How a set is built: slowly and methodically
Mike Binder on Marc Maron, Roseanne Barr, and why you can’t skip the process.
“Two incredibly talented performers with drastically disparate results,” says Mike Binder in this essay about the new specials from Marc Maron and Roseanne Barr.
Background: It now feels like hardly anyone realizes Barr was once a great comedian. Ever seen her debut Tonight Show set? It’s a star-making turn; the crowd falls in love with her by the end.
As for her new special? According to Binder:
I don’t care what she says, she didn’t work hard on this special. Not like she did in her heyday. No way. She didn’t hit the clubs. Not night after night. Not for six months to a year. She didn’t record late night sets or drop in sets. Hundreds of them. No way. She didn’t watch them back for hours at a time with confidants or writing partners or comic cohorts. Didn’t play comedy clubs doing the hour every night for six weeks in a row every single night week after week until the night of the taping. I guarantee she didn’t. She may have worked out a few times. Not a lot. No way in hell. Not nearly what I laid out here. Not nearly how she used to lay out her early specials or her early Tonight show shots…
She had great notions and ideas. She has a great comics mind. She didn’t work them out at the Store or the Cellar or on the road in clubs, or on tour. ‘The world has changed a lot since I was alive.’ is followed by a lot of nothing. Funny notions about not having any ass “being ass-less in an ass based economy” were never fleshed out. They weren’t given the months and months of repetition where night after night a new tag or idea would be added or replace something else so an idea would become a bit and a bit would become a hunk and a hunk would become a piece. That’s how a set is built. Slowly and methodically. Like putting a very tough puzzle together. You can’t get deep on a short dig. You can only get dirty. Messy…
You can’t skip the process. You either love it or you don’t. You’re either willing to do it or you aren’t. You can’t fool yourself that you’ll get over. You certainly can’t fool the audience.
On the other hand, he describes the new Maron special this way:
it feels like you’re seeing something that someone put his soul into. His heart. His time. Someone worked really hard to get it to this point. It mattered to this person. He needed to get it a level that it would mean something to you, because it meant so much to him. There is air, but it’s not dead air. There is anger, but it’s not misplaced. You may not agree with the anger, but you understand his reasons for it.
Good stuff.
Btw, Binder directed the really fun/insightful doc on The Comedy Store too.