37 comedians remember their first time onstage after 9/11 and how the attacks changed comedy forever.
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What differentiates comedians from your funniest friend is not that they are funnier.
Its that they can be funny to strangers, on demand.
A lot of people can be funny and knock down the pins.
Its setting up the pins that werent there to begin with.
So on September 11, 2001, the question facing stand-up comedians was not just practical, but existential.
Comedians wondered if people would be able to laugh not when,if, as inif ever again.
They didnt have to wonder long; stand-ups tend to be pathologically incapable of turning down stage time.
Shows stayed on the books, so comedians performed, and audiences came to see them.
But imagine trying to joke about airplane food on September 12.
Many comedians didnt talk about it or simply made a passing reference at the top of their sets.
The comedians whodidfeel an obligation to talk it out were sometimes received positively and sometimes received combatively.
In the following conversations with 37 comedians, the more significant role stand-ups played begins to materialize.
Many of the comedians took a populist approach.
Every comedians response to the attack wasnt necessarily positive, just like every Americans wasnt.
Comedy didnt save the country after 9/11, but it did reflect it.
In this article
TheresgoingtobeawarbetweenAmericaandtheMiddleEast,sogetready.
I called her the morning of 9/11 and said, Are you seeing whats going on?!
And she replied, I told you so.
So I took her advice.
My first joke was Hi everyone.
My names Ahmed Ahmed … and I had nothing to do with it.
c’mon dont follow me out to my car after the show.
That got a few chuckles, then I proceeded into more self-deprecating jokes, and the crowd loosened up.
The manager called me and said, You guys are getting death threats.
Its probably not a good idea to continue with the shows.
Thank you for making us laugh.
Two weeks after 9/11, I got a call from theWall Street Journal,who wanted to interview me.
A week later I was on the front page.
That article changed my life.
This caught the attention of Levity Group, who then pitched theAxis of Evilshow to Comedy Central.
When it aired, we were the first-ever Middle Eastern comedy show on Comedy Central.
A television online grid filmed the tour.
Once that aired we became instantly famous in the Middle East.
It felt like the Blue Man Group.
Louie Anderson
After 9/11, I headed to Las Vegas.
It was an eerie drive but somehow comforting.
We hugged and shook hands as if we hadnt seen each other in a lifetime.
Would the world ever be the same?
I stayed there until our show opened back up.
Im a descendant of people pleasers, caregivers, and comforters.
I used my moms adage: Be nice to people, Louie.
You never know what kind of day theyve had before theyve seen you.
But I did know what kind of day we all had.
We had to go on and not let anything or anyone stop us from living.
Little did we know that 2020 was not far away.
Todd Barry
I was in NYC on 9/11.
My first set back was at the Comedy Cellar on 9/14.
I realized the audience wasnt looking for my hot take on 9/11.
I felt it was the only thing I could do that actually might help.
Most everyone seemed to have stopped performing, and I felt driven to.
I dont know if I would have performed at other places.
I didnt know if someone in the audience knew someone who died or had lost a family member.
The audience was pretty amazing considering what we had all been through.
And San Francisco knows comedy; its in the DNA of that city.
I wish I had taped it.
After that show, it became a little bit easier, but it took awhile.
I wasnt; I just did it.
It was what I had to do as much for me as for that audience.
Alonzo Bodden
I remember going to Vegas.
It was shooting at the MGM Grand.
I remember Vegas being empty, deserted.
I think they said normal weekend occupancy was over 90 percent, and we were under 25 percent.
I joked that Vegas was so empty the hookers were handing out their own flyers.
I didnt do jokes about the attack.
I joked more about the aftermath.
The crowds loved it; they always do.
We comics relieve the pressure, and people were angry.
I wonNext Big Star, so that was cool.
I also remember flying about two weeks after when the airlines just started up.
Ittouchedmetomycore,andIjuststartedtalkingaboutwhathappened.
Elayne Boosler
Like everyone, I was numb.
I was booked to go back to a 700-seat room in Laughlin, Nevada, the weekend of 9/14.
Of course, we called to let them know I wouldnt be coming.
They said You cannot cancel.
Were sold out and no one has canceled their reservation.
People are expecting you to come.
We drove from L.A. to Laughlin.
The town has a lot of electronic marquees on restaurants, hotels, on everything.
It was the first time I laughed since 9/11.
I remember being in kind of a numb dream state as I walked onstage.
Then I looked at the audience.
Most everyone was holding hands with the person they came with.
The looks on their faces were so hopeful, so expectant.
It touched me to my core, and I just started talking about what happened.
I remember the jokes were pointed, but my delivery was more gentle.
Slowly I got to my regular material, and the laughter was wonderful.
I was afraid people would be too sad to laugh.
It was such an emotional experience.
It seems like the climate was all about us leaning on each other to help heal from this tragedy.
The audience was just as afraid as every performer getting onstage.
The climate in New York felt like one giant nerve that you were afraid to touch.
You could look at the audience and see how tense they were.
Once they started laughing, it was such a release.
So much energy had been pent-up so much pain, anxiety, sadness, and worry.
Thats the first time Ive laughed in weeks.
Thank you for what you do.
I remember feeling like a superhero in that moment.
When I decided to do stand-up seriously, it was days after 9/11.
Most of my stuff was self-deprecating Im so big-boned, isnt that wild?
pop in shit, but I didnt care.
I didnt talk about that day onstage because it was too soon.
It will always be too soon.
I felt fine about it.
and the audience responded enthusiastically.
He said of course and I did, and pretty much got the same response.
IdontthinktothisdayIveever,evenindirectly,reallycrackedajokeaboutit.
DeRay Davis
I remember being in L.A.
I was laying in bed, and then my brother comes in the room: Wake up.
Then he turned on the TV for me.
Im in disbelief; Im lost.
Im thinking,What went wrong?Because everybodys like, This is a direct terrorist attack.
I had never really heard those words other than in history.
I was supposed to go to New York.
I was like, Wait, do we still go to New York?
Is New York still alive?
Getting back onstage was immediate.
It was very, very sad for everybody.
You felt like one of the states was missing, and I wondered about the comics in New York.
I couldnt find a joke in it.
I dont think to this day Ive ever, even indirectly, really cracked a joke about it.
But audiences showed up, because audiences needed it, and they needed more outlets other than just CNN.
The biggest part of it was the fear that it’s possible for you to be touched.
Here we thought we were untouchable.
ThatwasthefirsttimeinmycomedycareerthatIwaslike,Oh,youcandothat.
Joe DeRosa
On the one-year anniversary of 9/11, I had been doing stand-up for a year.
These guys are firemen and cops.
And it got a laugh.
They were the original Trump jokes.
And I feel like that, somewhere along the line, since 9/11, has gone away.
Werethereahandfulofpeoplethatdidntlikeit?Ofcoursetherewere.
Jeff Dunham
A year later, we were still looking for Osama bin Laden.
Nobody knew if he was alive or dead.
So wheres Osama bin Laden?
I suddenly had this thought one day:I know where he is.
No, Im going to go where it counts.
I was booked at Bananas Comedy Club in New Jersey, six miles from Ground Zero.
It couldnt have gone any better.
I used the Dead Osama [character] for maybe a year and a half, two years.
Well, the threat of terror, and the idiots that did that.
So I said, Boy, theres a lot of material there.
So I created Achmed the Dead Terrorist.
Were there a handful of people that didnt like it?
Of course there were.
WhenIstarteddoingsets,Iignoredtheattacks.Thatwasmystrategy:Justgetlaughs.
The fear was that what had happened in New York City was only the first wave.
They were still searching for survivors.
The clubs stopped doing shows, and when they returned, the crowds were extremely sparse.
When I started doing sets, I ignored the attacks.
That was my strategy: Just get laughs.
But I dont do topical or political anyway.
And it struck me that, in this circumstance, comedy just wasnt on the same level as music.
ThenLetterman,Daily Show,SNL, and of courseTheOnionput out that great issue.
So I recall it took about three weeks to get stand-up back.
Ididnotthink,atthetime,itwouldbegoodtobeonstage.
Marina Franklin
I was home.
I live in Harlem.
I did not think, at the time, it would be good to be onstage.
I thought, honestly, nothing was funny.
I was still getting people in the room by standing on the street and doing what they called barking.
That did not seem to be the right thing to do at the time.
This was the week of maybe even a day after.
I was shut down immediately for saying this.
The anger from this comic was too much for the moment, and I guess I hit a nerve.
The comic told me that I am not a real comic for saying that.
One of the waitresses admitted that the comic was being too harsh.
It was a moment that possibly defined how I approached topics that are raw culturally.
My very first ironic observation was that on 9/11 nobody rang the emergency-broadcast system alarm.
THIS ISONLYA TEST!!
But when the actual emergency happened, we froze!
That joke actually worked very well.
After all, we never did hear any warnings, did we?
Judy Gold
I gave birth to my son Ben on August 9, 2001.
I was back onstage within three weeks.
The clubs were closed on 9/11 and several days following.
On September 13, Ben had a 104 fever and was very ill.
The pediatrician sent us to NYU Hospital for a spinal tap.
I remember saying to the nurse, Is it busy?
and she replied, We wish.
We left the hospital four days later on September 17.
The outside of the hospital was covered with photos of the missing and contact phone numbers.
Rosh Hashanah began at sundown, and as I walked into my apartment, I started feeling very ill.
I caught whatever Ben was sick with.
I recovered and got back onstage the following week.
I went to Stand Up NY on West 78th Street.
It is in my neighborhood, so I was only away from Ben for about an hour or so.
And every single building was papered with photos of the missing.
IfIdidnt want to laugh someone who lives and breathes jokes how was the audience going to feel?
But I knew if I waited any longer, it would be harder to get back onstage.
I was ready to figure this out.
I remember talking to other comics about how we couldnt do any George W. Bush jokes anymore.
We all had W jokes.
Im always prepared, but there was no way to prepare for this.
I had rid myself of my usual comedy weaponry.
That is the job of a comedian.
I remember the audience responding well, but we were all broken and scared.
9/11 was the epitome of too soon.
Gilbert Gottfried
I was booked for the Hugh Hefner roast.
Somewhere between me being booked and the actual roast, September 11 happened.
A lot of guests either canceled or could not get flights.
We were going through with the roast anyway.
Oh, and did I mention that the Hugh Hefner roast was taking place in New York?
Well, it was.
Now, if there is something that should not be said, I like to say it.
I have to catch a flight to L.A.
I couldnt get a direct flight.
We have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.
Well, no one in the history of show business has ever lost an audience worse.
There was booing and hissing.
One guy yelled out Too soon!
which I thought meant that I did not take a long enough pause between the setup and the punchline.
It has to do with loads of incest and bestiality, and those are the clean parts.
To my shock, the audience went from brewing and hating me to laughing uproariously.
The laughter just kept building.
When I got to the punchline, people were cheering.
One review said Its like he performed a mass tracheotomy on the crowd.
Itseemedtomethatthewayyoufightterrorismis:Whateveritwasthatbotheredtheterrorists,doitmore.
Penn Jillette
In any sort of disaster, everybody does what they do more.
The generals want to do war more.
The politicians want to do politics more.
And the free-speech people want to do free speech more.
Teller and I said, What can we do to help free speech here?
Wed been asked to doRocky Horroron Broadway, and it was not in our plans at all.
Well, then Im going to go on Broadway wearing garter belts.
If you need me, Ill be wearing fishnet.
I didnt want to do any of that.
Teller and I came back doing the most old-fashioned magic show weve ever done.
And the whole show felt light and breezy.
We took that out.
We had a thing in our show with guns.
We took that out.
Irvine is pretty notoriously red-state-y.
How can you be funny now?
And with my background, I feel like Im coming into the dragons lair.
And the guy was like, No, you should come.
I think people will need to laugh.
Itll be good for everybody.
And listen, just if it makes you feel any better, my wife is actually Turkish.
So shes from that part of the world as well.
That helped me feel a little more okay.
I flipped my act so that I did not lead with being Iranian.
I remember I bought an American flag and put it on the back of my car.
She just was laughing at me in a funny way.
She was like, Oh my God, look at Maz Jobrani.
Hes got his flag to try and blend in, and I go, Hell yeah, Marilyn.
Aron Kader
Id started stand-up in 99, so I was barely two years in.
So I did the relationship material and bombed.
After thatshow, I said,F this, Im just going to do what Ive got to do.
I cant pussyfoot around it.
When you start out, people will tell you, Youve got to be comfortable with the silence.
People who are comfortable in the silence are always the better comedians.
And it was in that silence that I was noticing there was this curiosity, this fascination almost.
Then the reactions started to come back: This is cathartic.
It was like,Geez, everybodys just going to ignore this?
Get the fuck on the back of the bus.
I was in the back of the room, and I literally just yelled Boo!
I was just waiting for him to get offstage and I go, Hey, Carlos, whatsthatabout?
He goes, No, no.
Thats not what I was saying.
Im like, You literally just told us to get on the back of the bus.
No, but what I was saying there is … And I was like, Come on, man.
It was just hypocritical.
Idontlikethatittakesstufflikethatforustocometogether,butthereitis.
I spent the day with friends watching TV.
It took five hours for the comics I was hanging with to start making jokes.
Not about New York.
Not about the dead.
Not even hacky about the Saudis.
My buddy sighed, Los Angeles, itsnot about you.
And it was the first laugh.
An hour later I got a call to do a show.
The booker said, A bunch of people canceled.
You willing to go up?
So I picked up a set that night.
Just for a minute.
Like the pandemic, people rose to the occasion to help, to cheer up, to support.
I dont like that it takes stuff like that for us to come together, but there it is.
Laurie Kilmartin
I performed either 9/13 or 9/14 at a youth hostel in Harlem.
Even so, I remember that everyone looked stunned and tired.
I believe Jim Norton was onstage when I walked into the room.
I was wondering if he would mention the World Trade Center; he did not.
In fact, I think I walked in on a dick joke, which was a huge relief.
As for my own set, I remember doing road-punch in stuff, including more dick jokes.
Jen Kirkman
I cant remember how soon I got back up maybe two weeks?
I wasnt a headliner yet nor doing comedy for a living.
I had been doing comedy for five years and was working a day job that I hated in NYC.
I felt okay about it because I saw other comedians getting back to it.
It felt subversive to even watch live comedy.
We cant be scared into staying home or thinking its inappropriate to laugh.
And yet the media was also pushing this opposite narrative that irony was dead after 9/11.
I never understood what they meant.
How can an entiremoodbe dead and why?
Just because some sincerity had been injected into our blood doesnt mean we were post-comedy.
Shortly after, I played D.C. and donated to the Pentagon, since I come from a military family.
You had to get back and laugh, but you had to do it in a respectful way.
Wewerelivinginthesortofbody-dustcloudofthateventformonths,sotherewasnotoosoon.
Marc Maron
What I remember is the way [the Comedy Cellar] felt.
Nobody was secure in their sense of reality, and people were clearly freaked the fuck out.
It was like shock.
The laughter was quick and weird.
Clearly what we were doing wasnt really a comfortable or effective show.
It was just doing something, because at that point, Lower Manhattan was closed.
It was constant police activity and excavation activity.
People were sleepwalking in a state of profound shock, so that was your audience.
I saw comedy as a platform that you worked through things on.
For me, the challenge was:How do we make this funny?
There was no way to not be in the shadow of it.
There was a tension.
Read Marons extended response
Thoseweeksandmonthsthatfollowed,Iadmit,IwasproudIwasacomedian.
I had a good set, drank too much, and went home long after I should have.
But my alarm didnt wake me up.
After ignoring the first 700 rings, I finally picked up.
It was a receptionist from the production company I was working for.
She told me that I didnt need to come in for obvious reasons.
The reasons werent obvious to me.
I never texted her back.
After a few weeks, I did start doing stand-up again.
People were going back to the clubs not in droves, but in trickles.
And slowly, as a nation, we cried less each day.
Those weeks and months that followed, I admit, I was proud I was a comedian.
It felt like I was contributing something.
I felt like maybe this job was important after all.
Maybe I was helping people.
Jerry Minor
My vague memory is doing theASSSSCATshow at UCB Theater on 23rd and 6th.
9/11 hit on a Tuesday, and I was scheduled to go back to L.A. on that Thursday.
David Cross was the monologist, and everyone was on edge.
It was the most awkward show.
It took a few months before I was comfortable onstage.
OnSeptember10,Iwenttosleepawhiteguy,andonSeptember11,IwokeupanArab.
Then it became clear it was much more than an accident.
I was not thinking about comedy.
I think my first stand-up show was only a little over a week later at Stand Up New York.
The audience laughed inappropriately loudly.
It was not a comedy show, it was a therapy session.
It felt like they were hugging us with their laughter.
Obeidallah is a very Muslim name.
Servant of Allah, serving God, is what it means in English.
He goes, I dont think you should do any jokes about being Arab onstage.
My own cousin was attacked.
I went onstage using Dean Joseph for like a week there and a couple other places.
Then after a week of doing that, I went back to Dean Obeidallah.
There were incidents with comics.
I dont want to say their names.
I went up to him and said, Youre actually encouraging violence against brown people.
He was like, Its just a joke.
Im like, Youre encouraging violence.
I dont think we talked for years.
There were hate crimes spiking, so a joke like that was really dangerous.
And people were laughing, the crowd was cheering, and youre like,Thats frightening.
I didnt talk about being of Arab heritage for like six or seven months.
Thats a shorthand of my life.
I now identify as an unapologetic minority.
I view everything the news, my world, everything through the prism of it as a minority now.
I wanted to remain a white person.
I joke that the 20th anniversary of me no longer being white is coming up.
Iknew,rightasIwassayingit,thatcomedywasgoingtosuckforawhile.
Patton Oswalt
I was onstage less than a week later.
I asked what channel, and he said, It doesnt matter, and then he hung up.
The walk from my bedroom to the TV in the living room was eighteen nightmares in as many steps.
press the TV and Im living in a different world.
I was onstage at the Largo the next Monday, the 17th.
So was everyone else.
No onedidnttalk about it on that show.
I think Sarah Silverman and Kevin Seccia went up.
I cant remember anyone else.
But were the bloated, late-70s Zeppelin and Emerson, Lake & Palmer of religion and violence.
These guys are the Ramones.
Theyll carry their own amps while were arguing for bigger fog machines.
Greg Proops
The weeks after 9/11 were tempestuous, to say the very least.
The country was so full of confusion and anger.
A comic is supposed to sort through all that and find humor and common ground.
Not an easy task for us, or the audience, who were looking for release.
My first sets were in England a month afterward.
The flights and airports were eerily empty.
The U.K. crowds were also out of character by being most sympathetic.
English crowds have a pathological hatred of sentiment.
The act of terror was not lost on British crowds.
The common ground is where the humor lies.
Tragedy shared is the mother of empathy, and empathy leads to laughter.
No,comedyisimportanttoo.Everythingthatusedtobeisstillimportant.
That, obviously, got canceled.
A week or two later, I had a show at the Improv comedy club in Irvine, California.
I remember driving down there, thinking,This is crazy.
Is there going to be anybody in the audience?
I think it was just because people were ready to just have something normal going on in their life.
When onstage, I just acknowledged the situation.
I hope everybody here has a good time.
People were ready to laugh, man.
But I remember being onstage also recognizing,This isnt all about comedy.
People were like, We miss the world the way it was.
I mean, nobody was naive.
It wasnt like people were going, Okay, its time to forget.
Everything that used to be is still important.
I had not one joke about 9/11.
There will never be anything funny about 9/11.
I have never done a joke about it.
I wanted to show that you werent going to beat America.
At the end of the show, a white couple walks up to us, crying.
Me and Mike think we have offended them.
So I start to apologize and go, I didnt mean to hurt your feelings.
Just because Im pro-America dont mean Im anti-anybody else.
But this time we wanted to show that we back our president, we back our troops.
I just wanted to give a respite or levity.
Our hearts were broken.
Lizz Winstead
I got onstage two weeks later, at a benefit in Minneapolis.
I explored the common musings, Why do they hate us?
Yes,itsterrorism.Yes,itstragic.But,foracomedian,letstalkthisthrough.
Roy Wood Jr.
On 9/11, I was working in Jackson, Mississippi.
9/11 happened, and I get an email from the club around noon.
They canceled the show.
The next night, I have a show in Jackson at a bar.
I had called the bar and theyre like, Yeah, were open.
So, as far as Im concerned, I have a job to do.
Yes, its terrorism.
Yes, its tragic.
But, for a comedian, lets talk this through; lets figure out a way to process it.
But I wasnt really thinking about it like that.
Id only been doing comedy for three years.
I needed stage time.
I cant afford to be canceling gigs.
9/11 or not, I have to go get onstage.
I was not sharp enough, at the time, to do any material about what was happening.
For the most part, I bombed.
I dont really remember how I did.
I dont remember anyone laughing, but I dont remember anybody really being disassociated.
Let me hurry up and maybe I can say something real fast.That was my 9/11.
I remember calling another comic or two going, Did you see whats on the news?
Should we get together and talk?
Whats going to happen with comedy this next week or two?
No one knew what to say or do.
So that morning and that day was just really nerve-racking in terms of,Can I go outside?
Can I go anywhere?
What am I going to say if people start asking stuff?
Read Youssefs extended response
MywhiteAmericanfriendsweresuperscaredforme,butIwasntnervousatall.
I am an entertainer, and the show must go on.
I never considered canceling it.
My white American friends were super scared for me, but I wasnt nervous at all.
Getting back onstage was one of the greatest moments of my life.
Seeing the city in ruins across the Hudson broke my heart.
I was so happy to be back doing what I loved.
I talked about 9/11 right off the bat.
I had no choice.
like did I have a heads-up?
But I didnt have a go at find a joke in the tragedy.
We all lost people that day.
It is still too soon to laugh about.
But everything surrounding it is fair game.
Especially the bigotry and hate my community was targeted with that is comedy gold.
And the audience seemed relieved.
This was Jersey; we witnessed it firsthand.
I remember noticing people really happy to see each other.
I had a great set.
