I've never really gotten that aspect though I don't wanna give away too much and most people have been cool or I've coerce them into revealing it once they're like oh yeah they still have to live on stage for 20 years right exactly so let me give you your proper introduction here all right hot breath averse welcome back to the hot breath podcast this is your weekly guide to comedy mastery I am your host comedian Joel Byers and our guest today hot brethren and sistren this is the man with the plan when it comes to comedy all right this guy was a 25 year comedy veteran who was written from everyone from Jay Leno to Chris Rock to Bill Hicks up until he got custody of his oldest son he was on the road grinding a comedy 40-plus weeks a year he has now since become in my opinion the authority on comedy education and really creating platforms and resources for comedians to learn the tools they need to become successful comedians so he is the perfect guest to have on he just recently started his own podcast right they end up comedy clinic it's not launched yet okay we're just like you had recommended at the seminar your backlog like 10 14 episodes before you put it up okay perfect so definitely this is one you're gonna want to listen to multiple times and share with other comedians a lot of people out there are attempting to teach this craft but from my research he has the best platform I mean if you go on as YouTube he has more hits than anyone else if you go on his website he has more resources so if you're looking to learn about comedy this podcast is the tool for you and now our guest you now know is the tool for you so without further ado welcome it's a hot breath Jerry Corley everyone Jerry quarry thanks well I'm glad you did that research because I didn't know that I had more hits so oh yeah oh your YouTube page is killing it it's a lot of fun I mean it just started I started one time putting out one video and the video was 47 minutes long okay and it was basically it was called how to write there uh how to write fifteen jokes in 30 minutes and it was based on a headline Tiger Woods falls out of the world's top 20 and so and then I just basically showed the process of writing the jokes and so it took 40 no editing was just there and I didn't know much about YouTube just put it up and now it's God I don't know it's got like three hundred thousand or over three hundred thousand views how long ago was that that was seven years ago seven years ago was your first video no first video I put up yeah now if you if you even just search comedy like you're like the first hit that comes up that's cool anything about how to write a joke right how to stand on stage how to become a comedian the year the good good to know yeah is is there a rivalry within because there's some top I mean there's some like players and then in names we know like Greg Dean and Judy Carter is there is there a rivalry between I think there I for me no I don't feel a rivalry I don't think anybody's my competition and not to say I'm above anybody else I think it's I think you learn you don't become a doctor from just going to one sir mm you know and so I have books that line my bookshelves almost any book that was written about comedy yeah I have it on my bookshelf it's not like I focused on one dude and said he's the only one you know that would be ridiculous but it's like even Melbourne hell it's Erzberg comedy writing secrets is which the sort of the just the absolute foundation of what I started that was based on gene parrots comedy writing step by step okay so but it was more written as a sort of a journalist's point of view a more lay person's point of view if you get gene parrots book he kind of drills down and almost makes it tedious where you start getting you know sometimes there's too much work you know whereas Melvin in comedy writing secrets made it really kind of easy to get into it and so I found some sort of balance that worked more as a comedian right so what I saw that Melvin helots er was doing as a journalism professor teaching comedy writing at Ohio University and what gene parrot was doing as Bob Hope's head writer I was like malama comedian I'm taking this stuff taking it on the road trying in front of audiences then I would have some theories go out tried in front of an audience then write down all my notes okay so I sort of had worked used the road as my lab you know and it was just that's how and then I realized it was helping other students how good that felt to see them go up there make a change to a joke and it got a real crisp laugh and you go yeah I was like that's a good feeling so then Booker's started putting new guys on the road with me to help them get better and so I said this is a lot of fun and then when I was given that the custody by my oldest son and I was like in the road work just stopped like you know that pattern disrupt you here in a commercial you hear that Denton incident and it ended and and they build the pace and you have to get up and get the kids ready for school you got to get another breakfast get them and make sure their dress make sure they have enough mittens and then diarrhea that sort of record scratch sort of thing uh-huh well we hear that all the time in Camaros we hear that pattern disruption used all the time and so that was my career it was like things were moving forward my manager was calling saying hey we're booking a bigger bigger where you know next thing you know we're gonna start doing arenas things are really going well I've got these things lined up for you and then the judge says you have your son or pull custody yeah it was like diarrhea yeah but he was not doing well in school and he said to me I want to live with you mom stresses me out mm-hmm and so I talked to the mom mom was like you know I he said I said Keith wants to live with me she's like over my dead body I said it doesn't need to be that exciting and so she she resisted and I said well we'll go to court then and the judge made a pretty much instant decision just spoke to my son and then said we're done here and you even said you like cancelled like 20 weeks of work did ya we're just like we didn't work I had to cancel yeah oh my god I remember those phone calls and as I finished got through the whole list of people I was booked with I was like okay now what and I was I had a writer's form at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills it was just me and first and so you know like 30 guys would get together on Monday nights we'd eat dinner and then have some drinks and hang out and I said you know we got the cigar room over there that nobody uses what are we going there write some jokes and I got these weird looks and one guy said I've had the same act for 25 years you know it's like why you know why would you do that it's so much fun to write a new joke so it started we started the writer forum it was just me and three comics and then over a period by six months it was me and 27 of the comics they were in the room and they kept looking to me I was just doing it sort of a group collaboration thing but they were saying you fix jokes you know how to fix the jokes you seem to know what's missing how do you do that you're the joke doctor you know and they started every time I'd walk in they go hey the joke doctors here and that kind of how is how I got the name the joke doctor you know oh cool and you don't think the jokes will fixing fixing the jokes is how you create tags for like Bill Hicks and Chris Rotten right you're exactly Comedy Store just watching them and they're like hey have you thought of this right that way and also when I was doing my writing in the mornings doing my current events writing you know one of the best lessons I got was from Jean parrot never edit yourself in the first draft so one of the jokes would be deemed racist if I did it but if Chris Rock did it it wouldn't be and the joke would contained the n-word so I'll say the I'm gonna say it without saying the n-word because we know what happens when you say things right Shane Gillis right so we don't want to you know and if anybody really listened to the context of what he said in that podcast he wasn't saying it himself he said the people said let's put them there oh yeah but it was like forget it your words had once first Asian superhero now on Marvel C mulu who's gonna be the first Asian superhero I think it's awesome the guy's awesome as an actor an athlete he's got a great sense of humor but he the way he heard it he tweeted about it and tweeted at SNL and at NBC of course you've got Marvel this big film launching this movement of Millennials who love Marvel and then they're like well we have a choice I think the optics don't look good here because we're also hiring the first Asian yep not-ready-for-prime-time player which made me say really in 45 years who's the racist SNL right yeah yeah Jim Jefferies brought up a good point of he brought up a character I think I may have been Mike Myers that played it back in the day but it was just him like being exaggerating race racial I came here what race he was playing but he he pointed out like three examples of SNL characters who were blatantly racist but in this time and I'm sure you've seen and how long you've been doing comedy like you probably won't even pitch this Chris Rock joke anymore just to him because I would I would pitch it right to him but it would private like I did before I pulled the most yeah so the joke was this is how old the joke is this is mayor this is when you had the those two Ethiopian guys who were taken into custody and by the NYPD and one was sexually abused with a plunger I don't know you don't remember this but it was a big story in the 90s and so NYPD had this racism issue and I said basically Mayor Rudy Giuliani issued a memo to the NYPD telling them they need to be more polite so now when they pull you over they say step out of the car mr. n-word okay right and I I know I could never do that joke I hate that word I grew up in a you know in just this tremendous tremendously wonderful family musical theater parents we had everybody over and it was like that was like a famous character right it was character actor and it's like so I didn't really know there was an issue with different colors of skin till I was much older so it was like 10 or 11 but it's a kid growing up everybody was over at the house so so when I when I wrote that joke I said I could never do that joke but Chris Rock could do it because he's working on a piece right now dealing with this very subject and I was down at the Comedy Store and I pumped into him he didn't even know me I said hey man you don't know me but I wrote a joke today that would fit in perfectly with the segment you're doing on the NYPD he goes lay it on me and I told him and I said it's not my voice so hey you know yeah I laid it on amigos now I see why it's not your voice did you say the word yeah to him I said the said it goes and he did the joke in the main room it got an applause break and he says and he said you write more like that I'll I'll pay you for them I go [ __ ] that you're paying me for that one I saw the response and he took out 50 bucks and gave it to me Wow yeah and it was like that's how that's how it started just sort of just write stuff but I'd listen to Bill what Bill Hicks who approached me one time when I did a segment in my act and he asked me if he could have it he said because it would fit perfectly in a piece I'm doing and I said but I you know respect what you're doing I don't want to step on your toes and I go well that's of course that's not even the funny part you know I was a kid and he did it and got a big applause break on HBO and I was like oh crap yeah it was like gorgeous yeah right yeah exactly it's like there you will be oppressed through whatever it's like he did his whole religion ran and he's like well then forgive me it's like a famous it's exactly what my when we were traveling cross-country my dad you know my was met his mother for the first time and I was a little 12 year old Punk and she said Jerri you're gonna have hell to pay and I say what's he'll cost these days grandma hey give me 379 and an eternal flame and she smacked me mm-hmm and then my dad actually took her by the wrist and said you will never strike my kids mother and she goes how am I going to get you know except this Pat if you can't accept Jesus into your heart he says will you forgive me you've never understood this you forgive me and I did that as a piece and then that's when Bill Hicks approached me and I was like you know I didn't even know who he was at the time you know it was that long yeah I wasn't even he was just like a working cop he was coming up he was just coming up is his first HBO cousin really did that piece what was that like being at like The Comedy Store and being around like though these are like the 1% comedians you know yeah this um it was I was just starting so I didn't really I wasn't commiserating or hanging out with any of the guys but it was just these random I would bump into people and just randomly meet them and next thing you know I just started to sort of hand off jokes you know you became like you were almost like the the joke plug you could write jokes for people and you were starting to make money that way right and making a little money and I would and then when I'd see open my kurz I would just give them jokes you know and I'd listen to their bits and and and just write tags and Stoppers and my little notebook tear it off and say hey man that piece you do about the Hummer right maybe these would be good tags and they go wow that's really funny ago you could have it if you want it to go I can just have it sure you know jokes are a dime a dozen but even the the Jay Leno job came about you you got him on the phone somehow and you know just pitch him a joke in the moment yeah here I talk about it in depth because I did once and it got out there and I got a call because when I was fired I signed an NDA and so there's a lot of specifics I can't talk about there was politics involved and so I'm not you know it's like with with my movie that I wrote was like there are certain things I'm not allowed to say because you sign these things of course a you know anything could be looked at as you disparaging somebody in Tuesday's so you know it's so weird I mean part of me goes I can talk about yeah I got fired because I they were working on pushing me out because it was well I can't really talk about it because it was a it was sort of uh it was a personality thing in that somebody felt threatened because I was writing a lot of jokes because the guys who trained me gene parrot and Bob Mills Robert Mills was gene parrots contemporary and Robert Mills was an attorney in San Francisco and he basically responded to a in a writing lesson joke writing lesson from jean parrot thing correspondence course and then he said hey you're not sending me in more courses he said you're the first person that has gotten gone through all of them so he he brought him down to LA and got him a job writing at Dean Martin roasts and then he got a job writing for Bob Hope and he's the one that said he said I would write for Dean Martin from nine to five and then I'd write go home have dinner with my wife and write 100 Bob Hope jokes from 7:00 to 10:00 and that opened up my brain go wait a second you can do that you can write a hundred jokes in a day were in three hours so I wound up hiring them as mentors and you know coaches and they would just weekly push me and push me and push me and so when I started my website that's when some of these older writers contacted me by email and said please keep doing what you're doing cuz the kids coming in these days have no structure yes so that was that was why I was like oh okay so I'm on the right path yeah and you're speaking of mentors you also had like George Carlin became a mentor yeah what is rising this was like you know you go back and look at the stuff and it's like I go back and said wow the universe was just sending me all these gifts until I went back and just thought about all these things I go holy cow remember uh this lady who is uh she's kind of one of those spiritual psychic ladies and she said do you realize all the gifts that were being passed to you by the universe I go what do you mean by that you know and she sort of mapped them out for me I go holy [ __ ] she's right so I what happened I was doing my first corporate in New York City at four Chemical Bank and my dad's agent actually booked it he heard somebody wanted something he said hey you want to do this gig I said yes three thousand dollars so I said I'll go do it two years in a comedy right exactly right and you know cuz he knew I had an hour clean material and I go do this thing for this Bank and so I go out to New York and I get up the next morning and I'm heading I you know I get up after the gig and I'm going I go down to the little pad there where the cars come in to take me to the airport and I'm sitting there and you know waiting for my car and it's not showing up and there's no cell phones I couldn't just pick up the phone and call I couldn't call an uber and this guy goes hey you going to the airport and I turn around go on okay looks a lot of Courland man and so he says I said yeah he says you want to ride with me JFK I said if it's not an imposition he said sure you look like a nice guy I get in the car and he's as hi my name is George and I'm like gulp you know my name is Jerry Jerry Corley he goes you any relation to the character actor Pat Corley I said well that's my father and he goes well my agent said I should study him to become a better character actor and I said who's your agent he told me his age and I got this my dad's agent so we just started talking yeah and then he said what do you do I said I paint houses I couldn't tell Carlin I was a comedian oh you're getting amazing it what came out in the conversations yeah eventually because we're talking and I go I memorized your albums man and I started doing like tracks from his albums I'm like wonderful I know in western Walla Walla I was doing the stuff he's like how old were you I said eight years old because you listened to my albums when you were 8 years old he goes yes and what about the language I said my dad said there was my dad and mom both agreed that there's no bad word there's just inappropriate places to use certain words because they're literature people and you know musical theater people and Broadway people so in that literature there's you know profanity so if you looked at it as bad words then you would address him differently and we didn't use them much when we were kids I would just use them when I was reciting Carlin albums and I said and they said if you have any questions about the language ask us and so I asked a lot of questions as a kid and how did their relationship grow with George and what was he like he said any time he says look any time because when we got towards the I see the sign that said departures and I said this this is gonna end really soon and so I said you know what would be your best piece of advice I may never see you again he goes I hope not you know but he meant I hope so right I hope you won't I hope not you won't see me again well whatever right so he said I said what would be your best piece of advice he said there's a line cross it mm-hmm that sounds like a metaphor George give me something that's more concretely mean I don't want like is that do you mean touchdown or line crossing or what does he mean exactly he said he said you ever read the newspaper watch the news and call [ __ ] and I said all the time he said make that your comedy but make it funny here's a trick raised the bridge and that was that means raise your eyebrows when you're delivering something that you're angry about and it'll change it from you being angry and judging maybe this audiences ideals to this is absurd I don't understand it I'm confused interesting Jon Stewart uses it all the time or did it use it all the time in yeah on The Daily Show we'd go this is crazy why are they doing this I find I have a habit of doing this so it's just raise your eyebrows instead and perceive difference yeah watch Bill Maher struggles with doing that he tries to he's like it gets in a weird twitch so did you get did you see George again yeah the next like two months later I was in Vegas and he was playing at the celebrity room at at Bally's and I called the hotel there and I said George Carlin carlins room please and they put me through I left a voicemail figuring he's busy who I won't hear back I go out I come back to my room at 5:00 p.m. and there's a message it's George Carlin he says hey great to hear from you why don't you know come by see the show I've left some ticketed will call and then come back to have afterwards and police combined say hello so I have this I grew up in the theater that's what theater people say right and so I got the ticket and I afterwards and went back to the stage manager and said George said to come by and say hello he's and he said are you Jerry I said yep and so I went back there and we wound up talking for about two hours and I kept saying am i keeping him here you know I don't want to impose and he said we just talked he gave me a you know glass of wine we just sat and chatted and it was just a great time and then we talked about we started talking about comedy and you know some places I would you know question and have a counter proposal and he was like great he says um and he said and that's when he said to me I know with 98 percent odds that a joke is funny before I step onstage and I said how do you know that yes said because it contains all the elements necessary for a joke to be funny I said what are those elements he said you're gonna have to learn those on your own kid really and then later on after another glass of wine and a pain pill because that was George's drug of choice at the time he said I think the reason I said that was because instinctively I know what they are but I can't Birbal eyes them mm-hmm maybe you can do it and then come up with some ways so you can explain to explain it to the world and I said I took that as an order so of course if he says Oy that's what I start that's when I really got into studying why do we laugh yeah and you're almost like a historian like you take it like you take back your references to like Socrates and yeah you go all the way back to like the source code of laughter and you well I wanted as a kid as a five-year-old kid I always took apart my toys to figure out how they worked okay so I figured with comedy I wanted to do the same thing why am I doing this and when they at least feel like I'm empowered to work on the applied approach a joke with confidence right rather than what do I do let me just pray and hope it's gonna be funny so now I can write a joke and know with high odds that it's gonna be funny because and I'll even point out why well because it's got this it's got incongruity it's got surprised it's got this is plausible and I can put those pieces together and get up there with high confidence and deliver joke yeah cuz George Carlin actually had an office that he reported to as anyone else with a job would do and that that's I'm glad you brought up older riders encouraging you to take this approach of technique and all these different elements of comedy because a lot of especially now I mean I don't know if this is a newer thing or you've always noticed it but it seems like a lot of comedians are trying to just get by with like attitude and just being like being like yeah this is funny because I'm saying it cool but really there's gotta be a punchline exactly you know in fact we can go back and talk briefly about that so the Leno thing what happened was something happened in Leno called me because I sent a letter you know my dad said my dad sent a letter and so I sent a letter and then to the Tonight Show yet to the tonight because you were feeling well I felt their joke was stolen you know Oh verbatim it wasn't even it was an evergreen joke and it wasn't even it wasn't even a version of it it was verbatim and I know who did it and I know who was at the show that night and then 24 hours later it's on The Tonight Show verbatim and I don't okay that's that's not cool so I I told my dad about he goes write a letter I don't know am I gonna write a letter dad don't be write some letters it's stupid so so I wrote a letter right and and two months later I got a call from Jay and a hold though as I'm answering the phone I heard this voice I'm like what one of my friends does a really great Jay of course and then I realized it was him and I just said to him I said Jay I've got you on the phone my job is not to get off this phone until I have a job writing for you and then that's when you and he goes all right well you gotta I can't do your act I go well you did even Touche and then he said you gotta be up at the current events and then he said like this morning Oahu Hawaii lost power to the entire island what would you do on a joke like this now I'm sitting there going oh my god another gift because I was watching the news that morning and I see him now in his office watching CNN and the chyron says exactly what it said at 7:00 a.m. when I was writing Oh wah hoo hoo I lost power to the I entire island traffic lights were out court buildings were shut down at about a hundred thousand kids stayed home from school today and that's a threeway buildup all I have to do is remove the third mm-hmm and now I have to and now I have to disrupt the pattern and but still a you know so it's infrastructure infrastructure you know court buildings traffic lights and then show something else that's heightened in reality but still reelect losing electricity so I said and a vacationing Don King was seen with flat hair so and that's when Leno goes huh and I said that right on the phone in that moment because you just thought of that I go yeah I just thought of it of course I had been writing it earlier mm-hmm a lot of comics back then said well that was luck I said that was luck I said no well luck is opportunity meets preparedness and because I was writing every day because gene parrot said treat yourself like a professional now and that means right every day and set it up in your schedule right every single day and I read that Jerry Seinfeld was writing five hours a day so I said I'm gonna write five hours a day and so um I need to have the calendar with the red X's on every day he writes and don't break the chain make the change so I had that calendar up there I was doing all of that so yeah and that's what happened I mean so then he was like okay you got the job that's on the fun we're gonna he started me as a contributing writer so they sent release forms that that day I signed them sent them back and that night I wrote a hundred Zachary Taylor jokes cuz it was a big deal Zachary Taylor I think what 17th 18th President United States was being his body was being exhumed and they were trying to determine whether or not he was poisoned and so that was a big deal and so I wrote joke's on that and then faxed them over now what I loved about it was the facts they still had that thermal paper you know that slow oh yeah and I sent a hundred jokes on several pages so that they thought the fax machine was broken and they got my out of all the jokes I submitted they used one that day and it was the more mundane of all the jokes I wrote I thought that's not even the good that's like a transition joke why would you use that but it taught me a lesson on The Tonight Show they look for middle of the road because you're trying to respond to middle America not the coasts got so the joke was something like Zachary Taylor and 19th president United States the body was being exhumed CNN apologized for not give being able to give us pictures of the crimped you know because there's a centerfold you wouldn't want to miss silly joke I love you I love you do it his voice yeah I used to every time I would do a joke I delivered in his voice just a seasoned vet damn it does it fit does it fit and so I would do this you know did those impressions of him and you did that for like eight years he wrote for him yeah after that yeah Wow so that that's crazy it started out with I guess you were at a stand-up show and then like the next day you're like oh I did that joke at a show and then now it's on The Tonight Show let me write a letter now I have a job at the tonight right exactly so that's that's well you know it was it wasn't even that my old I just wanted to do stand-up and I but I wanted a really write be a good writer and the best way to do that is to practice the best way to practice is current events jokes yeah because current events jokes you see them every you just take headlines and lines in the news and then take some a straight line and try to make it funny rather a lot of people make the mistake of going to the weird news trying to find the weird news that's already funny and well you have nothing to do you just state what's weird right so instead just taking a straight line and then making it funny that's the difficult part so I definitely want to roll our sleeves up on the actual work of comedy as well like I want it I want to make sure we get a lot of just the context of your career and just how qualified you are to be the authority you are on but your approach to the work of comedy is inspiring and like you're talking about I'll just write for five hours a day because I'm feel said but I mean I've gone through phases where I'm like I'm riding every day and this is great and then it's like you miss one day and then one day turns into a week and then a week turns into a month and then it's a year mm-hmm you're like wait where'd my writing habit go like literally what kind of tips do you have for comedians to start that daily ritual we all know we should do and we all feel better when we write but it there's seems to be a block with us just staying consistent you know well I think that's with everybody and everything like if you're like if you're alts Arnold Schwarzenegger or the rock he's in the gym every day that's what he does it's like his religion it's non-negotiable and when I decided I was gonna write it was gonna be non-negotiable I had to get every day I had to be in that seat and it was like I know comedians who have a day job who adhere more to the schedule of that day job that they hate than they do to their writing schedule because they impose it upon themselves and I think there's a couple of blocks there one is a lot of comedians get into equate comedy with frivolity and therefore they treat their careers frivolously and so it's like I kind of got into this to beat the system you know so why would I adhere to a system if I don't want to be in a system and comedy serious businessmen when you're making 40th your minimum pay is four thousand a week writing on a Late Show then it's worth it's you better work your butt off if you want that job it's it's harder than you think but you know so if I get up every day and I my that my day is basically I make my coffee I sit down with my laptop open it up at the kitchen table and I'll say okay I'm gonna look for 10 I'm gonna look for I'm gonna start with three headline jokes mm-hm and then I'll just take three headlines and with those three headline jokes I'll usually write say 15 jokes per headline and that that gets me started okay so then and that'll be then I'll be like an hour and a half in or something like that and I'll write some more and I might get inspired to go off on a different place sometimes I sit down I go okay today I'm gonna do I assign myself like on a certain day so I'll assign myself today's cliche reformations so I'm just gonna grab ten random cliches that everybody's familiar with and that can include book titles movie titles slogans for corporations I'll just write those down and say okay I'm gonna write some takeoffs and some reformations so a Reformation is taking the first part of the cliche and then coming up with a second ending right so it's like WC Fields if at first you don't succeed our brains are running try try again and all you all he says is quit there's no use killing yourself over it so finding a cliche and finding a second ending so then I'll do a few of those and that'll just or if I do one awesome I'm inspired because there's some days you wake up you don't you don't feel like it exactly so if I do one or two of those I'll be like wow I'm feeling like it now I feel inspired because I came up one joke when Joe can change your whole viewpoint of how you feel about writing today you just have to show up every day you just force yourself and we're about a five-hour habit but would you start off like okay I'm just gonna sit down and write one joke every day and then it like grows into oh I wrote one now I feel like writing five more you just kind of yeah it's darting goals in fact that's what Jeanne parrot said to me sit down write one one joke a day next week change it to three jokes a day next week double it go to six jokes a day because if you could write three you could write six it was tough when I started hitting 18 and 30 and I was like I'm tapped he goes push yourself and I got past 30 to 60 and then then Olson it just grew and every threshold I hit and passed it I knew if I could pass that one I could pass this one and so it sort of became like trying to be an athlete towards your writing you know I'm gonna push myself further and if you're not sitting down every day pushing yourself to get better you're not improving we see comics do this all the time they plateau and they sort of stay the same with no reinventing or no new discoveries as comics they're just the same you know so it's like how are they how do they expect to get better if they're not doing anything to improve are you improving the amount of mics you're doing per week are you improving the amount of jokes you're writing are you trying to come up with fresh stuff are you replacing the mundane jokes that get me the ocher laughs with laughs that get you no real punches and applause breaks if you're not effectively doing that you're not really doing anything to get better it's pushing yourself past your comfort zone so that's uh that's kind of what I try to do how would you overcome writer's block oh there's lots of cool things to overcome writer's block first of all there's like cliche reformations those are fun right wordplay just taking fifteen random words and you can go to what website that has a random word generator right it's just Google random word generator and I'd write 15 random words and come up with alternate meanings for those words just that process sometimes it's not even thinking about being funny it's just here's an alternate meeting and all sudden an idea comes to you oh crap I can use this for this you know say the word peace you know well peace would you like a piece well which like a piece of what you know and also now there's a potential for most comedians think think cynically or sexually so piece could be piece of ass so if my wife says cutting some cake and she's Jerry would you like a piece I said yeah then I'll take some cake you know and now I were oh I didn't realize that before and it becomes like something called frequency illusion you know when you buy a car and then suddenly you see that car everywhere you thought the car was unique everybody has his car right but it's like now you understand that you can take a meaning of word and come with come up with alternate plays on it because you now know that's possible now it's started and you start to practice it in your regular interaction with your comedy buddy your sister your brother your mother your wife your husband you you know now are training your brain to recognize that opportunity yeah like I like I guess as comedians we we're like I got to write down and write my genius bit today but it's almost like taking us if you have writer's block take a step back from your material just write something silly just racially around silly simple some of the best jokes are the simplest Anthony Jeselnik everybody loves most comedians let me just say most comedians love Jeselnik oh he's a genius look at the structure of his material very simple setup an assumption shatter the assumption mm-hm and but he does it with his character his persona his through-line that's he's dripping with this sarcasm and mischievousness that it's almost like he's pranking the world it's like he's just this little shrewd sly guy he's like I'm gonna play a trick watch this you know and it's that's what makes it fun you know so you know one of my favorite jokes it's like he says you know there was a these kids were playing hide-and-seek in my neighborhood and one kid they found three hours later or three days later in a refrigerator and everybody's like this heaviness you feel that heaviness and he's like yeah but who else could say they died a winner [Laughter] it's such a positive note how could she be on the side of that joke right unless you're the parent I guess yeah and that's that's a specific style you know and one of my favorite comics it was like Ronny Dangerfield Mitch Hedberg and when I actually started I was one liner I was like a one-liner comic which i think is a great place for comics to start just to understand the mechanism of building an assumption and then breaking it any and edwards was on here and he he broke down a one-liner and then how to expand that into like an actual like five-minute bit from just one line you've heard of this and used oh you can have whatever you want no one ever have the brands and the book I got it was actually a Greg Dean's book yeah so that rig was my first down oh so you took the classes Greg Greg was my first teacher yeah he was the one that taught the setup an assumption shatter the absurd assumption exactly yeah I mean it was like that is Wow and that opened up my eyes to a lot of stuff and then and then as I I wound up sort of being an assistant in his class so I was I would record his classes and sort of trade that for tuition when I was in his classes for a while and then that and then it just I felt I learned as much as I could and then he sued you and then he threatened to sue oh okay he threatened to sue you he threatened to sue me he said he said he when I was starting to put on my blog and put up my YouTube videos he called me and he said you know I'm gonna sue you I go for what Gregg he says you're basically copying my book I said you show me anywhere where I plagiarized anything you have put in your book I'll share it with my attorney and then if she thinks it's anywhere close to being plagiarism we'll take it down and he stopped bothering me but he was like he's well you know too dissimilar his ideas converging that's mine I go you know who initially came up with that Aristotle you know and he's like what you know and I said and then James Beatty in 1476 it was a he was a philosopher coined that as well as being a definition of a joke and he's I said have you done your research you know and he's like so for you to say you own it it's like you saying you own this is like Ford saying they own the internal combustion engine mmm you know it's like it's like if Microsoft owes IBM a bazillion dollars because they're the ones that came up with uh you know the initial computer right so it's it's you can't and then when what Microsoft came up with icons clickable icons for to execute programs Apple sued them and said that's ours oh wow and the judge on a judge determined you can't you can't really patent a concept like that you know it's you can't say hey because we use little icons to show to say you know to support letters that that say that's that's a patent you can't patent it see it's all cool now I guess well I try to make it cool right I tried to you know every time I do a seminar I always mention him that he was my first teacher right because I try to promote synergy because again somebody can go to him and maybe get just a different version of something and go oh that flips the switch cuz it's not about me it's about somebody learning this amazing craft right so if it because they heard something from him differently and all sudden it opened up their world that's a win you know it doesn't hurt me it makes them better so if I was part of that journey that's a positive right so anyway I do sort of that thing so here's what happened they gave a little Dean story Greg does a lot of passive-aggressive let's call it passive aggressive behavior and plus he's got the reason why I stopped studying with Greg was this we were in a class and this student was having a hard time he was trying to talk about his father obviously clearly by the look on this guy's face he was having a difficult time talking about his father and there was some rage there and he was having a hard time and Greg what kept going how do you feel about this how do you feel about this how do you feel about this and the guy can see was getting visibly rayji you know and I'm like this ok Greg's working beyond his credentials right now so I tried to diffuse it you know Greg had this list of all these emotions right and I said hey Chuck what one of these emotions or two of these emotions fits the scenario of the story you're talking about when you're talking about your dad he goes this one in this one I said why don't you say those and then and then execute them you know maybe I shouldn't use the term execute when he's that close to rage right so he's but he said he said oh yeah and he said the words which got a chuckle in class and then he you know did sort of an act out and he got an applause break in class and Greg shot me daggers man and after the class he was just raging at me now dare you usurp my authority I was like what it's not about you man it's about this guy right this guy trying to have a breakthrough here we got a breakthrough it's a win but he wouldn't let it go and so I said no more this guy's nuts that was and so that was it I wasn't gonna I didn't go to his classes anymore and then so then [Music] what we were told we talked about what Greg Greg was ready story oh the great story then for a fluke we were at the world series of comedy and I was teaching a seminar and Greg was scheduled to teach a seminar so I was teaching on Tuesday and Greg was teaching on Friday so I teach my seminar then afterwards after a show Greg was mingling trying to mingle and he's a little awkward in his mingle but the student comes up to me one of my students comes up to me and evidently he took a class of Greg Dean too and he goes hey how are you he goes uh you know so you know you know man I was your teacher he goes at any and the guy just literally says well I study with this guy now and Greg got all kind of weird right and then Jim Barnes just had a great set gets off stage and Greg Dean comes over to help them you know give them some tips and stuff I said well you can come to my classes it goes well I study with Jerry Corley and Greg got all upset so Friday rolls around and all these people now start after Greg Dean's cemetery come up and start talking to me and I go what's going on and they say this they say Greg got up there first of all just talked about himself for 15 minutes and then basically said you guys know Jerry Corley and it was like yep he goes I taught him everything he knows and then so that's what he said now I thought it was funny right so that night Saturday at the finals everybody's there right all the judges and for the finals and I get Joe asked me to close the the segment so the judges can tabulate the scores so I go up there to do ten fifteen minutes and I open with are like maybe my fifth joke in I say I have five kids because normally I say I have five kids because I'm only half Mormon and I say well I have five kids because evidently Greg Dean also taught me how to [ __ ] and the place explodes in the back of the room while the comics start laughing and he just started clapping and Greg goes Joe goes that wasn't really nice it was absolutely necessary necessary absolutely did he say anything do you have nothing nothing bro your lap but he did reach out to me just recently he sent me a he just sent me a note and he said hey I got this on this website I found that this guy was copying and pasting segments of my book and I found this from your book and he said you may want to give him a call and I said well thanks so much for that heads-up Greg okay maybe you're finding your way to being okay with the fact that nobody's taking anything away from you you know and it's like there's lots of teachers in LA and I don't worry about any one of them you know cuz my only focus is putting out the best content I can for people to learn and a lot of other people learning about how much money can I make yes if you put your mind there just like you mentioned in your podcast about my focus is not about making money it's about putting out the best content figure out the best value for my listeners and that's where things come back to you it's a it's a long-term game not a short-term gain yes and if that's what you're in it for because I am I mean I love what I do and I love helping people and I'm gonna continue to do it until it's until I can't do it anymore because I enjoy it I enjoy watching people transform I enjoy getting and having somebody deliver a bottle of maker's mark and say thank you for my career that's an amazing feeling you know so it just feels good you know you almost feel like it's your you helping them get that laughs it almost feels like you got the laughs as well and you see it right because I I dabbled with teaching some and but it came down to and this is this all happened like this year where I was like oh I'm gonna start my own comedy school and like really like really start to help people teach in comedy but then I had to take a step back because I was like I've never been afraid of work but it's like working in the right direction and I saw myself I was like okay if I'm gonna do this this is gonna become like my job you know he and I had to be like well why did I start comedy and I didn't start comedy to teach comedy I started coming to be a great comedian and as soon as I had that realization and I still help people and I loved I mean if people ask questions I'm more than happy to answer them but as soon as I close the door on building a comedy school like three months later I'm taping my first comedy special and then next month I'm going on like my first solo tour it's like as soon as I close that that comedy teaching door now my career opened up Wow yeah that's great you know do you find that in in your even just life experience that you just have to assess first why am i doing this and that can almost become like your guiding light in a sense well I found out for me what happened with me was I think there might be sin there's definitely some value in that focus laser being focused on what you're doing when your intent is I think what happened with me was I had I had this vision of what I wanted to do I wanted to be at first of all as a comedian I wanted to be a triple threat I wanted to be able to sing dance and do comedy very old school I studied tap I you know I used to close my big like when I did my hour-and-a-half show I would close with singing the star-spangled banner as a character named Fritz the freedom fairy which is a character based on my best friend from New York was a New York City firefighter the camera to the closet about 15 years ago and so I do this whole thing it because he's he's sprinkled throughout the act and the whole act is really was just a story and it wound up people used to come up and say I love your message and so the message seemed to be tolerance and across races and across sexual preferences and all that and it just sort of because that's the way I was raised you know I was raised my dad raised us with a philosophy of wouldn't it be great if we could take care of everyone we can't but wouldn't it be great so that's kind of the way we were raised yeah and so that's kind of the through line of the act it turns out and but because of the the singing and all but it was so at multiple so in my pursuit for comedy I thought not only do I want to do stand-up I also want to be a really good writer so I couldn't increase my revenue streams plus I was acting you know so I was able that I was doing commercial and then as I was writing my comedy I was dabbling in in screenwriting and then and that's how you know in dabbling in screenwriting I wound up writing the movie stretch for with with joe carnahan actually has a screenplay by credit because that was the deal and getting the film made which was interesting Wow because but I still say I've got six drafts of the [ __ ] so I when I say I wrote it I wrote it and my boy Rob Rose came down to LA and and wrote it wrote versions of it with me - because he's a defund it past this funniest guy I've ever met and then when we met Joe Joe loved it and basically sat down with us said we're gonna get this film made but here's the deal I have to get screenplay by oh my gosh we'll make your movie if you say it's by yeah yeah basically why now I had an NDA with that one too and I'm not supposed to talk about it but the company I signed the NDA with was dissolved to form another corporate company so that they could fight fight it paying us residuals so I don't have the NDA now with that one they don't exist so do you have any other NDA's floating around well anytime usually any time you do a script with a company you have to sign documents that say you won't disclose won't disparage won't you know and I don't talk that I'd you know Joe did great things we made a movie and a lot of other filmmakers I talked to said first time you do something usually gonna get [ __ ] and so when I was talking to a good friend of mine Dave Connolly I was complaining about getting [ __ ] and then he sat me down with another writer who wrote some pretty substantial films and who has not hadn't had a hit hadn't had a movie sold in a while but we had lunch together he goes I would love if I was getting [ __ ] right now you know so I was like I guess I want to get [ __ ] gonna have I in fact when we sat down with our meeting with Joe I brought a brown paper bag and inside the paper bag was Lubin condoms really and I just said be gentle why that that was it but we got a film made and and so now that the film the film got made other doors have opened you know people see you as legit this one producer from Marvel met me and because his wife was in one of my showcases and he says he basically said hey yeah I'm a producer for Marvel I'm not looking for any script so I said I don't need to give you a script I got my own and he goes tell me more and so I told him he goes stretch it was I just watched that what with Jessica last night I love that you did that Wow we have to talk cool and then he came into another one he's like so uh do you have any do you have any comedies you're writing because I do things on the side I do under 10 mils you know that means I do with production budgets above an hundred and ten million now yeah but producer asking you for something so I was like sure all right when I write something marvelous I'll make sure I get it to you you know and then I walk away I don't stay there and Joe yeah you know I just walk away you know I act like I'm my own entity you know without I'm not begging for a job sort of thing you know yeah and it's important I think that you're like I want to be more than just one thing right and in researching you I heard you say comedy or comedians should think like entrepreneurs without a dump please expand on that well we don't we think like broke comics we think you're cordis it's a mindset and when I learned I tell you what I was when I was doing my stand-up I was also teaching comedy traffic school and which is a group I recommend this for any comic who really wants to have a captive audience first of all you're working as an emcee you're you have to get a state mantid mandated curriculum out to the to this group of people while making it humorous what a great training ground for eight hours so I was doing this and I know what was going well because there's a when we'd have like a Wednesday Thursday evening class the second night I had a dude show up with his wife he goes I brought my wife I go why it's date night this is a traffic school you know he goes yeah but it was so much fun last night you're cool with it right I go sure and so it whatever what I was obviously getting laughs and they were still learning the material and so that for me helped me to branch out to doing warm-up for television shows it's perfect Anna same thing basically and then what I did was I was I had this guy in one of my traffic schools who was president of the Chamber of Commerce and he came up to me and he said I'm the president of the Chamber of Commerce he was there for rolling a stop sign and he said we do an annual dinner every chamber in the United States does one of these where they swear out the old officers and swear in the new I would love you to emcee it and do 30 minutes to stand up I'll pay you $800 and give you beer and I was in college at the time and I thought broke you know and I thought beer I'm in and so I did did the event it went really well I got a videotape up and I hired a videographer right which was six hundred bucks at the time investing in your sound so was I made $200 total on the gig and got that video and then two weeks later at the neighboring cities Chamber of Commerce called me and said hey I heard you did a great job over at Chico would you come and do ours how much do you charge me I thought the going rate would he ate was 800 I didn't know I could negotiate so I took the gig and I thought to myself how many chambers of commerce are there in the United States seventy six hundred and fifty and I had to go down to the library to get that data because we didn't have the internet back then and so I basically got a database for 200 of them in the region of Northern California sent out flyers via fax with me at the dais at the Chico Chamber of Commerce saying change your annual dinner to an event hire a professional comedian to emcee and I got a bunch of phone calls that came in I booked 28 in a three-month period all at $800 and I said I've got a career I've got a business and so that's how I started going out and doing corporates I love the catharsis of doing the clubs but the clubs don't pay like corporates do Oh No so then I was able to up my dollar amount for other corporate events and then I said what is a Chamber of Commerce it's an association how many associations are there in the United States too many to count but according to one of the databases that track associations there is like 2.3 million all wanting a comedian to do their event they just don't know it yet they don't know how it fits hmm but with the Chamber of Commerce since I knew they did annual dinners and most mother's most of the time they can't find the person that really wants to emcee it that's their pain point and so I offer a solution to the pain point just like every commercial does right you know pain point pain point pain point solution that's how you sell something right so just and when I was becoming a comedian booking myself I got a sales kit you know how to be how to be a good salesman because I knew I'm gonna have to sell myself that's I hate sales but might as well learn the techniques entrepreneur and that helped me to book that helped me to book a lot of stuff and that helped me to get it to get a manager an agent because I was already working mm-hmm you know I went in and show him how much I'm working there so yeah we want to sign you it's funny to say Chamber of Commerce because I did a Chamber of Commerce event last year and you're making me think I need to email every Chamber of Commerce in the region now because I did that one they need to know but if they know where it fits how does it fit how is it a solution for us because if you just say comedy they're like okay what comedy where does it fit but if you find a place where it could fit like MC for their annual dinner that fits what if and so I said hmm what can I do and I read this thing in a Business Journal that said the California company is small businesses we're facing you know twenty eight million dollars in settlements legal a liability sell settlements for sexual harassment lawsuits and so I came up with a 20 minute routine on how to alleviate sexual harassment or how to recognize it and alleviate it you got to know what it is first before you alleviate it and I prepared it a humorous sort of thing a comp be still a stand-up act with us with a speech so in Meishan laden with a lot of humor points built in and then did a offered a free luncheon to the Rotary Club and they had me and I did a free I said the caveat is don't tell anybody it's free and so I delivered this 20 minute thing on tolerance in the workplace and pitched it from the angle of pain point twenty eight million dollars in liabilities how many of you small business owners are prepared for this I can deliver this thing on on alleviating sexual harassment in the workplace by developing tolerance and so I went up and delivered this thing 25 minutes they loved it 15 20 people gave me business cards hey we gotta have we have a Christmas party we have a golf tournament we have this we have this and I booked all these gigs so they came to meet with that you know it sounds like the entrence thinking like entrepreneurs means think outside of just the comedy club structure yeah I mean starting your own show is a way yep but also finding there's events everywhere there's birthday parties there's family reunions like think outside of we get there's the old school where like but you gotta rise the ranks of the comedy club but it's like the business of comedy is way beyond just trying to emcee feature than headline a comedy club so far beyond in fact and and just a little note I don't say any of this to brag because money to me is just a result of you doing something positive it really is and I think if you keep it that way you never have the ups and downs of success and failure you have the joy of doing the work for the sake of the work my dad taught me that as an actor and I live by it so in this case word got out that I was teaching comedy there was this doctor and my one of my lots of my classes he loved what I did and he gave the word he gave the word to the director of Kaiser director of Kaiser for West LA called me and said Jerry I'm thinking about I'm doing a seminar where I'd like to teach doctors to use humor in the workplace because I want their clinic to visit visits to be more like you know house calls can you help doctors develop a sense of humor in the war in the clinic visit I said that's right down my alley and so we had look phone calls and he said how much I said $5,000 he said no problem he said I'm gonna run it by the board first he said is that all and I went yeah no problems so he said oh that's just for me showing up right right I can't change it then but what happened they passed on me so three days later a week later I got this call from this guy who's they and he called me up he said you know they went with some mucky muck from Cisco or talks and from Oracle and all these big companies so but his name is Dan something rather so this guy calls me up named Dan saying he needs help on how to use humor Kenny can I coach him on that because he's got a speech for Kaiser he's talking to 200 doctors in the morning 200 in the afternoon and they're paying him $40,000 40 40 thousand so I said I can help you with that he goes how much will that cost me I go $5,000 because I wanted to make back the money I lost so we agreed and he was miserable as a student he was arrogant he refused to adapt things and learn the jury I don't need to self deprecated I know I'm very knowledgeable and I researched my stuff and I'm good at what I do I said what you're talking to doctors they need to know that you don't feel you're superior to them because they're doctors so if you self-deprecation stal ittle bit they'll trust you more he still refused I said you know what I can't work with you so just give me half and good luck six months later I got a call from the director of Kaiser he said that guy he didn't do so well so he wasn't that he didn't live up to our expectations do you still are you still willing to come help us out with this event yes sure he's your fee still $5,000 I said no sir it's now 40,000 and he said I'm just curious why is it more I said well because you worked with a guy and he didn't do it for you and you paid him 40,000 he goes how do you know he called me up for coaching and he was miserable to coach with he goes haha I I can I can see that he said I have no problem with the price in fact the board might like it more because that sounds more legit to them and that opened my mind to how we think about money and how other people think about money comedians think about money is like as oh my god I've got a piece of gold I'm gonna hold on to it forever right because we don't there's not a lot of it going around yeah but these guys think of money in a whole different way drop in $40,000 for an afternoon Wow and then what they were trying to do is get this to go national as a program for Kaiser so they were in contact with the Director of National Kaiser who's in Hawaii and then what happens he now retired so it's kind of a dead issue have to reignite it and get it back going again but if you can you know say I had no idea I could ever get paid that much for one event never you know and when that happened I went that's a whole new world they've probably passed on you because it was so low that's right it's not legit right exactly and it gave me a whole different way of looking at it we think if somebody afford if we quote too much they're just gonna run away mm-hmm and then no they usually counter because they're not as emotional towards money as we are yeah we're like Oh $50 in chicken wings okay experience in the mic type of course and I did a lot of that stuff always I drove for you know just to have the get the mic time somewhere encounter a new book or do something for free of course no yeah I use my because because I had kids I used the the sort of the my tax refund which is usually about somewhere around $4,000 and I put that into a travel fund and I'd use that money to go I would book one-nighter gigs and fly to the one-nighter gigs and then in the brakes I'd map out and do I call up and set up guest spots at the a clubs and sort of use that beast like a Salesman on the road you know and I you know if I can go there and wear and do a guest spot for free and show them my wares you know hey here's my vacuums you know good night so it's basically thinking like an entrepreneur and think about this is your comedy enterprise rather than thinking as a comedian with your you know it gives you a whole different level of commitment to it to you're not actually sitting there with your hat out you're sitting there with with a as a businessperson you know saying we have a mutually beneficial business arrangement rather than please I need the gig you know it's just all they look at you differently when you approach it like that and I think it's important comics understand get funny first like you have have a have a product to sell mm-hmm don't try to just jump in if I want to make five grand it's like we'll have a show worth five grand yeah yeah the funny first and then start saying you have to develop that you have to develop that act and like you said that the fundamentals of all comedy is based on the 1 & 2 liner joke when you can master that then your stories automatically become funnier because what does a story made up of sentences every sentence is a set up gives you an opportunity to now treat that like a one-in-two line or come up with a quick quip or two or three and then then continue with the story so if you're writing the story you can go back through your story and go sentence by sentence by sentence Sid Caesar said a joke is a sentence with a curlicue what is every story it's made up of sentences so if you go up and take each sentence and can tag and top each one with something or maybe not each one every third one and then now you have a bit that's humorous overall which you have jokes on the way to big to the big joke so that's you know tags and toppers is the way you get more laughs per minute you know and it's writing the story not trying to be funny right write it as is and then go back through and start - yeah the intent is to get the let me tell you about the arc of the story right so it has the five elements of story setting theme plot character conflict and then you have and then so you're telling the story the who what where why when and how the moral arc and all this stuff the moral of story is and then so you have this great story and then you but you want to it goes on forever with no laughs but you can use technique to drop it in you know one of the techniques is ask each sentence three questions one is there a double entendre so is there a word that has an implied meaning I can possibly turn to a comedic meaning in this sentence just to get a quick quip you know I came home from work last night my one you know it's the night before my wife was scheduled for c-section so I come home from a gig and she's laying on the couch watching TV I said hey babe how you feeling she says I'm having some gas pains I say I said well everyone is it's like five bucks a gallon but and I continue with the story right it's just a quick quip on the way to the bigger story and so I continued to tell the story but every line gives you something you can play with then if there isn't a double entendre play you can say are there two dissimilar ideas converging here so I can do an incongruity joke with this so if there's nothing if that's not available then you could say is there an assumption in this setup that I can shatter I'm teaching my son I'm home I'm teaching my daughter how to tie her shoes you know which is weird just 17 and you know you just a quick quick break this way to the big joke so it's adding more stuff and that's just three structures then if you add cliche reformations you force an analogy in there that's how Bill burr built its entire actors through analogy is Mike's taking two dissimilar ideas and saying they're similar which sets to the audience an illogical equation my girlfriend's like a smartphone huh right they're asking they're sitting there with tension now saying solve that how is that true I'm curious and we'll all you do is solve for true and the secret is it's got to be true for us smartphone all by itself or a per girlfriend all by itself because if you had it if it if the verbage that you come up with as the tie-in doesn't match a person or a girlfriend then it's not going to work it sounds forced it's gonna be odd but if you say my ex like I say my ex it builds more of an antagonistic situation I said my ex is like a smartphone at any given time I can usually find her at at least one bar mm-hm and that's what a coincidence that's so true but that fits for a person or a smartphone one bar being the signal of course right so but that's just by listing everything smartphone so it's gonna ask how do you find the connection between the income group yes so you take basically take if I decide to use smartphones say if I want to use sometimes in this case what I'm doing is I'm taking an element and comparing it to my wife rather than fiying traits about my wife and then finding the element to relate it to like if I my ex-wife was a alcoholic right so I said so I you I played on that angle I said what else is alcoholic what else is alcoholic and it's funny cars funny cars are alcohol fueled so if I say might want my ex-wife yeah my ex-wife she's alcohol she's like a funny car alcohol fueled now I have a quick joke there but I'm working the other approach to it the alternate approach finding what is she like and then finding something to relate her to this way I'm taking any element and comparing it to my ex-wife and then listing everything I can think about using subcategories of people places things words phrases cliches events and and I'll write that down people places things words phrases cliches events every single time I do a list to remind myself because when you're so close to it you're going through the list sometimes you just get too heady and I'll go on into any cliches here what do people say when they say this what people are involved in smart from dude can you hear me now that guy you know and I'll just write down everything I can about a smartphone what else in smartphone in the minutia the signal what about the signal the bars hey what are some of the phrases hey my phone's only had two bars bar as bar is double entendre that's a bar could be a drinking establishment fits from my ex-wife likes on my ex-wife's like a smartphone you know at any given time I can usually find her at least one bar Oh same phrase fits for phone see wow that's how that that's and you kidding bill bar bill bird uses analogy that's what he uses through his whole thing once in a while does a cliche drop in you know so it's a you know like this thing about this girl he was dating being aggressive you know she's aggressive you know she's like I want you to choke me I don't know if I'm comfortable with this you know what if I choke too hard you know what's what's the pressure what's the PSI you know I don't want to choke the horn and she's like I want you to take me against my will I was like what is this fifty Shades of rape you know and he does that joke of course our brains are wired to create expectations since we're children very definite expectations yeah so think about it we you don't have to rush to a punch because the audience their brain is already creating an expectation you know we don't have to you don't have to do it it's so firm you go like so if you say in your head fifty Shades of that was such a popular book and movie that people are already creating the ending so all you have to do switch the last word and it fits the scenario of him being uncomfortable because he's like to force you you know you know it's like take me against my will what is it fifty Shades of rape and he gets a quick joke there because he shattered an expectation and plus it's familiar and oh my god so funny how that fits into this place right here and we didn't even see it coming yeah you have you you're going through like a checklist of all this and you have like nine there's like nine elements there were nine psychological laughter trigger okay and I'm stimulated that the brain respond to that triggers laughter okay surprise embarrassment superiority release configurational incongruity recognition and Bivens and and coincidence did I get all those that's about nine sometimes I forget right so then there are 13 major comedy structures and so the structures pull the triggers okay so and not every joke just has one some have multiple once some have ones where you're like well that's kind of this and this you know this is compare and contrast and this yeah it can be both just like you'll have literary scholars arguing over whether something really fulfills the obligation of meeting complete irony you know same thing you know if you you don't have to it's art so and also you have to remember as Picasso said you got to know the rules before you can break the bones boom it's an art yes so don't get all wrapped up and it's gotta be this way you know but a lot of times you can tweak and go oh if I do make it this way that joke snaps right and that that's what part of comedians trying to just get away with attitude they're not learning the rules first before they break right they just see like bill Burgess up there talking like no he's worked over half his life at this art form you know and he says the first five to seven years of my career I did one in two liners because I had to know how to write a joke yeah and that's what I did too when you know how to write a joke when you're on on the move when you're in the flow it's easier to see the opportunities or recognize the opportunities and the mechanics and the structure to be able to spin something and go oh I just put two ideas together I'm gonna now list real quick and put it up there's the here's a line you know what he does I go he was like everybody wants to bang a hot chick you know but you know the the guy working at home Home Depot can't cuz he's not a celebrity besides chicks don't dig lumber right that's what he says that's his joke and it's like all he did was take something from Home Depot every time I see the name somebody says Home Depot I see a pallet of two-by-fours and he says lumber and boom that triggers that image and it makes us laugh what a coincidence what were the 1313 if we go into 13 we have double entendre okay incongruity we have paired phrases we have simple truth we have recognition observation so observation takes the recognition laughter trigger and you just basically basically observed the world and basically explained what it is like somebody waiting for a bus they stand on a curb that's seven inches high waiting for a bus that's 16 feet tall and they said they're looking for the bus they don't see the bus so they step off the curb living losing seven inches then they raise up 2 inches losing a total of 5 inches to see a bus that's 16 feet tall if you can't see it from up there you can't you're not gonna see it from down there but all you're doing is taking an observation that's stepping it out for the audience so that's obvious and you know comedians should have a goal of every week write down 5 new observations in the minutiae of what's happening in and so it's just you set yourself goals so you're always walking around with comedic glasses then you have then you have so parrot phrases comedic irony paradox ambivalence you don't have my list in front of me and I just got lost but it's like there's so there's 13 that you can use simple truth very simple it's like double entendre but it's a phrase that has an intended meaning you find it a lot in songs we speak in metaphors and euphemisms and all you're doing as a comedian it's all in having your cynicism proving it wrong I'm going to show you that's wrong so somebody says like a song you go to Disneyland you hear it's a small world have you listened to the lyrics it's a world of joy it's a world of tears it's a world of hope it's a world of fears isn't this a song about being bipolar hmm and all the audience goes oh my god I never thought about it that way it's so true because you're taking that simple truth and you're flipping it scripture has a lot of symbolism if you take that and now go to the literary simple truth meaning you can get a joke its essence and its foundation goes back to call me a cab you're a cab mmm-hmm right so call me a doctor cause they're a doctor and I you know call me a doctor you're a doctor it's that same raw form but now expand it out to other things that we see all the time you know so that's a oh you'll notice that Jon Stewart people say you want to take your comedy to the next level start to recognize comedic irony and also a paradox that makes your brain actually do a dance paradox has two things that could be true but not true at the exact same time for example when Carlin used to say on TV you could say you pricked your finger but you can't say you fingered your prick it's fricking prick two different meanings of prick they can be true for each of their meanings and these it but they can't be true at the exact same time and oh my god you use them so close together you know one their same word but so different so the brain does a little oh wow that's interesting you know so that's paradox so there's lots of so many different ways ambivalence you can build a bamboo valent situation and make sure you have two descriptors in the in the in the in the sentence is where specifics are important and comedians sometimes try to be too economical and they remove a potential for joke so for example if I say my dad was just diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer not a lot of opportunity there well foot boy did you know I can add that attitude maybe you hope for laugh right but what if I added more of a descriptor my dad who lives in Bakersfield was just let's say my dad who lives in East st. Louis just got diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer horrible right he lives in East st. Louis so we have we're supposed to be traumatized over the colon cancer but oh my god he lives in East st. Louis you know Esther my son is my son and Jersey just came out of the closet oh oh that's what you have a son who lives in Jersey right so it's like using ambivalence quotient it's supposed to be upset about this but instead I must set on the set about that so that extra descriptor helps you get there you know that's another technique you can use yeah and is there other resources like this for this on your website as well yes lots of them so and on the youtube channel here's what's well here's something really cool hahaha masters series you're familiar with the master series master class yes great right Ron Howard does one Steve Martin he does comedy blow me away Steve Martin was my favorite guy when I was in high school sit was Jerry Seinfeld right so and I you know of course I disagree with Seinfeld when he tells people you can't teach people out of do comedy but he still he was my favorite he's still one of my favorites but I disagree with you Jerry I'm writing an article it's gonna be called the big lie Jerry Seinfeld wants everybody to believe I mean there's there's techniques people can use just like I think learning an instrument but not everyone's Jimi Hendrix right people can learn the basics of it but to what degree does you come down to some national village if they practice and practice and practice and practice this has been proven now there but called peak written by K Anders Ericsson and Robert Poole and their psychologist and they've been studying for the last 30 years the psychology of mastery huh and what they did was was they studied like violinists what separated the best from the best of the best the best of the best practice more and had more expert feedback so that's what real practices is practiced with expert feedback so when you take say Jerry Seinfeld wrote five hours a day always was at the club's bilborough's always at the club's doing his thing he's always there he's always working at least one to three shows a night right so and the Willman went from two years I met her at coached her a little bit and she got on Stephen Colbert last year's been on she she's awesome yeah and she she was also coached by Gabe Abelson who wrote for Letterman she was looking to get better and better and she got in Colbert but when I met her she sent me a video of her I go you're so good why are you coming to me and she said I want to get tweaked it so I can get on a late show and I said I can help you with that and then she said I said how did you get so good how long you been doing it she said two years Wow how did you get so good fourteen mics a week yep plus at X being open to notes being open and seeking out expert feedback yeah so that's the key so K Anders Ericsson says anybody can master anything they want he firmly believes that because the brain is highly adaptable and so it's like wow now I've seen people I've taken people who are absolutely unfunny and now their friends call them funny so it's very interesting this guy Braun Olga Lucia Croatian right he goes my dad my father used to say don't laugh it makes you look stupid so I was never funny so now I have nephews and they're funny and I want to be able to keep up with it can you help me he was showed in my class regularly who was an adult school teacher right and there's like and he started doing mics around town eventually and people saying you're a really good writer you're really funny then he was on campus it is school and he was with other teachers and he saw a poster on a kiosk he goes now that's really funny I think what's so funny about that it said domestic violence workshop Wednesday February 14th mmm that's hysterical why is that funny give your wife a Valentine's gift don't punch don't punch her in the face you know because this incongruity right and so I was like see now he gets it you know he can drive down the street and go look all thick Chinese cuisine se habla espanol you know he now sees he's identifying this because now he's open to it right right now he's not Jerry Seinfeld but he's he's certainly a whole different person yes he's now got a sense of humor that he didn't have before because he didn't recognize what triggered laughter and how to apply it but you you got to do the work who a man without a doubt and he did three years he came to every class okay yours plus English was a second language so we had another barrier yeah but he said I'm going to learn this and he just kept applying himself asking questions to the homework all that stuff so the master class Steve Martin said was interviewed one time and I followed Steve forever and he was interviewed one time are you gonna get back to stand up I said good that's the question I've been asking and he said no it's too hard then why I found who's teaching this masterclass on comedy go well what's he gonna teach if it's too hard mm-hmm so I got the master class I'm watching him basically talk about did you watch it you know watching him talk about being you know just his life and comedy and everything and he goes and you want to learn how to write go to this website and look at the 13 comedy structures and it's my [ __ ] website yeah I was blown away students started to call me oh my god Judge Steve Martin's master class says you ever has your website on it they're using you go to your comedy structures what blew my mind do you mean even now humbling is that you didn't even know no nobody getting paint just started getting pinged yeah dude that was really kind of a humbling experience but had almost lots of years to my honor Martin Mike my idol yeah Steve's like my favorite too it almost like I almost like teared up at that moment so like crazy my teared up when I heard about it I can we got my favorite comedian the world you know I was like you did you know that's so awesome I wanted to tell everybody it's incredible yeah so that's that was really cool dude so and all of it was just is just focusing on trying to give people the best tools yes that's it if you stay focused on the intent whatever rewards come to you I mean that reward I can't put a dollar amount on that like my idol comedic Lee just referred them to me when it comes to writing a joke oh my god right how amazing is that and so that and and but every time somebody says anything to me that the compliments I get on on YouTube somebody put on there you're the goat you know and I had to look up what goat man right why you could make me a goat I didn't know what that was and so um and anytime somebody gives me any kind of compliment like that that just reminds me I have to work harder mmm because now you got a bar to uphold right yeah and it's like thank you that's nice but that just means I have to work harder and keep keep working and keep helping and you know run into somebody experience a problem how can I help them solve it and that just helps me get better too yeah I think in 10 super important because with with me not taking the comedy school route I the red flag was my intention is to literally just like make money I was like I'm literally only doing this because it's been my primary source of income for the past few years so as soon as I let go of that those almost constraints like I got I think I'm gonna make this work cuz I got to make money because I did my parents were teachers and I do enjoy helping people but releasing the class helped me to realize oh but this podcast is helping people when I'm at shows and absolutely questions that's I'll still helping people but the intent is to now do this to help as opposed to well I got I got to do this class but then I gotta do this workshop to to supplement Inc like you know right as soon as I release realize my intent was not in the right place then that's when the career just started to I mean you always have to keep the lights on you know it's but it's it's if that if the money is your objective if Fame is your objective that's so fleeting you know and not sustainable he's not he wouldn't be as successful as you are if you were to cycle let me just horde all the comedy secrets and make yeah well not doesn't do anything it's gonna help everybody I mean people get better there's more funny people out there now you know cuz I don't know if you know this but most people don't that when you laugh your brain releases the same exact feel-good chemistry we release when we fall in love that's powerful yeah it's also the same chemistry if you shoot heroin but it's true it's the same exact hormones are released when you laugh so manually or spontaneously so you can chemically change your mood if you're in a bad mood just by making yourself laugh for one to two minutes I mean chemically I mean that's like taking a drug and it's better than than a drug so because it's more sustainable but what I found in I've just started to put a more personal spin on my comedy in terms of like I've been working hard you become an [ __ ] of a dancer well yeah though they'll hear the seminar the podcast seminar I did here at world series where I got heckled and called an [ __ ] and all that and the word that came from sorry I'm so glad you were there dad I called him dad sarcastically but incredible and yeah so but what I found is when I become more personal people I've started to come up to me like telling me specific jokes as opposed to like oh you were funny and they can't remember anything as soon as I started make it personal and have an emotional connection they were able to come and be like oh that's just like my wife or my dog she treats our dog like that or my grandpa said the same thing to me and you mentioned in the the Greg Dean's story that you were you helped that comedian inject emotion into it because for a lot of the years my comedy was more surface and it works because the math adds up I think Greg Dean was trying to help him and check that emotion yeah yeah he was laying into a block so I kind of distracted him and showed him he couldn't label it so I said what about one of these words here and that snapped his brain out of this sort of intensity and he would say well oh these two right here okay let's see if you can make that happen yeah that's what I was trying to steer you into is so weird saying comedians need to learn the structure first but then how do they start to inject that personal touch that you brought that up the best piece of advice I got comedic ly as a stand-up was from an acting coach hmm and I studied in Lee Strasberg theatre Institute in LA and some of the some of the intense you know acting schools my dad was an actor studio guy and so I was studying with a teacher named laelia Goldoni she was unbelievable because she never let me get away with my [ __ ] tricks you know because those were my defense mechanism trying to hide the fact that I feel vulnerable and put up this defense mechanism like I'm you know oh you know my humor I'm in control and teaching me that I am perfect in all my flaws so show your flaws no no problem with that because people now connect to you she is secondly when I did five minutes for her in front of the class the jokes mechanically were sound I know they were good jokes they laughed I got laugh so I was like ha showed her she sat there with her arms folded her legs crossed and she said oh look Jerry thinks his jokes are so funny he doesn't need to perform them and I said what do you mean by that and she said I don't know how you feel about any of that so I don't care humans connect through emotion Jerry go back home I want you to write down how you feel about and play the emotion make sure it's authentic through each of these lines connected to the environment connected to the pictures in fact don't even think of the emotion think about the colors and the textures and the sounds and the smells of the events you're talking about automatically the emotions will come to you and so I practiced what she said by at the same time rolling my eyes mmm-hmm I'll show her right I go back and I said I'm just say my dad always said anytime a acting teacher gives you a note don't ever take offense to it they're not saying it because they dislike you they're saying because they want to help you and that gave me a whole different perspective so somebody gives me a note I never say oh [ __ ] you I'm like what do you mean by that always follow up with a question or two it'll help you to clarify what they mean so I came back and delivered it the way she said and holy [ __ ] what a difference applause breaks on jokes that I just thought were funny what else in people oh my god and what you said exactly happened to me my brother does the same thing or my father you know it's like the same thing and I was like now well you're affecting people you're not just making them laugh yes they were leaving with an impact how did you how did you inject that emotion you said you'd think about the smells and sense well sir that's one of the lessons in acting instead of just trying to play sad that's so general sad what do you mean sad distraught you know upset what good but if you remember the smells textures and the scene about where that emotion is connecting to that's when the emotion comes out okay so you're not just playing the label of an emotion you're playing an experience so it changes the way you play the experience it's like when when I coach actors sometimes on self tapes and a lot of times they deliver the lines looking at the character all the time watch real actors they'll look at the character maybe 20% of the time especially if they're talking about an event the event we go somewhere in our eyes to the event in our memory and then we check in with them once in a while so if you're really remembering an event or substituting a real event in your life for that character you're gonna that emotions gonna come to you hmm and as comedians we get good at this because we do it every night expressing herself over a certain subject or emotion or something if we can play sarcasm we can play we can play retaliation benign retaliation is another structure very important structure probably a great structure to open with okay because I call it the perfect joke form because it's got an antagonist and a protagonist built in so you can say that like when people say hey you're comedian tell me a joke I always tell them a joke because if I just say I don't do jokes they do stories what are the odds of them coming to any of my shows zero but if I give them a joke that was funny where are you playing here there's an app on my phone I opened it up it's a form they put in their email they had send with their first name they had send it goes they automatically get an email response that leads them to a two or three minute video here's a clip you know enjoy I'll send them something else I just use I use MailChimp MailChimp oh yeah I create a link on I have it on my Evernote I just hit that and it opens up the website with that form on it and they put it in and I say I'll invite you to a show it it's my fan list yeah I think this happens all the time oh you're comedian well tell me a joke and I'll tell him a joke the joke is usually my ex who cheated on me called me on Halloween she's like Jerry I don't know what to pretend to be for Halloween I said why don't you just just normally and pretend you're in a committed relationship that's funny were you playing right and it's that simple you know and it's rather than oh no dude rupes or do stories the reason we most of us say that's because we're not prepared yeah to say a joke why not you know how many people have come to see me based on that you know probably hundreds you know based on meeting people and asking to be on that list you know by saying hey tell me a joke you know so I just rambled no you didn't know that was all relevant hmm so with that was there anything else with injecting emotion you go to the place or you bring in a parallel experience to find the emotion within a story don't chase the emotion I'll sort of let it come to you clearly just say you know oh my god let me tell you about this my my ex she's like just she's a plus plus you know that's the that's the positive way I tell my kids you know she's [ __ ] nuts it's what she doesn't but she's all I'm doing is I'm picture during her picturing those situations how did she make me feel sometimes she gets me so [ __ ] frustrated and I just not afraid to share that with the audience that does take practice and that comes with learning to be yourself the way you are with your friends at a bar on that stage because we tend to I want to put on my best self on this stage rather than I want to be completely vulnerable and be the same guy I am at the bar on the stage and that's why I tell the audience I'm but like I'm so flawed you know I got baggage I got Samsonite you know but I'm not afraid because that's made me who I am mm-hmm and being able to be that way and be honest with them on the stage now you're communicating with them you know like it though we're watching the World Series of comedy a lot of comics good jokes but I don't feel the connection I don't feel them connecting with the audience at all you know there's they want to get up there and recite their jokes because they have a time limit yeah you know and it's like be with us doesn't matter the amount of lab point you get if you're with us there's nothing on there that says how many jokes did you do per minute on the on the judging application or the form it's like originality stage presence overall performance those are the three criteria but yeah laughs per minute do matter but are you really still connecting with us and communicating with us but I've been doing this nine and a half years and I'm just now starting to kind of open up that level of comedy and stuff just now like peeling back that layer of like oh the personal and what's finding the emotional connection behind it so it's like I've been on stage a lot and I'm just now getting around to oh yeah motion is important and you know I should tell my story and tell jokes that only I could say and I try to put my jokes through a filter now of like what can I do that someone couldn't steal really mm-hmm you know I try and I'm trying to put my material through that filter but I mean it's not given up on them no way you're gonna stall in a lot lots of time since so it's like Jay Leno give me a great piece of news after he stole your dude yeah exactly right oh they also got sued lots of times for a lot of jokes being stolen because the head writer was not a great joke writer great ad-lib guy but he was a not a great joke writer well the late night show like Twitter they've been accused of stealing tweets and stuff as well they did that with Conan yeah what what gets me is Conan it first stuck to his guns he said nope I'm gonna fight this and then they finally settled with this guy and if the judge only knew how you write jokes she would have seen how easy it was for him to come up for them to come up with this parallel thought on a current event and I wrote one of the jokes he was yelling about the night had happened it was like when when the Seahawks they they threw that pass play on that that third down a fourth down play at the with two minutes two seconds left on the clock or whatever it was they threw a pass play when they had the best running back in the league and it was like right on the goal line and they got intercepted because of course Belichick knows that Pete Carroll is gonna think he's gonna run so he's gonna receive he said his defense for pass snap that ball away and they want now I said wow the MVP award goes to Pete Carroll right right there at the just in my house and that was one of the jokes this guy argued that was his original joke you know and I didn't even tweet it because I thought it was so low hanging fruit because it's just right there and so they'd Conan did a version of it and this guy did a version of it and it's like but if you list it's right there you know so if if the judge knew how jokes were written the judge would have said now there can be parallel thought so but there's a lot of people that complain about that I have I wrote some jokes you know when Trump said I'd go in there even if I wasn't armed about the Parkland shooting I said yeah you cuz you could you could you could hurt a [ __ ] with a bone spur that night Stephen Colbert did to bone spur jokes and I tweeted that I don't think he took it from me right it's right there you know so I let him go like Leno said just write more yes yeah and writing is a muscle and it requires a lot of reps and the I feel like just for people listening like the techniques and tools we're talking about require time and repetition and writing is a muscle and the more you do it the stronger it gets but it is it's gonna be incremental and I'm part of developing the comedy muscle and we can we can land the plane with this question cuz this is something I ask every guest is like the an epic bombing story like getting booed on stage or I mean getting up your bottle thrown at you if that's the one that comes to mind for you but like in your over 25 year career like do you have a show that just sticks out is just like just that gig you'll never forget let me see I think that one was see I don't really see that beer bottle as a bomb it was going well up till then and I did get punched in the face - after that - because but I I don't want to tell the story because these days with this political correctness people will see it as racist because it was it was in a town it was there was a table of cholos and they were having a good time but there was a misinterpretation between playfulness between the guys sort of ribbing each other as guys do and then the sum of their ladies thought it was too personal and they got personal with me and called my mother a [ __ ] and so I had said a response based on factual information yes and the way I said it was inappropriate and they had no place to go so that's when the beer bottle was thrown and I deserved it but someone's breaking in yeah that that full story is on another podcast no matter which one but I came across that story in researching you know someone wants to hear it they can hear in its entirety on if you just search Jerry Corley on the podcasts you know we're in the breakfast area uh yeah that's right now you have it you have a different show that comes to mind yeah one of the times when I used to I heard from Seinfeld too that he liked to he'd like to do he'd like to open for bands more than they'd like to work with comedians so and I just heard that and so I go that's so I had friends and as a played trombone and a horn band myself so I knew some musicians I had friends that had this fusion band jazz fusion band that was doing a lot of spots around LA so they would always call me and ask me if I wanted to come into a spot and I would do like their breaks and so one time I did a break for them at this place called the rusty Pelican in Calabasas and so I'm doing I do a break for them and it wasn't going well mm-hm and I could tell I heard these what these three guys were standing off to the side I hear one guy one guy say oh look he's bombing let's [ __ ] with him so they sort of walked towards the front of the stage and one person would yell something and as he ran out of breath the other person took over and it just was not there was no way that I was going to overcome this and this is what happened I I said well it looks like you guys are creating your own show so which it probably explains why you're single I'm gonna leave good night got some laughs from a couple of people over here who are now rooting for the poor failing comic on stage got off stage went to the bar and said [ __ ] it I'm gonna get drunk and so I the bartender delivered a beer and as I'm delivering the beer I take my tape recorder and I set it on the bar and it's still rolling and I go holy [ __ ] this is the black box of an airplane it has all the data that led up to that crash I said I'm gonna take this home and take every line these [ __ ] said and write a comeback to it Wow and I turned it off and I said that to the recorder and I went home and I wrote a comeback to every single line those guys said Wow and that's what and then I said that's never gonna happen to me again and so that's what I did so it was like that was empowering yeah to realize that wait a second I've got the data right here I can I can write a line to come back to everything they said what went wrong do you think I had a couple of jokes new jokes that failed mmm and so they saw that as a weakness and this audience is not a comedy audience this audience doesn't is like they're there you can talk while the music is playing so but and all sudden I'm more of an imposition to them this time so most of the time it worked out well and it really got a chance to work those chops but this time they just didn't want to hear from me and these guys noticed it and decided to take advantage of it because they want to feel better about themselves so that's what happened that's one of my favorite lines oh look he's bombing let's [ __ ] with never forget that beautiful just that epitomizes just a comedian on stage failing and just the sharks in the audience that's so oh it's so funny but the other thing we have to understand too is the audience psychology right Bobby Slayton in a documentary called it's called it's alone up there interesting ok it's done by a Canadian filmmaker and I'm I'm in it he interviewed me and I I watched the thing Bobby Slaton's there Bobby Slayton says it's an us against them mentality and I'm like that's so far from the truth because we've sat in those seats and we've watched comedian after comedian get up on the stage what is our disposition in general it's curiosity who's next what are they got so it's never nuts against them mentality just knowing that stepping on the stage changes your entire psychology of what this audience is looking for they want to laugh they're curious yeah so why would you say it's an us against them thing maybe that's part of his persona cuz he was the Bulldog of calm yeah so you got to stay that Bulldog guy but it's got to be a different age for him now this PC environment oh my god no I hear Seinfeld getting upset about it all these guys gonna well write new jokes adjust you know you can't tell society what to do you can sort of press against it a little bit make your complaint but they're gonna they're gonna have that they're gonna default to what they that's a that's a generational thing now you're dealing with it's not a it's not something you can change overnight you know you can mess around with them a little bit but they're it's like doing Trump jokes the moment you do a Trump joke you gotta tensing up attention that room up you know so it's like somebody's gonna want to fight you eventually so that's what happens that's throw beer bottles I had again I had a guy want to fight me at the Comedy Store doing a Trump joke brilliant three and he said wanted to fight me so he got up approached the stage oh that must been more recently yeah that was recently oh so you're still out in the yours young man I love getting out right in a Comedy Store like I'll go to the improv oh oh did the Icehouse hole I do corporates I still whatever I can I go out and do something okay good cuz it's like I'd love it I still got to connect with people right sharpen the sword - that's exactly right you know there are times and like I got to be doing more I got it and I'm doing it at least twice a week but it's like you know doing like Comedy Store The Improv but to be able to go out for a week is different you know do be able to do a cruise but then you know I can't be gone because they're still having it now I have an eight-year-old at home and my wife is an airline pilot mm-hmm so she's gone I'm home you know so it's uh that's good we got to work that out yeah but that is the mindset of a comedian as you see me even like Joe Rogan multi-multi-millionaire still on stage multiple times a week you know sign soaps still on tour like as a comedian I mean you're the stage is really that's the laboratory we could write we can ride all day you got to take it to the stage yeah the audience is always the final judge yes even though you think you have 98% odds the joke is gonna work there's still that 2% you may lay something out in flatline yeah and then you'll ask him why didn't you laugh at that and they and they usually tell you you know and I've had comedians on here say their success rate is like 1 out of 20 but I feel and the comedian's listening go to your website go to Jerry's website and look at the reet like well Steve Martin says do it right you might as well go do it we're gonna we'll link it in the show notes to this episode as well just you can jump to it but it's gonna help you like the success of your jokes it's gonna help you write more jokes better and faster I would imagine yeah yeah and you own begin to the key is I think understanding why why it works mm-hmm once you understand why it works it like oh [ __ ] yeah okay I got it you know and you're white a John Doerr House author of the comic tool box said the rule of nine when you write ten jokes nine are gonna suck get over it but I think once you understand I've seen in my classes every tonight we do current events jokes seven out of ten work Wow are really effective jokes and I'm I try to be very objective about it and go okay is that a good joke or just I'm just a big fan of their them overcoming an obstacle and so that's a solid joke and then also the class will laugh right so seven out of ten they usually get that nail it some nights six out of ten but it's rarely one out of ten they're usually on point more than they are not so but Jen they've got to still maintain that discipline and regimented practice yes every day man every every day just like a musician so you kids know out there watching and listening you have your marching orders you do the work all right do the work you're gonna want to listen to this with multiple times because there was a lot this is this may be the longest one we've ever done we had fun though yeah it was yeah it was exciting cuz I mean I've been a fan of you and it's cool to see people sharing all this comedy information but with the right intent you know right so before we get out of here is there anything else you want the world to know or any closing advice you have for comedians I think you said it do that it's all in doing the work if you really love this and want to have a level of a success you got to make that commitment to do the work every day every day like every day you're gonna Jean parrot said I write every single day except for the weekends because I made my wife that promise but he set a schedule and I guess that's the important thing is in your date book and your schedule on your phone set as scheduled I show up for work at this time and if you don't do that you won't because I find no one I'm gonna wait till I'm inspired that could be weeks yeah to get that right signal of inspiration rather than just sitting down creating inspiration you know as I doing [ __ ] you can sit down my wife is like a smartphone my wife is like a bank and then list bank you're gonna find something in their release or that relates to that now my wife is like about us she always wanted me make 24 hour to park pause so it's like she's like an ATM at a bank now you just tweak it and it's like just finding a second element in practicing with it and you'll find something in there that fits most of the comedian's won't do the work they won't like 2% this is the last thing I'll share Sunshine's law it's a philosophy professor gave to my dad and he passed to me 2% of the population excels at their specialty 18% or average or just above and complacent staying there the rest of the 80% are in a declining scale of incompetence do you want to be acceptable or do you want to be exceptional Jerry Corley everyone thank you so much my pleasure for me that the timing of this was so perfect as well so please let let the listeners know how they can keep up with you support you like my listeners not my listeners the hot breath averse is what we call this like they reach out to guests they'll reach they'll reach out they'll be reaching out with questions I just had Craig shoemaker was on here he's great comic in San Francisco who loves the show reached out to him ended up driving to LA to meet with Craig like the the hot breath of ours is very engaged and these are people who love comedy and you've really done such a great job of creating a community too I mean just listen to your seminar I'm gonna I got a tune in because you had breatharians or breath of hers like reference and yes it's like that's awesome such a good tool to use to create the community in fact I was I went back to the room and I toyed with the idea of what to apply to my sort of community my tribe yeah and I'm thinking as an angle how can we all how can I help you all become joke doctors yeah so just based on what you had said and I saw that was so meant that moved me I said well I want to be a part of this community you know because it was so neat that's why church is so effective because it you know I'm not a religious person but I love the idea of the community you know people getting together so kudos to you for that and thank you and yeah man I'm very active on twitter twitter is I hate Facebook because it takes too much of my time although I'm starting a group now based on what you said oh yeah because I do have a Facebook group that's called Corley's kids it's only four people have been in my classes but I want to open something up some more to people that are on like YouTube and I think Facebook's the better vehicle for a group certainly than Twitter yeah people contact him contact me on Twitter at at Java and I recite Rai to respond to everybody people ask me for advice some help sometimes I'll fix a joke if I have the time I'll help somebody but I'm always active there because it's quick you're in you're out you can do it on the fly right Facebook I always get distracted with other stuff and now next thing you know it's 90 minutes of my time on the window but definitely going to do that group but Twitter it's a great way to reach out to me okay yeah and your website is stand-up comedy clinic ok cool calm perfect alright well Jerry Corley I feel like our communities have a lot of parallels and over that a doubt you know I'm hoping this is not the the first of many times we can go this is gonna be this is gonna be synergistic I can tell when you were up there I go oh we're gonna have a good relationship this because he's got a good philosophy that helping people and it's like this will be fun yeah I was a little nervous with you and I was excited you since you stayed cuz I just watched yours a few hours earlier I was like oh man he does is professionally I was a little nervous that you were sitting there and like I don't know if you were listening or just like well let's just see what this kid his kids all about I want you going watch it going well he's an [ __ ] no no it was like I still don't know why he said that man I will every I've never what was neat about him saying that no you're being an [ __ ] I'm serious you're being an [ __ ] and because I've never seen a roomful of Cobb comics beep be Bill wildered at the same time what's he doing serious he's just being comic you know in some comics we were like trying to speak up and I was trying to be it's okay it's okay I'm up here I can control this but it I'll put the link to that episode in the show notes cuz I was recording the whole thing yeah and you can listen to it and hear for yourself yep great all right Jerry Corley thanks about hot breath my man my pleasure a lot of fun that was a fire hey hot brethren and sistren thanks a lot for watching this video if you love comedy as much as we do here at hot breath click the subscribe button to join the hot breath averse and then watch more videos to get even more comedy tips and stop sucking at comedy go ahead click it