Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld's message to young comedians

Rock: “You make money during the day. You collect it at night. During the day is where the money is made.”

New Yorker interview with Jerry Seinfeld. Some excerpts relating to standup below…

Chris Rock and Jerry talking about a young comic:

I was with Chris a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about a young comic. He was asking the comedian about what he did that day. And the guy said, “Nothing. But I’m going to do a set tonight.” And Chris explained to him, “You make money during the day. You collect it at night. During the day is where the money is made.”

What does that mean for a comedian?

Comedians don’t generally think they have to do more than perform onstage every night. They don’t think there’s more to it than that. But there is quite a bit more to it than that.

And it shows if they don’t.

Well, it shows when you try and go to different levels or different worlds. If you have a really solid work ethic and have some sense of writing, you can move into different fields more easily.

Photograph by Brian Doben.

Jerry on how comedy is a writer’s game:

So you became disciplined right away?

Not right away. It was after I saw a comedian do a couple of “Tonight Show”s and get bounced that I realized—

Who was that?

I don’t want to mention the name. He went on, he did well. The second time he went on, he did less well. The third time, he struggled, and they never had him back. And I went, “Oh, now I get how this racket works. This is a writer’s game. If you can write, you succeed. If you can’t, you will not make it.” The performing, being funny onstage, that’s great. Any comedian can be funny onstage. But the bullets are the writing.

On finding your stage persona:

How did you invent how you wanted to be onstage—the persona?

It’s like sculpting. Sculpting is removing everything that isn’t the sculpture you want to make. You’re not adding; you’re removing. Stone sculpture, not clay. So, when you do a joke and it gets a laugh and something inside you doesn’t feel quite right, you don’t do that joke. You do the jokes that you feel connect to your anger, your attitude, your personality. Success in comedy is very much a—conducting. So, the face, the voice, the body, the joke—when all of that is working together, it hits. Bang. You just feel it. You feel it like hitting a baseball on the button. And, when one of them is a little off, it’s not there…I do what’s funny on me. I don’t do what is not. I mean, every artist works like this.

On turning over material:

I think if you go see a comedian and he does some great stuff that you know and a bunch of stuff that you don’t know, the audience is happy. I think comedians now try so hard to be all new, all the time. I think the quality suffers, because none of us are really that good. Chris Rock and I have determined that a great comedian working his ass off his entire career writes two good hours.