Favorite Stand-Up Comedians of All Time
With a recent surge of some great stand-up specials, the writers at CineNation talk about their favorite stand-up comics.
Stand-up comedy is one of the hardest forms of entertainment, but it is one type of entertainment that everyone thinks they can do. “What’s so hard about telling a few jokes in front of people?” A lot. Good comedians might have a brief stint in the limelight, but only the great ones can stay on top for so long. If you can spend decades working on a high level in stand-up comedy, then you are amongst the greats. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, and the late, great Don Rickles are people who fit in that category. Great comedians are intelligent, sharp, and they are aware that with comedy there are no boundaries.
Recently, Netflix has become to home to a number of great stand-up comedians. Comedians like Dave Chappelle, Louis CK, and Amy Schumer have all released their most recent specials on Netflix. Chris Rock will be releasing his next two specials on Netflix, Sarah Silverman will be releasing her next special through Netflix, and Jerry Seinfeld has just moved his successful web show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, from Crackle to Netflix. So, because of this recent surge in great stand-up comedy, some of the writers decided to talk about some of their favorite stand-up comedians of all time.
Mitch Hedberg
By Sean Randall
The late, great Mitch Hedberg is one of those comedy talents that died way too young. He died in 2005 at age 37, basically at the peak of his career. I had only discovered him a year or two before in high school, watching his 1999 Comedy Central Presents appearance, among other stand up moments. He was the perfect form of humor for me. It was his appearances on the Late Show with David Letterman that really got his career up and running. He was even called “The Next Seinfeld,” signing a pretty big Fox sitcom deal before his death.
But enough about being depressed over his death. I wanna talk about his life. His comedy. What made Mitch perfect for me was his fast-paced absurdity on generally simple concepts. Many comedians tell lengthier jokes with longer setups to explain the concepts. Mitch would more often make simple declarations that seem fairly obvious. “I like an escalator because an escalator can never break, it can only become stairs. There would never be an escalator temporarily out of order sign, only an escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience.” Plus, his unique, halting delivery filled with strange, Christopher Walken-esque pauses and speedups created an interesting feel to the flow of his jokes. Sometimes, the simple joke would sit and fester and more and more people would think on it and laugh at the absurdity. Sometimes, he would hit the next and the next and the laughter would just pile up until it became too great. And then there was the self-aware laughter and deprecation. All of this from puns, one-liners, and absurd observational humor. “A dog is forever in the sit-up position.”
It’s hard to explain the greatness of Mitch without watching him, so here’s two of his routines on YouTube. Enjoy.
Emo Philips
By Dan LeVine
I’m not sure that I would have discovered Emo Philips had my mother not introduced me to his 1985 cassette tape, E=mo2, when I was a teenager. Despite much success in the late eighties and nineties, appearing on shows such as The Arsenio Hall Show and The Late Show with David Letterman, Emo never had as big of a career as I believe he deserves.
If you’ve never heard of Emo Philips, you’re in for a treat.
Emo is a master of the “paraprosdokian,” which Wikipedia defines as “a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence, phrase, or larger discourse is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part.”
Essentially this means that each joke has an unexpected twist-ending that results in a different sentence than what you were expecting. It’s a unique type of humor and very effective, but also very difficult to write. But Emo’s the master. Some of my favorites:
I was in a bar the other night, hopping from barstool to barstool, trying to get lucky…but there wasn’t gum under any of them.
My brother says hello! So, hooray for speech therapy…
I’m a great lover……I’ll bet.
Furthermore, Emo does his stand-up entirely in character, complete with a quirky voice, unusual hand gestures, and strange hairdo. He plays the character completely straight, not even breaking out of it for interviews, which makes his oft-bizarre first-person stories very effective.
My dad told me that the rearview mirror is your best friend. I said “Thanks Dad, for rubbing it in…”
Listening to Emo is always exciting, as you never know what he’s going to say next…even when he’s halfway through a story.
When I moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, I had the singular privilege of seeing Emo Philips in person. It was one of the funniest evenings of my life. I even got to witness him swiftly handle a drunk heckler in his signature comedic style.
Lucky for you, the incomparable Emo Philips still tours nationwide, doing standup, improv comedy, show hosting and music-playing with his band. You can check his website to see when he’s performing near you.
Norm Macdonald
By Will Clayton
Norm Macdonald is my favorite stand-up comic of all time. Norm’s style of comedy and sense of humor has always resonated with me, mostly because he is able to take apart any topic he touches in a sardonic way. His style is very natural, almost as if he just had some idea and needed to share. As Norm himself has explained, one of his methods of joke telling typically begins with Norm laying out a premise and then circling the punchline repeatedly like an airline pilot that has not been given clearance to land, then finally delivering it. Essentially, some of the best parts of Norm’s comedy are seeing where he will take a joke and how long he can put off the punchline.
Norm is also my favorite Weekend Update anchor in the entire run of SNL. Norm and legendary SNL writer Jim Downey took Update in an entirely different direction and transformed the segment into one of the most successful in SNL’s history. They essentially tried a punk rock approach to joke telling. They would strip jokes down to their rawest and simplest forms. Here are some examples:
“In England, a much-publicized videotape of a naked Princess Diana having sex with her lover Captain James Hewitt has turned out to be a fake. But on the bright side its still a video of two naked people having sex.”
“Who are safer drivers? Men or women? Well, according to a new survey, 55 percent of adults feel that women are most responsible for minor fender-benders, while 78 percent blame men for most fatal crashes. Please note that the percentages in these pie graphs do not add up to 100 percent because the math was done by a woman…For those of you hissing at that joke, it should be noted that that joke was written by a woman, so now you don’t know what the hell to do, do ya? No, I’m just kidding, we don’t hire women.” His jokes could be edgy and dark, but they never fail to deliver.
Norm is the best. He is an unbelievable talent. His podcast, Norm Macdonald Live, is great and needs more episodes. Dirty Work, his movie directed by Bob Saget, is another hilarious look into the mind and method of Norm. However, I would be remiss if I did not tell my favorite Norm Macdonald joke of all time in closing. “Alfred the Great is widely considered to be one of England’s best monarch’s. The worst? Richard the Goat Fucker.”
Mike Birbiglia
By Thomas Horton
It feels like an oversimplification to call Mike Birbiglia a stand-up comedian. He’s more of a storyteller who just happens to tell funny stories. Describing Birbiglia as a comic to someone who’s not familiar with him just doesn’t prepare them for the way his performances come together as fully formed narratives. By structuring his specials as stories, as journeys the audience can take with him through his life, he’s able to craft some incredibly hilarious anecdotes, but he also is able to be the only comedian who’s ever made me cry.
Birbiglia’s first big special, Sleepwalk With Me, uses his development of a life-threatening sleep disorder to explore the failure of his first serious relationship. You might think you’re just laughing at this goofy guy in front of you telling a story about jumping out a second story window naked while dreaming, but he’s brilliantly setting the stakes for a huge emotional moment when he finally tells his long-term girlfriend that he doesn’t want to marry her.
Birbiglia took that narrative style he developed in Sleepwalk With Me and on many visits to NPR to write his best special, My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend. Not only is My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend my favorite stand-up special ever, it’s one of the best structured narratives I’ve ever heard. Opening the story with a rant about how much he hates the idea of marriage, Birbiglia uses the course of the special to explore an entire relationship, from the first date to a long break up to a near fatal car accident. His story eventually builds to a truly heartfelt finale. Despite his opening rant, he and his girlfriend get married in a moment that can only be described as beautiful. Beautiful is not a word you hear often in stand-up comedy, but this special truly is.
George Carlin
By Alex Bauer
This decision was easy. George Carlin is my favorite comedian of all time, as I’m sure many people agree. I listened to Carlin specials on rotation throughout middle school and high school. Not only did I find Carlin hilarious, but his thought process was incredibly similar to mine. In Carlin, I found a person to look up to as a “role model”. Truly.
Carlin strived to think differently. He also was blunt, and he put life in a blunt package. “Life is not that complicated,” Carlin says in one of his specials, “You get up, you go to work, eat three meals, you take one good shit and you go back to bed. What’s the fucking mystery?!” I loved his simplistic thinking. I could spend hours digging up quotes on all the different examples, but that reinforces my point: Carlin brought this way of thinking to every show. This was not an act; this was how he felt. And I could not agree more.
At time he could be crude, but I still laughed. It did not matter who you were or what you were, if there was a joke (or point) to be made, George Carlin was fearless. You could see it in his stand up specials, or his appearances on talk shows. Carlin was always comedically “on”; his brain always turned with new ideas and jokes. He is one of the most influential people in my life, and I only knew him through his comedy.
Probably my favorite Carlin line is, “People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”
