Daily Dose of English 176
Stand-up
Daily Dose of English 176
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you can make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about stand-up, which is a style of comedy. It is not the action to stand up physically. It is a thing, a kind of comedy that is really quite popular in a lot of the world. It is one of the most pure forms of comedy because you just get up in front of people and you tell some jokes, right? That is what standup is. The best standup comedians have like whole routines and sets and there's different styles. There's a lot of different ways to do standup, but the essence is that you are in front of people and you tell them jokes to make them laugh, right? That's standup. And I'm not currently watching a lot of standup, but standup comedy is something that was very important to me growing up, and I watched a lot of it, I listened to a lot of it, and I think it's a really, really cool art form, a really good form of expression, because it's this great mixture of storytelling, truth, human connection, and that sort of thing. Right, there's a, one of the, I guess, tips for good comedy is talking about things that are relatable, right? So everybody, or all the good comics really talk about something that other people can imagine, right? And that's one of the reasons why people that are just so, so different from you aren't as funny, right? Because if you're listening to a comedian who's just, has a, a trillion dollars, right? They're so expensive, they're so rich, they're so different from you are that their life is just in every aspect is completely different. They're not really going to be funny to you because the things they find funny aren't funny to you, right? Because you don't really know what they mean. That same thing can apply across cultures, right? It can be really difficult to understand comedy from a culture that you don't intimately know well because you don't get the jokes, you don't get the references, or there's a lot of things that just don't make sense to you and aren't funny. That relatability, being able to relate to something, to understand something, is very important for comedy. And the best comics in their area usually really lean into that and make jokes that are relatable, that people can understand, that can laugh about or laugh with. Even if they haven't been literally in that situation, they understand the general idea. Um, and so I'll start out by talking about a comedian that I quite like. His name is Bert Kreischer. Um, he's a little bit, he's quite crass. He swears a lot. He drinks on stage, talks about doing drugs, right? So if that's not your thing, don't watch his comedy. But if you're interested in some like, what I'd say is very like white American comedy, right? It's, he's very funny, but he's definitely like very American. Um, he's good. He's very good. He's very funny, very charismatic. Um, and, but he tells like these stories that literally nobody that's listening to them has been in that situation. Right. So his most famous story is about getting involved with the Russian mafia when he was 20, 21 or something. Right. Um, and nobody's done that. Right. I mean, maybe you have, but basically nobody's done that. But the way that he tells the story and the things that he talks about, we can think of in our minds, we can relate to, we can understand. And that's important, right? So it's not necessarily about telling jokes about things that everybody has done, but things that everybody can relate to and understand the feeling of, the problems of, whatever that is. Um, that story is great. Um, if you want to watch it, look up Bert Kreischer, the machine. It's a very, it's very funny. Um, and it's, it's like partly true as well, which is funny. Um, but that's another thing about standup is it doesn't matter if it's true or not. That's something that I quite like about standup is that it's a lot more about crafting the story and telling a good joke rather than being like truthful. You're not going up there to tell the truth to people. You're going up there to make them laugh. And, um, however, most good standup is based in truth. Right? And so pretty much all the stories you hear in standup comedy sketches have at least something true about them. Whether that they did happen or they happen a little differently, or it's actually two or three stories combined into one. There's usually something that's not literally true about them, but they often come out of true things. And one of the reasons is because often reality is way funnier than like fiction can be. Some things that happen that are really real and true are just crazy. They're so weird. And that can kind of make them funnier because there's just random things that happen that you go, how is this real? I'm sure you've seen some of those videos that are recorded from door like those fancy doorbells or people's just phones that are recording something else and you get something very just funny recorded on camera. Um, but like you could never have thought that up, right? There's actually a phrase or a saying that you might hear is, um, like, When people say something crazy or that's hard to believe, you can be like, I'm not creative enough to make this a joke. This is just true. And that's absolutely true. I've had things like that happen to me where it's like, I could never have thought of this in a million years. This is not what I would think of as funny, but it's just insane, right? And so that's what's something I think is also fun about stand-up comedy is that it is this form of telling a joke, which may or may not be fully true, but it usually does have that kernel of truth. That's a good word, kernel of truth, that small amount of truth that makes it really feel more real. And so don't necessarily believe everything that you hear in stand-up comedy, obviously, but do enjoy it, right? That's why it's there. It's for fun. It's for entertainment and having a good time, which are synonyms. Some other comedians that I grew up listening to and watching a lot of are Dave Chappelle, John Mulaney, Oh, geez. Can I remember these names off the top of my head? I didn't look this up before. John Mulaney, I definitely listen to a lot. Bo Burnham, he's a little bit different in his stand-up. It's a lot more about songs and singing and musical comedy, but I love musical comedy, so it's great. Oh, God. There's... Oh, Brian Regan, another good one. He, he was, he's pretty old at this point. I don't know when he was like performing probably like early two thousands. Um, and he was known for very clean comedy, right? So he didn't really swear, didn't talk about, um, uh, like adult topics, but was still very, very funny, which is, I think is really cool. Um, because he's funny for everybody in a way that like a Disney movie is fun for everybody. You don't need to talk about, um, adult topics or swear to make things funny. which is I think a good example. Um, I also listened to some like Jeff Foxworthy, which I don't know why he's like a, a, like a redneck comic. Um, but it's also pretty good. So if you want to like hear some, uh, uh, redneck American comedy, definitely listen to that. Oh, there's, there's so many more comics that I listened to that I just can't think of right now. Um, Ah, this is going to annoy me, and I don't know what to Google to help find it. I am sorry, but those are the names I'm going to put out there, but there's a lot of them out there. There's a lot of really good comics working. John Mulaney is definitely... Oh, Gabriel Iglesias is another really good one. What I like about his comedy is that he also adds a lot of sound effects and makes the show a lot more fun that way. He makes sound effects, makes noises, and it becomes a little more goofy, and I definitely like that about comedy as well. When you add a little bit more fun to it, But John Mulaney I think is one that I watched many specials, several times growing up. And he's known for a bit of drier comedy. And this dry humor, dry comedy is when you are a lot more straight faced and your jokes are told almost as if they're not jokes, right? So this British humor is known for like dry, very dry humor. If you've ever watched something like Monty Python and the Holy Grail or any Monty Python sketches and a lot of British humor is quite dry in the sense that it's just like you say it. not like it's a joke, but then it's very funny. And so that's what I really like about John Melanious is sort of matter of fact, just saying stories, but they're also very funny. And you can tell that he's practiced it. He's very good at it. And he's definitely, I think, an all-time favorite in the kinds of stories he tells, in the jokes, in the The pacing as well, that's definitely really important. How fast or slow do you go with the jokes to make sure that they land well? So yeah, there's a lot of really good comedians out there. I can't think of any other off the top of my head. But if you have a Netflix subscription, they actually have a lot of comedy specials on there. That's like an hour-long stand-up show. Um, because they're really easy to make, um, for Netflix, like cheap, they're very cheap rather. And they get a lot of views because. What they usually do is they have a, a comedian who goes on tour and they record the special over like two or three nights. So they do the same show two or three times, and then they just take the best, um. they edit together the best takes or something like that. I'm not exactly sure if they always do that or if it's always the same audience, but that means that they only have like a couple of hours of footage total, and then that's an entire hour long special. It's like the half of the length of a movie, but it's for so little of the price, right? Like how much does a comedy special cost? cost to produce? Let's see if I can get an answer with that long of a thing. I don't want to create my own. I just want to know what's the average production budget of a professionally produced hour-long stand-up comedy special? At least three cameramen. So yeah, this looks like if you're, if you're a small creator, you could do it for $6,000. Um, Netflix definitely puts in at least 10 times the amount. Um, so like, let's say even $60,000 plus like whatever you pay the comedian. So well under a well, well under a million dollars for sure. Um, actually not for sure. Let's even round up a million dollars, but like a regular, um, TV show or a movie, low movie production costs, that sort of thing. Like how much does a movie cost these days? In recent years, movies like The Last Duels, that's $100 million. Where else can I see prices? 100, $150 million. Da da da da da. Some low-budget movies can be really cheap. Oh, yeah, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, like I mentioned, is $400,000. Get Out, oh, there we go. Get Out is a good, low-budget movie for $4.5 million. So at least a quarter or a fifth of the price of a movie for a good show. So that's why they're really common on Netflix. Oh, The Grand Budapest Hotel, a movie that I love, was $25 million. There you go. Um, anyways, I'm going way off topic. We're 13 minutes into this episode. Um, I got distracted, but thank you very much for listening. I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something. Uh, do you have a favorite comedian or comedy special, maybe in your native language? Let me know down below, but I'll see you again tomorrow. Bye.
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