19 tips on doing standup like Patrice O’Neal
Comics who loved him talk about what made Patrice great. Some lessons: Take big risks with audiences, make every show different, be okay in the moment of possible failure, and more.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc wrote a great profile about Patrice O’Neal years ago in New York magazine: The Comedian Comedians Were Afraid Of.
Plenty of great comics who loved Patrice are interviewed along the way. For example, Bill Burr, who came up with him in Boston, said, “He got to it in a new way every night. As long as I knew him, he was always working on trying to attain a level of freedom onstage where he could just go up there and talk to the crowd.” Colin Quinn, Keith Robinson, Gary Gulman, Dane Cook, and other comics who knew him chime in too.
Want to be more like Patrice as a standup? According to those quoted in the piece, this is the path to follow:
Take big risks with audiences
Make every show different
Don’t stick to a script
Question a lot and, even if you are wrong, present the case like a champion
Keep researching yourself
Talk until you get to “the reveal”—whatever tender or humiliating fact is unearthed by honest conversation
It’s okay if they disagree with you
“Speak from your heart, asshole!”
Have moods onstage, free yourself
Traffic in your vulnerabilities
Don’t people-please
Try on stereotypes to see what fits—and what doesn’t—and coax your audiences to do the same
Don’t show bitterness, show curiosity
Don’t chase money; aim to inspire some kind of personal reckoning
Keep going and going, twisting the knife – a nasty lesson should taste nasty
Have a life philosophy and a “goddamn ethic”
Reconnect with the purity of the early years of doing stand-up, “get back to the audience”
Be okay in the moment of possible failure
You are on a journey to find your people
That might not be the path to mainstream success. But sometimes the path to respect goes in a different direction. As Patrice would say, “Speak from your heart, asshole!”
Dane Cook remembers one discussion they had about people-pleasing. Patrice wondered if the desire to be liked onstage might be coming from the need to protect a belief in oneself as a nice guy offstage. What if you weren’t that guy at all?...He had plenty to say about comedians who cared more about being liked than committing to their particular point of view: “Do you have a life philosophy? Do you have anything that says goddamn ethic? Any ethic, you piece of shit? If you don’t, don’t talk to me.”
Also, this crowdwork story is bananas. Talk about going hard in the paint…
More to come on Patrice soon…