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Posts tagged as hecklers

hecklers

Watch Nick Turner Face Off with a Drugged-Up Heckler

by | January 15th, 2013

Here's comedian Nick Turner performing at the excellent L.A. stand-up show Holy Fuck when a heckler who seems to be under the influence of something misinterprets his joke and freaks out. Hit the jump for a video of Turner telling the joke he's trying to tell here, uninterrupted. As you may recall, Nick Turner was the guy who performed a set after he accidentally locked his keys in the car with the engine running the whole time last month. Hopefully, terrible things won't continue to happen to him when he performs stand-up.

drug fun

Jake Weisman Invites a Heckler Onstage and Finds Cocaine on Him

by | November 15th, 2012

Here's a video of L.A.-based comedian Jake Weisman performing at a the Hell Yes festival in New Orleans on Saturday when a heckler interrupts him and then drops a bag of cocaine on stage. Start at the 4-minute mark and enjoy!

Jerks

Eight Types of Hecklers and the Comedians Who Shut Them Up

by | March 14th, 2011

In the 2007 documentary Heckler, Joe Rogan says that “the number one thing about hecklers is 100% of them are douchebags." A stand-up comedian's act depends on the audience reaction by nature, but when someone attempts to derail the performer's work, well, that's something a douchebag would do. Still, heckling creates exciting moments of discomfort for the audience, and hecklers have instigated some great moments in comedy (Bryson Turner's comeback) as well as some terrible moments (Michael Richards incident). Whether the outcome is funny, awkward, or awful, the eternal battle between heckler and stand-up is always fun to watch. Here are eight kinds of hecklers, and fifteen [...]

journalism

'The Chicago Tribune' Is Wrong About Hecklers; Patton Oswalt and Steve Heisler Are Right

by | January 8th, 2013

The Chicago Tribune ran an odd piece last week in which writers Nina Metz and Chris Borrelli explain their support for hecklers, explaining that they make stand-up shows more exciting and demonstrate how strong the comedian is by how they deal with having drunk people yell stuff at them. The whole thing is pretty insulting to comedians and the art form of comedy as a whole, and writer/comedian Steve Heisler has fired back with an excellent blog post that completely dismantles the Tribune writers' already-shoddy argument. Tons of comedians, like Matt Braunger, John Roy, and Dan Telfer retweeted Heisler's article, with Kurt Braunohler (or some troublemaker using [...]

Standup

Ed Helms' Lesson About Standup Comedy Karma

by | February 28th, 2012

Ed Helms swung by The Late Show last night to talk standup, and in particular one terrible standup show he did once upon a time in a place starting with a P. The happy ending is of course that Ed Helms is now hugely successful, while the headliner was punished for his "violation of the brotherhood" by a lifetime in obscurity. Even worse, the obnoxious audience member had to continue being a doctor and helping people. Don't heckle, kids, or you could end up with an MD.

Movies

Peter Serafinowicz Is Writing His Own 'King of Comedy' and a 'Look Around You'-esque Movie

by | November 19th, 2012

UK comedy great Peter Serafinowicz told Digital Spy about several promising movie projects he's currently working on. The first is a film "about a stand-up comedian who kills a heckler" that Serafinowicz hopes to star in. He explains, "I'm sort of writing it for myself. When you're an actor, I just hate waiting around for people to decide that they want me… everything takes 20 times longer than it does in television and 2,000 times longer than making something for the internet." Serafinowicz noted that the film is similar to Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy, saying, "That is one of my favorite, favorite things. It owes a [...]

Standup

Aziz Ansari Wrangles With A Racist Heckler

by | August 8th, 2011

Sure, there's a lot of swagu associated with being a stand-up taking on a heckler. Still, I can't imagine that bone-chilling moment when an audience member asks you, “Why don’t you have a red dot on your forehead?" Which, of course, is what happened to Aziz Ansari while having a little Q&A at Tig Notaro's show in L.A. In response, Aziz tried to open up the intercultural dialogue by asking why the heckler didn't have the word “c— on her forehead," before lamenting that there are still “racist” people in the world.  Of course, that is the risk you run when you decide to take questions from the [...]

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