Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-up Comedy (Paperback)

by Franklyn Ajaye (Author) "The first and most important step for anybody who wants to be a good and stand-up comedian is to make sure that you watch the..." (more)
Key Phrases: comedic essence, aspiring comedians, most comedians, The Tonight Show, Richard Pryor, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
If you want to build a stand-up comedy career, this book is a must read. If you want to write comedy, this book is a must read. If you simply enjoy comedy, well . . . this book is a must read. Part One offers essential advice about understanding the fundamentals of stand-up, studying other comedians, finding your own style, writing your material, working the live performance and appearing on television. Fascinating, candid, insightful interviews with today's top comedians, who discuss at length why and how they do what they do, comprise Part Two, the bulk of the book. Interviews with:

Louie Anderson, Richard Belzer, Elayne Boosler, George Carlin, Ellen DeGeneres, Rich Jeni, Jay Leno, Richard Lewis, Bill Maher, Paul Reiser, Chris Rock, Roseanne, Jerry Seinfeld, Garry Shandling, Sinbad, George Wallace, Jonathan Winters.

The last part of the book addresses your stand-up career through interviews with noted comedy club owners, an agent, a personal manager and a television talent coordinator. Crammed with the wisdom of today's finest stand-up comics, this book is without peer in quality, quantity and timeliness of information.

About the Author
Franklyn Ajaye is an Emmy-nominated writer-producer-actor. Among his many television writing and producing credits are The Parent Hood, In Living Color, Roc, NYPD Blue and Politically Incorrect. Among his acting credits are The Burbs, Hollywood Shuffle and Stir Crazy. He has also appeared on The Tonight Show, The David Letterman Show and The Arsenio Hall Show. A noted stand-up comedian, Ajaye has worked from small clubs to Las Vegas hotels. He also has two comedy recordings on A&M Records. He lectures on stand-up comedy and sitcom writing at UCLA and other venues.

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: Silman-James Press; 1 edition (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1879505541
• ISBN-13: 978-1879505544
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #48,335 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A CLASSIC for those who love, do or want to do comedy, June 4, 2003

By	Joel L. Gandelman (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

According to author Franklyn Ajaye, he was partly inspired in his successful comedy, writing and producing careers by Larry Wilde's Great Comedians Talk About Comedy, a 1968 question & answer style interview book, reprinted in 2000 (available on Amazon.com). Wilde's book contains insightful interviews with late 20th century top comedians and Ajaye hoped his own Comic Insights would be along the same lines.

In fact, Comic Insights, a book containing interviews with some of the early 21st century's comic geniuses, is as good as or even better than Wilde's wonderful and still timely book.

The reason: Comic Insights contains not only great interviews but also specific and concise advice on standup comedy performance technique -- complete with easy-to-review notes at the end of key chapters. It's one of the best books ever published on the subject.

Comic Insights is required reading for ANYONE remotely or seriously interested in performing comedy, key comedy techniques, the comedian's mind-set, goal-setting,
perseverance, the need to be YOU onstage and -- a crucial subject incredibly ignored in most comedy books ...TIMING. Hopefully it'll be reprinted periodically, like Wilde's
book. If it isn't and you don't have a copy then you'll be out of luck because you'll be missing a vital potential comedy tool.

This book was so fascinating, easy to read, and had so much good information, facts, performing tips and inspiration that I virtually defaced it with my colored-marker underlinings and little notes written in ink. Any second the Book Police will (rightfully) arrest me .....

The first section is one of the most readable explanations of key standup tricks of the trade ever written. If an aspiring comedian uses some of these principles it could save him years of bombing. Ajaye also includes helpful review notes at the end of each of these sections.

There are far too many superb tips to list here, but a few include studying WHY top comedians are funny; studying the use of timing, body language and visual effects. The importance of recording and analyzing your act. And, critically, the importance of being yourself in performance and act content: "The hacks can steal your joke but they can't steal the way you look at life," he writes.

Peppered throughout are the BEST written explanations (from him and other comedians) on timing EVER published. He points to the famous (and sadly not re-run) eternal master of timing Jack Benny and notes that timing is a way to "light the fuse" on a
joke, by taking a pause to deliver a punchline. Don't "be afraid of silent moments," he advises, and wait until a laugh naturally subsides before moving to another joke.

The second section includes a wide range of the 21st century's top laugh-makers (again too many to cite here). Some key highlights include:

---LOUIE ANDERSON, a master of setting up routines, using his eyes, space and silence, inspired by Jack Benny. Anderson says: "The secret behind timing is to hold whatever you're going to say until you absolutely have to say it."
--ELAYNE BOOSLER on the importance of taping an act, listening to it, analyzing it and enhancing it..
--GEORGE CARLIN'S great explanation of how evolved from a jacket-and-tie comediandoing stock, standard jokes in front of people who he realized where his parents' friends into a comedy icon for his own and younger generations by changing his jokes, dress
(getting fired for it) his attitude -- and the way many comedians forever would do comedy.
--ELLEN DEGENERES & PAUL REISNER: The slowing down joke delivery.
--JAY LENO: The importance of learning jokes (he has no joke file) and goal setting (you should be able to make standup within 7 years work).
--CHRIS ROCK: On the importance of writing NEW jokes to take any comedy career to the next level.
--ROSEANNE & JERRY SEINFELD: The importance being disciplined to constantly write down ideas (on anything even napkins), jokes, concepts and then sit down and translate those ideas into actual performable material.
--GARY SHANDLING: Persistance. He bombed for 5 years but never gave up.

The third section is especially useful since managers, club owners and agents tell what they seek in a comedian. Talent Agent Irv Arthur, among other things, notes the importance of total preparation to be ready for the big break when it comes.

This superb book, especially if read together with Greg Dean's wonderful Step By Stepto Standup Comedy (also available on Amazon), could save aspiring comedians years of frustration and tears....and it tips off civilians to what's really lurking behind the curtain of that comedy wizard of the Oz called "the comedy club."

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Read for Standup Practitioners, August 26, 2004

By	AZHAR USMAN "Azhar Usman" (Chicago) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Any comedy junkie knows that most of the books written on standup just plain stink. Whereas Judy Carter's "Standup Comedy-The Book" is a decent read, it is of course extremely dated now (screams 1980s homogeneous comedy club standup!) and is far too formulaic for most comics. Greg Dean's book is far better than Carter's; however, Dean suffers from being too quantitative in his approach to and understanding of comedy. His book can help one appreciate joke theory, but will do little--practically speaking--to help polish a mediocre comic. My favorite book on standup generally is definitely Jay Sankey's "Zen and the Art of Standup Comedy." It is an excellent read, jam packed with highly practical insights and suggestions about how to truly become a good comic. That said, what Sankey's book lacks in terms of insights from the living comedic masters themselves Ajaye's book more than makes up for. Larry Wilde did it in 1968 with the greatest comic legends of the 1950s and 1960s, and Ajaye did it again with the greatest comics of the 1980s and 1990s. In fact, Ajaye's book is superior to Wilde's in at least two respects. First, Ajaye has included his own highly refined tips and suggestions about how to become a good comic, which Wilde has no trace of. Ajaye's thoughts are so highly structured and logically organized that it is no wonder he is putting that NYU law school education to good use after all. Secondly, Ajaye's interviews are, at times, more revealing and more helpful than Wilde's because Ajaye is a serious practitioner of the art of standup himself, whereas Wilde--though he is undoubtedly America's best-selling humorist--is still just a humorist. A humorist does not a comedian make. If you want to know what makes good comedians become great, read Franklyn Ajaye's book. You won't be disappointed.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somber Study of Comedy, December 10, 2002

By	"ronlv" (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews

In the first fifty pages Ajaye provides strongly written advise worth reading several times over particularly if you are well into the process of performing. How to study your favorite comics and still be true to your self is an outstanding section.

As comics write and talk about stand up comedy business, the struggles to break into a living wage level are displayed as mind numbing. The world is full of people that are tearing you down for their own entertainment both on and off the stage. Your desire to succeed must be massive to overcome the grinding down. For each and everyone comic that has opened up, they have described standup as really hard work. This book may depress you if you are thinking about a life in comedy. This is not a motivational book. It is more of a get tough or get out road map. Entertaining the reader does not happen in this book.

One great insight in the Richard Jeni interview is worth the price of the book. There are three equal parts to performing your own material: written construction, body gestures and facial expression. You have to work on all three with equal commitment.

Interviewing the very successful comedians is very smart. The 17 famous comedian interviews could have been the heart and soul of the book. The interviews should have been better written. With his incredible access to famous comedians Ajaye blew this chance to work at creating a classic on comedy. Where is the editor? My point is the following. In the book Success Secrets of the Motivational by Michael Jeffreys the author gets deep into the mind and art of each interviewee's work. He then edited it down to a very powerfully written book. With loads of exact quotes-each carrying great poignancy. In Ajaye's defense, I suspect that the interviews are lightly edited to remain true to the interview. It is still the lessor skill compared to a strongly worked book. Who wants to read court testimony? Where's the Beef? I hope Ajaye takes another shot at writing another book.

If you are already funny you want to read this book. It would not be my first recommendation. My rank order follows: 1. Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible 2. Step by Step to Stand Up Comedy by Greg Dean and 3. Did I Ever Tell You About the Time by Grady Jim Robinson. Fourth would be this book. The first book is critical to developing the foundation on how to write stand up.