When Patton Oswalt, one of the top comedians over the past several decades, was going through the worst experiences of his life this past year, he wrote an entire post about one joke Gary Gulman made. ONE JOKE.
Oswalt starts off:
âThis isâŠso perfect.â
I like the pause in there. LIke there are no words so he had to notch himself down even though it doesnât express exactly what he wants to say: ⊠âso perfectâ.
He analyzes Garyâs joke and why itâs so difficult to do a joke like this (nobody sees how the sausage is made, they only see the final joke after years of perfecting).
Patton closes with: âThank you Gary Gulman. I know a lot of my shitâs gonna get angry these next four years, but itâs stuff like what Garyâs doing that reminds me I gotta make sure itâs funny first. Angry doesnât change shit. Funny disarms the horde.â
Gary is one of the best in the world. And no matter what area of life you want to improve in, studying in detail someone who is among the best, will up your game.
It ups my game. I am infinitely frail. I fall apart at the slightest resistance. I sometimes canât handle it. I sometimes canât handle failing. I donât always believe you learn from failure.
But studying the best, makes my brain feel good. Like itâs being nourished. And that often gives me the strength to persist.
For the past five months Iâve been going up on a stage 2-3 times a week and performing standup comedy in front of an audience.
Often the other performers are people who were on the Colbert Show the night before. Or just released an hour-long Netflix special.
So I have to up my game all the time. I want to be âone of themâ. And I donât want people in the audience to be able to tell that Iâm different.
Plus, I get scared to death. I am honestly so scared I am about to cry every time I am about to go on stage. Even if Iâm going on stage to perform just five minutes of jokes. Five minutes is an eternity.
What I realized, and will save for a future post, is that there are at least 20 or 30 (and probably much more) âmicro-skillsâ that I could not have possibly imagined when trying to get better at standup comedy.
Iâve been public speaking for 20 years. Is it that different?
Yes.
Which is why I had to have Gary Gulman on the podcast. One of the best in the world.
I said above âfive minutes is an eternityâ.
Gary told one joke on Conan in 2016 that lasted six minutes. One joke where (and I measured it) he gets laughs every ten to fifteen seconds throughout.
He uses every skill in the comicâs toolbox. And probably many more that I havenât been able to understand yet.
I printed up the joke. I gave it to Gary. I said, âI want to analyze this joke word by word.â
The first thing he said is, âThis almost depresses meâ.
âHow come?â
âIt took years to write this joke. And the others that I came out with around then. Itâs so hard. Sometimes I canâtâ even get up because itâs so hard to do this.â
What follows is one of my favorite podcasts. We cover his career, the techniques he learned and how he learned them.
We cover the depression and anxiety and fear that goes into building any career out of excellence. We cover the micro-skills.
No matter what you do in life, the one who masters all the master skills of your field of endeavor will be the one who rises to the top. How do you identify those skills? How do you master them?
And we analyze this joke. To see the joke, Google: âYoutube Gary Gulman Conan Statesâ. Itâs his 7/13/16 performance. Watch it first.
Here are some things I learned:
Part A) DELIVERY
1. COMMITMENT
The whole joke is about the states and how they were abbreviated. Gary walks out on stage, âI just wanted to recommend a documentary to everyone and then Iâm going to go.â Everyone laughs.
No one believes him. But heâs totally COMMITTED to the joke.
In the podcast he says, âIâm bragging, really. Because I know I have something in my pocket that Iâve polished so frequently over the years. Years and years have gone into this one joke. And I know they havenât seen it. Itâs almost like Iâm say, âWait till you get a load of me.ââ
A lot of comedians just pander for a laugh, especially in the beginning. Yes, fart jokes work. But GREAT comedy is art.
Garyâs worked hard and heâs know it. This transcends more than just jokes. People wonât always know that what you have to offer is valuable to them. Until you show it.
Thatâs how Gary builds rapport with the audience. They sense the commitment. They are in for the ride.
2. BUILD UP CAPITAL
Audiences are terrifying. And often they donât know you.
Might be a business audience in a meeting. Might be a reader. Might be a listener or a crowd. Or a comedy club audience.
They have to like you. Johnny Carson has said that this is the most important skill for a comedian.
Likeability.
Watch Garyâs clip and see how he becomes naturally likeable to the audience. These are techniques that can be used in every situation.
But itâs also how you build up capital so now you can take chances, propose ideas they have never heard of, build rapport with each person listening to you, and perform the magic trick of transmitting what you see in your head, into the heads of all the listeners.
I didnât realize this was such an important skill at first.
Again, I have another post about this. But, for me, the results were disastrous when I didnât realize how important this was.
3. MOVE
Gary uses movement. Itâs almost like heâs acting out the joke.
He points to the sky, everyoneâs eyes move up. Theyâre with him. Theyâre in the story. âI need to keep their attention during that time because itâs a lull,â he said.
You canât just tell your joke. Or tell your story. Or tell your idea. Ideas, jokes, stories are three dimensional.
Gary takes his joke and turns it from a premise into a three dimensional world we are suddenly all living in.
Part B) WRITING
4. OBSERVE THE ABSURD
Throughout my entire life, Iâve been abbreviating states. Iâve never thought, âOh so many states start with the same two letters.â
Who thinks of that?
âWhat were you doing when you first thought of that?â I asked him.
âI think the first time was when I was in 2nd grade and I got the arrow book of the states. I got it in 2nd grade but it mustâve been printed several years prior because the abbreviations was a new concept in this particular version of the Arrow Book of States. For whatever reason, I wanted to memorize the abbreviations. Thatâs when I noticed how difficult it was.â
Thirty years later, he turned that difficulty into a joke.
I notice this with comedians. They observe everything out of the ordinary.
Seinfeld once said that a regular person goes into Bar Mitzvah and says, ânice buffettâ. A comedian will go in and say, âwhy is there pork?â
Iâve been working on a joke lately. The premise is that OJ Simpson made $2.7 million while he was in prison. The premise doesnât have to be funny. Just quirky. The punchline can come after years of work. Not in my case but in the case of the best comedians, jokes, speakers, inventors.
5. PERSISTENCE AND DEPRESSION
This is unique to Gary. Heâs able to draw out jokes for 6 minutes. I asked how heâs going to get down to writing the next 6 minute bit.
âItâs daunting,â he said.
âHow do you deal with the anxiety?â
âIâll say this, but itâs something thatâs very personal to me. Hopefully it will help people. But I was in the hospital for a few nights because of my depression and anxiety. I was overwhelmed. It was a couple of months ago. I wasnât suicidal. I just went to the emergency room and they admitted me and changed some medicines up, but itâs literally crippling.â
âDid that help? The combination of medicine and them talking?â
âYeahâŠIâm in a better position now then I was then. I can function a little bit better and Iâve been able to get back on stage.â
He said he had a fear of performing. Which was amazing to me because heâs so good at it.
But I get it. I canât go on stage without having a panic attack. And I know heâs been on stage 1000s of times.
Itâs hard. But once you say, âThis is too hardâ, thatâs when you have to do it to get better. And improvement never ends.
Thatâs why I wanted to learn from him.
Itâs easy for a comedian to tell crude jokes. Gary brings you into new territory.
He told me that once he got a hold of the abbreviations joke, he held on. âI tried to strengthen it and lengthen it.â
We kept dissecting. I wanted to get deeper into the toolkit. How did he make the joke stronger?
6. GO OFF ON TANGENTS
Heâs a few minutes into the joke. Theyâre talking about abbreviating the first state (Alabama). Alaska is next. But he had to take the audience away from the story.
Or theyâd lose interest.
He sets the scene. The whole team of abbreviators is eating breakfast. And Gary says, âThe omelette station had just been invented and was sweeping the nation.â
âIâve always felt uncomfortable with the omelette station,â he told me. I never thought about it before.
Hidden truths surround us. Ghosts in a conversation. But saying them brings the discomfort into comfort. Makes the scaryâŠfunny. Or possible. Or gives us a new way of looking at things.
âThe omelette chef must hate us,â he said. And in the joke Gary says they wanted to be a âchef chef.â Not an omelette chef.
The tangent diverts your attention away from the main plot. He adds another about the people who call Hollandaise sauce âholiday sauce.â This has nothing to do with the joke. But itâs funny and adds depth to the story. And does it have to do with the joke..? Maybe!
And then brings it back to abbreviations. Alaska is right after Alabama.
Both are AL. Thatâs when the âcrack team of abbreviatorsâ realize theyâre in trouble. âDid we already use AL?â
7. BE SPECIFIC
In one of his first lines, Gary tells you the documentary is 98 minutes. Not 90, not an hour. Itâs 98 minutes.
âWhy 98?â I said.
It had to do with the number of syllables. And the exactness. Words donât tell a story. Details tell a story.
And it ends on a âtâ. Gary knows from 20 years experience what consonants will elicit a bigger laugh.
Micro-skills.
8. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF MEMORY LOSS
The crack squad of abbreviations is made up of ânayer do wells.â
I didnât even know what that meant. âI like to use language that you forgot you knew,â he said.
9. PUT LAUGH LINES TOGETHER
Gary quoted the late Richard Jeni, who said, âWhat youâre trying to do is put together as many laugh lines as close together as possible.â
You donât have to wait long to laugh again when you watch his act. Gary does this too. He makes a small reference.
âI want to say it was 1973⊠So I will.â
And the whole crowd laughs. At first, I couldnât figure out why I was laughing. âItâs a cliche,â Gary said. He uses a cliche to make fun of cliches.
He makes you take a second look at some statement everyone says, but no one realizes theyâre saying.
10. SUBTRACT SELF-KNOWLEDGE
The joke gets more and more ridiculous with each line. But Gary looks almost clueless. Heâs going on and on about this documentary, their struggles and challenges.
Itâs almost like he crosses this invisible line where heâs no longer aware. He becomes part of the story.
And his comedy turns from joke to performance.
Everyone in the audience begins to see thereâs no real documentary. Except Gary.
He subtracts self-knowledge which adds to the laughter. Because now people not only canât believe how ridiculous this documentaryâs premise is, but they canât believe how ridiculous Gary is.
Adding knowledge makes a hero. Subtracting knowledge makes comedy.
James Bond can get shot in the heart, perform surgery on himself, and then get the bad guy. Heâs a hero.
If Woody Allen is shot in the heart thenâŠ.even picturing it makes me laugh.
11. TAKE RISKS
Gary makes jokes out of difficulties, adds specificity, tangents, cliches and so on.
He has his tool kit. Each element has a purpose. And they all take him to the edge.
âThatâs one of the reasons Iâm moving to Boston,â he said. âI can take more risks.â
âWhat does it mean to take more risks?â I said.
âJust to go on stage with material that is not as worked out as the one we went over today.â
He wants to test his joke in front of audiences, then record it and tweak it.
If you canât take risks, you wonât hit the edge. You wonât go beyond it.
Beyond the edge is peak performance. The area few, if any, hit. Beyond the edge is success. Because people reward the ones who have mastered the risks beyond the edge.
I always say I donât like to hit âpublishâ on an article until Iâm afraid of what people will think.
Thatâs not quite true for this article. Iâm proud to say Gary is one of the best there is. Iâm happy I got a chance to take my absolute favorite joke and get the guy who told it to answer all my questions for an hour.
I felt bad when Gary expressed his depression. His desire to continually improve and his fear of where that next improvement might come from.
Weâre all afraid.
I wanted to tell himâŠsometimes when I feel that way, and I feel that way almost every day, I often know that something new is going to happen. Something that will push me forward.
Afterwards, I felt bad I didnât say that. I wanted to tell him how skilled he is. That he will push forward.
But I didnât say that either. Iâm hitting publish here not because Iâm afraid. But because I want everyone else to experience the pure joy I felt when I listened to this joke, listened to how he crafted it, and learned a bit more about how in any area of life I can strive to improve and be the best I can be.
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