The Courage of Comedians

“For every laugh, there should be a tear.”

-       Walt Disney, animator/entrepreneur

“The moment that you feel, just possibly, you are walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind, and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself… that is the moment, you might be starting to get it right.”

-       Neil Gaiman, writer

            I feel like being a comedian is a job that takes a lot of courage. Now to be clear, I’m not saying it’s a job that takes the most courage out of every other job on Earth; that category would be something along the lines of being a firefighter, a police office, a person in the military, or an astronaut. But while being a successful stand-up comic looks like a fun job, there’s a lot behind the scenes. One has to find the right note, almost like a musician, that will make the audience laugh. For every minute-long joke that flies, there’s a ton of prep work behind it. And a lot of jokes are based on real life pain, pain that the comic is showing off to the world.

            For example, Patton Oswalt in his comedy special “Annihilation” spends a large portion of his routine talking about the death of his wife. He talks about not only dealing with that, but also with having to figure out how to break the news to his daughter Alice and raise her by himself. Somehow he is able to make one of the most tragic things possible also pretty funny. For example, at one point during the routine Oswalt talks about dropping his daughter off at school after his wife’s death, and how one of the other schoolchildren asked him, “Is Alice gonna have a stepmom? Because when my parents got divorced I had a stepmom right away!” And he says that he was thinking, “I bet you did! Is your stepmom teaching you Russian, because I don’t think she’s teaching your Mom pilates anymore?”

            Even before the tragic death of his wife Patton Oswalt would talk about dark stuff and make it funny. Throughout his career he’s talked about his depression. There are bits in which he’s talked about wanting to kill himself while shopping in the grocery store thanks to the fact that the song “Africa” from Toto was playing in the background. There was also another bit in which Oswalt talks about trying to put on a smile and dealing with his depression while promoting the PIXAR film “Ratatouille” and interacting with children.

            Another comedian who draws from his pain is Pete Davidson. When he was a child, his father who was a firefighter died while on duty on 9-11. While Davidson has brought laughs to millions thanks to his stand-up routines and years on “Saturday Night Live,” he has suffered a lot, dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.

            In Pete Davidson’s comedy special “Alive From New York,” he ends his routine by talking about his father, and the stories about him he would hear from family and friends of said family. All of the stories basically were told to make his father look like an all-American hero (which he definitely was) and someone to emulate. Davidson then talks about meeting an old friend of his Dad’s and asking for more information about him. And this old friend begins by saying, “Oh, you’re Dad was awesome! We used to do coke all the time!” He then continues by telling an absolutely insane story about his late father; I won’t spoil it for you here.

            Pete Davidson seems to have also borrowed from his life struggles for his upcoming movie “The King of Staten Island.”

            So yes, being a comedian and mining nuggets from one’s own life, whether tragic or not, can take a lot of courage. Honestly being an artist using self-expression in any form might take at least a small amount of courage. This is whether one is a writer, an actor, a filmmaker, a dancer, a painter, and so on. A lot of people try their best to hide their deepest emotions from the public, perhaps even their closest friends and family. Artists, not least of which include comedians, show off their emotions to the world.

Note: If you’re interesting in checking out my fantasy novel-in-progress “The Princess of

Infinite Tomorrows,” you can do so at https://princessofinfinitetomorrows.blogspot.com/.