Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
How do you follow up an audienceless special?
The answer is his 2021 HBO special,Red Blue Green.
His work raises questions like: What does it mean for a comedian to make their pain laughable?
And how essential are the laughs anyway?
Tune in toGood Oneevery Thursday onApple Podcasts,Spotify,Stitcher,Overcast, orwherever you get your podcasts.
And at the end of the relationship, she was like, Youre not funny.
She didnt mean that I was bad at comedy she was like, Its too real.
Youre showcasing too much.
Dont attempt to exploit it and mine it for content, but actually get to the root of it.
It has changed how I view my own work and also the work of others and stand-up in general.
I remember my first time featuring, I had a great set.
Just the rhythm of it was so crisp.
And it was some of the worst comedy I had ever seen in my life.
I was like,I dont even want these laughs.
This has been tainted.
So at some point I became disenchanted.
Its hard to appreciate laughter as its own metric when I see it being generated pretty cheaply.
But Im there because I have things to say.
Bo famously took a five-year break up untilInside, and Jerrod hasnt performed since8.
Josh hasnt even put out a special; hes doing a lot more writing and producing.
Its like Michael Jordan in his retirement, being like the NBA has gotten worse.
You just have a go at make the thing that you wish existed.
If Im being completely honest, inRed Blue Green, I think we did a better job of that.
InDrew Michael, I think the construct and the content were not perfectly married.
I have my own creative regrets about that.
In this case, I wanted to see to it that it was tied to what was being said.
Theres a bunch of ways to interpret it.
If you want to get further into it, its like its open to even more people.
Its like this recursive loop, and youre watching it on a screen.
