Do Famous Comedians Hate Stand-Up?

To me, stand-up comedy represents possibly the purest form of comedy. The comedian personally delivers his unfiltered, unadulterated joke, directly to a live audience who then provides their unfiltered response in cheers, boos, or anywhere in between. The comedian is alone on stage with no one to play off of and there are no redo's if a joke is accepted poorly, the comedian can only hope to recover. In this way, I find stand-up comedy to be one of the best representatives of a comedian's ability to be humorous because there are no handicaps, no one to hold you by the hand and walk you through the process. That is exactly why the lack of prevalence of stand-up comedy performed by famous comedians has often surprised me.

Stand-up thrives in small, cramped New York City basements with dozens of attendees huddled around a small, claustrophobic stage. Stand-up also makes infrequent appearances on the Comedy Central television network however, these occasional examples are far outweighed by Comedy Central's presentations of shows like South Park, Futurama, or The Daily Show. Furthermore, while popular comedians almost always make their beginnings in stand-up comedy, why do they constantly turn their backs on the practice once they achieve fame? The television show I can recall having most embraced stand-up comedy is Seinfeld and even so, the show only provided a minute or two of stand-up at the beginning and end of every episode. While late night television hosts begin their programs with a few minutes of monologue, I still find this representation of stand-up performed by popular comedians to be significantly out of proportion with the presence that I feel stand-up comedy has on the comedy industry as a whole.

Without stand-up the discovery of up-and-coming comedians would be far more difficult, so why do famous comedians appear to abhor the practice. Rather than viewing such comedians as Adam Sandler exclusively on the silver screen, I would prefer to enjoy occasional stand-up shows in venues like Carnegie Hall. I'm sure there are some reasons why comedians prefer to make feature films rather than continuing their stand-up careers for example comedians do not have to write the scripts for the movies they star in, and standing in front of a camera that can re-record any flawed scene is clearly less stressful that standing live in front of hundreds or thousands of people. However, I still very much enjoy stand-up comedy and believe that many others do as well. Therefore, I believe that the demand is present, and I wonder how significant the incentives would need to be in order for the supply to meet that demand. Perhaps this is in fact the major problem, it is possible that the profitability of a major motion picture with a global presence far exceeds the profitability of a live performance in a limited capacity hall. Maybe the incentives will never be present because of this incredible disparity in profitability, however something else gives me hope that perhaps my dreams of stand-up comedy featuring some of today's most famous comedians is not out of reach.

A video of Adam Sandler's early stand-up in the 80's.

A few years ago, I first saw the movie Funny People, a film about comedy, made by comedians. The movie starred Adam Sandler--who I mentioned as an example earlier--a famous comedian who found had been diagnosed with fatal cancer. Sandler's character decided to put large scale movie productions aside and return to stand-up comedy. This leads me to believe that there is a sentimentality that comedians associate with stand-up possibly as a means of remembering their beginnings. I find this film particularly encouraging because it was created by a group of filmmakers who themselves started in stand-up comedy and therefore hopefully provide a perspective representative of the comedy industry as a whole . So hopefully, as some of the more famous comedians age, they will return to their roots and return to the stage.