¡Satiristas!: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians

"Paul Provenza has done many things. He was the director of The Aristocrats , the movie, and he was the host of a cable show called Green Room with Paul Provenza and he’s done a million other things – most of them very good projects. I can’t say enough good things about this book. That may sound egotistical because two pages in the book contain an interview with me. But even if you were to take that out, I still think this is one of the best books written on comedy. It’s composed of interviews with comedians. For the most part, Paul is not interjecting his own opinions, he’s mainly trying to draw out the opinions of others. In my view, he talks to some of the best comedians of our time – George Carlin and Patton Oswalt and Janeane Garofalo and Billy Connolly. Legendary comedians like the Smothers Brothers. Brilliant satirists like Stephen Colbert and The Onion writers. It groups all of these amazing comics into this book and elicits their view on comedy. No other book has ever accomplished such a feat so honestly. I wish I had had this book to guide me when I was starting out in stand-up 14 years ago. It’s tough to say. One thing you can gain from reading it is that great comedians often have very different views of the world. Paul shows that comedy can come from all angles and all places. Some comedians are trying to get across a message and some aren’t. But pretty much everyone in the book understands the power of comedy. I started as an observational comedian, a comedian who makes observations about life but doesn’t make a deeper point. I did that for years, and then I made a transition in my personal life and in my comedy to talking not necessarily about politics but mainly about important world issues – issues that are affecting society. I saw that when I talked about deeper issues people left the show with more than just a good mood, they left with a new understanding, or even if they disagreed with the point I was making, they left with new information. That’s what I love about comedy. You can speak to a room full of every different type of opinion and they will not only listen but they’ll enjoy themselves too. People that disagree with me leave saying they enjoyed the show. If I were just up there giving a speech and someone disagreed with it they would walk out but with comedy people will pay attention and learn. It’s very powerful in that way. Like I was saying earlier, comedy is a shortcut into people’s minds. In terms of the first part of the question, his point that advocacy comedy doesn’t work, I disagree. The reason why goes to the second part of your question. If a comedian is focused solely on influencing an audience, they’ll stop listening. I always remain conscious of keeping the whole room laughing during my stand-up act. That’s been really important to me because I feel like my gift, the thing I’ve worked at for so many years and the thing I’ve always wanted to do is to make people laugh. If I lose the laughter I’m just a speaker, and I’m a mediocre speaker. There are a million other people who could stand up on a soapbox. But as a comedian making a point I’m one of a small group. And if I’m doing it well then I’m near the top of that group that change minds while entertaining people. So I wouldn’t agree. You can definitely set out to change minds. Sometimes it’s going to work and sometimes it’s not. The right does understand that there is power in comedy. Fox News attempted a comedy show. It didn’t work out. When the punchline entails foreclosure on the family home, it doesn’t sit right with most people, even Fox watchers. The right wing would like to match the left-wing comedy machine but so far it’s failed. “The right wing would like to match the left-wing comedy machine but so far it’s failed.” Look at what happened to Dennis Miller. I was a huge fan of his stuff in the eighties and nineties. Then he became far right wing and his comedy became angrier and less funny. Now it makes me sad to watch him. Watching someone well-off trash the idea of helping people who are worse off is not funny, to me at least. No organisations as big as the Cato but I work a lot with a group called Laughing Liberally. We do live shows and we’ve occasionally been hired by left-wing organisations like the American Prospect or SEIU [Service Employees International Union] to make videos that have a point but are funny. So we’re sometimes hired by left-wing organisations to get a point out, and if we agree with the point we make the video because we feel like we’re doing something good for the country and at the same time making people laugh. And that’s what we’re good at, so I don’t think I have a problem with that."