Comedy w/ Dan Feist

Everybody loves being entertained. We love to let our hair down and laugh loudly when we are out on the town. There’s nothing like stand-up comedy to lift your spirits and split your sides at the same time. We’ll have a convo about comedy with Dan Feist on this week’s episode of FYI.

Transcript

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everybody loves being entertained we love to let our hair down and laugh loudly when we are out on the town there's nothing like stand-up comedy to lift your spirits and split your sides at the same time we'll have a convo about comedy with dan feist on this week's episode of f y i welcome to for your info english you got it[Music] hello hello hello and welcome to another exciting edition of fyi for your english and i'm really psyched yeah i'm gonna use a word that we use in the states i am psyched emotional minta though i'm psyched because today we've got an amazing program for you a wonderful guest a great friend of mine i want to welcome someone you may already know and if you don't know him you will after today's show please welcome dan feist hey how you doing alberto thanks for having me hey how's it going man great to have you we've been we've been talking about this for for quite some time that's right and finally we made it happen by hooker by crook you're here with me in the studio you even got a beer in your hand with that which i think is awesome i think uh we we're gonna have a chat here about comedy yep we're just having a laid-back chat and i'm gonna be enjoying this beer awesome awesome and i'm sure the listeners are gonna enjoy our conversation about comedy first we wanna find out a little bit about you dan now i know let's let's pretend i don't know anything about you hi nice to meet you tell me a little bit about yourself dan feist well um originally from minnesota wisconsin in the united states that's the upper midwest but i've been in spain for 20 years and i've had all kinds of cool opportunities this is the latest cool opportunity being on fyi awesome and this sounds familiar because you were on an episode recently telling us a little bit about why you love spain that's right i i did send you that so that that's great this is actually this is really your second participation but this is this one you're really here in the flesh as we say absolutely in the flesh doing it live so you live in spain you're from the united states that's one thing we have in common but another thing we have in common is we're both performers we both love comedy we you know ever since we met we've been saying have you seen this one did you see this sketch do you know this and uh i think that's one thing also our love of beer as well has brought us together i mean a lot of good in the english language and we're both english teachers so we do have a lot in common even though you'd think our states have nothing you know a boy from new york and you'd be like what but actually we're more similar than i think we can imagine that's scary it's scary it is it is but that's maybe even comical and that's that's what we're going to talk about today now how did you get into performing how did you get into comedy but because you've now performed in english and spanish you also are one of the one of the forerunners i would say of comedy and improv here in madrid right right well thank you for saying that um i definitely have put in some time it all started uh when my wife told me that we were pregnant and i went oh that means all my my dreams either have to come true now or i can never achieve them so i started doing stand-up um at first in spanish and it was just really soul-crushing experience um trying to get laughs when you don't know what you're doing uh in stand-up well it's hard to get laughs in your own language oh for sure absolutely but i made really good friends uh back in the day uh when in those first open mics and people who've really kept pushing me forward and really helping me out a lot and so that was great shortly after i started a comedy group with a couple other really great comedians awesome people called freshly comedy and we were around for eight years nine years uh doing live shows and that's kind of maybe why i'm one of the forerunners of the comedy injury at first i was like wait there's nothing else like this freshly comedy which was uh something an initiative that dan and and some other awesome friends of ours put together bilingual all of you uh with a love of comedy and and you brought people together hey when when is freshly comedy coming back will we ever see freshly comedy again i'm afraid we won't um i'm still performing quite a bit uh both in stand-up and improv um with a dark roast comedy darke rast okay comedy um for stand up and mad improv for improvisations uh but the other members uh continue to be doing uh creative things and continue to be producing tony's making a podcast about movies sean is uh writing political cartoons for satire magazines all over britain and so i think we've we've uh moved past freshly it will it will live forever it really was an a unique initiative for english speakers in madrid which there are many not just the people from madrid but also people who were learning english in madrid you know not just saying native english speakers i mean so it brought together a very international crowd of people who were laughing drinking beer because if i recall it was at the beer state why is this an episode about beer or comedy well i don't know man but i think they go hand in hand sure sure who you want to see a good stand-up show with an icy cold brew and some good company right absolutely absolutely now stand-up comedy i think most people would think about it i know they say monologus but in english a monologue sounds more like in a movie to me or from a play right well that's a really interesting thing to say um because when i when i started in in stand-up in spanish it was in 2009 and monologue was the word that almost everybody used monologuista as a buzzword yeah but at that time the comedians were doing something that was more similar to a monologue than to stand-up comedy ah so it really was like a month like a written gotcha right so when i think of a monologue i think of um a stage play like a soliloquy yes exactly right exactly there was always that one monologue in the shakespeare play or think uh i think or mario right in that play it's one person having a monologue for five hours about one person all right and so it was a stand-up in the past was a lot more like that uh the comedians here were more like actors who were doing some funny script they were hiding behind their script putting on voices and things like this that's right exactly um but not just putting on voices um following a very scripted style gotcha and in stand-up it has to be a lot more spontaneous right and you have to be willing to forget all of your material and talk about what's happening right now in the room right you don't have to necessarily stick to the script which is a great expression to look at yep absolutely um and so nowadays in the last well in the last 15 years of course comedy has really evolved in spain and now we have we still have some of the older school monologue style right and we have many other styles that are fresher uh live or quite quite a bit more diverse right off the cuff i mean because sure you want to be scripted you want to have an idea of what you want to say but i always say when the script limits you that's not a good thing oh absolutely later we'll talk about bill hicks he was a legendary comedian who died way too young he said that your script is only there for for you when you don't have anything funnier to say wow he was i was going to say he's more than a comedian i would say we're going to talk about bill hicks but he was a visionary of sorts right absolutely politically before bill maher and all these political comments i mean he's still relevant today even though he died in like 1993. another one george carlin's still relevant the things he said are not only funny today but they're brutally honestly true yeah yeah it's incredible so we're going to talk about that in the bonus part guys we're going to take a look at a bunch of different classics we're going to recommend some of our favorite sketches some of our favorite bits but first uh well i wanted to take a look at the definition of stand-up comedy according to wikipedia because you got to trust wikipedia uh wikipedia is an excellent tool if you know how to use it exactly so let's see if we can use it right let's see if you agree with their definition stand-up comedy consists of one-liners stories observations or schtick that may incorporate props music magic tricks or ventriloquism i mean this is a very broad definition isn't it yeah it is that is how would you define in your in your definition what is stand-up comedy if you had to define it stand-up comedy is the solution for people who don't want to live anymore but can't commit suicide so they get on stage expose themselves that's right that's right uh one one of my favorite comedians said jesus died on the cross for your sins i die on stage every night for your mere entertainment value just so you laugh at me and decide how good i i may or may not be right no but i mean stand up is a really the total art form because uh you have to come up with the idea you have to write the idea edit the idea then you have to produce a show promote the show direct the show and star in the show right and everything is on you it's the you don't get to count on anybody else very much so right and that was um very typical in many european countries they still call it a one-man show well yeah are you doing a one-man show the one-man show yeah because it's that it it is all that and so so it's really somebody getting on stage exposing themselves telling stories making people laugh entertaining people because what are people going out to be in the end okay they want to laugh but above all that it's entertainment i want to feel i want to forget about what's happening in the world or quite the contrary some comedy makes you think about what's going on in the world and laugh it off and laugh it off or and it can even help change your perspective or your opinion about something you know bill hicks and i'm just repeating him because i don't want to keep spoiling other comedians right for the second half of the show but bill hicks said uh the us went to war in iraq and they said war but i do you can can anyone tell me what the iraqis uniform looked like right and so it kind of pointed it made out very it made a very clear point that we weren't really fighting an army when we were there right and right and even that line from 1991 or 1992 uh could be applied to certain uh current events that we're seeing nowadays absolutely that's the thing about good comedy just like good writing of novels timeless it's timeless i i aspire to be that so obviously not everything i can write can be timeless but i aspire to have some of those real key bits right as you said before bits uh be those jokes that really last forever well this is really interesting stuff now i wanted to find out a little bit about where and when comedy started and the first thing i came i thought first thing that popped into my mind obviously was vaudeville which was kind of music and shows shows and people dancing these kind of reviews right and then it developed into a more like strictly comedy based thing well i i would say that there are there are kind of two main veins that were feeding into the creation of stand-up and one of them definitely was this idea of cabaret vaudeville um variety show kind of a thing where where the host or one of the one of the guests would be particularly funny only speaking right the other vein that fed uh stand-up comedy was public speaking they consider that mark twain probably had the first stand-up comedy tour as towards the end of his life he had made some bad investments and was broke uh so he he started a speaking tour oh wow and his speaking tour was uh was quite comical of course the american comedy award is named the mark twain award he is the creator of the american novel and the creator of american satire in a certain sense so wow interesting and yeah well if it makes sense now you say it but later the standup wasn't used until i don't know what to do well i i looked up some information again wikipedia gotta trust them gotta trust them with your life well let's see what you have the first document and i quote the first documented use of stand up as a term was in the stage in 1911 describing a miss nelly perrier delivering stand-up comic ditties in a chic and charming manner i i would i would say that uh that's true i've heard that name before and i've heard that that that's coming through but a ditty to me sounds like a song yeah more than just a spoken rhythm that's the thing well they were it says a performance of comedy songs yes rather than stand up comedy in true terms however in the yorkshire evening post this is november 10 1917 the stage gossip column described the career of a guy named finlay dunn okay and the article states that dunn played as what he calls a stand-up comedian so this was the first time they said here's a profession here's you know somebody does this as a job the other one was mentioning the act she she was dude and this one says a stand-up come so let's say in the early 1900s absolutely yeah yeah and then um for for what we would consider modern stand-up most people think that the late 50s early 60s is when it started to get established uh lenny bruce is widely considered the original stand-up he's a jewish guy from new york who is very critical of pretty much any anything he's anti-establishment he talks a lot about politics or religion sex uh vulgarity sure so if you think back to the pure 1950s in american culture and then here's this man coming to our town he was kind of like a jim morrison yep a couple of decades before jim morrison was jim morrison right right um uh and so uh he was great he uh one of his most famous lines was against censorship was uh if you can't say [ __ ] you can't say [ __ ] the government and so it's not the most hilarious joke but it's very poignant it makes a very good point and there's a twist at the end and we'll talk about the twist in a little bit interesting interesting yeah cause there's there's this line where if you want to find out what's happening in a particular society or culture just look at their art and i include comedy in that i include stand-up comedy you want to know what was happening in the 60s watch the stand-up comics look at the art look at the movies look that's going to tell the story more than the history books imo sure no i don't know absolutely i agree um the same the same would go for music so if you find uh um something some songs from bob marley if you listen to it you can figure out what's happening in jamaica in 1973 or 1976 in the political scene and so absolutely you got to listen to the art and stand up is uh is that thing you know um not every comedian is a critic no no there's all and that's great that that's how we're going to get into that now the different styles we already said some people do schtick yeah can you tell us a little bit about some of the different styles that are out there there's the obviously observational sure my brother-in-law the other day sure well um the observational one seinfeld was really uh famous for this absolutely and not i mean he was so famous for it that he they parlayed it into uh a series that lasted 13 years and was super popular and it's all about the nuances in the language and the observational sure an observational comedy comes up with this idea it generally starts with have you ever noticed that what's the deal with these people that's his life what is the deal with and so he he questions things and he does a lot of like really banal or mundane observation things and then he makes them quite entertaining yeah yeah so there's that observational side observational then i love one voice a lot of the voice guys too who do a lot of different voices okay stories sure i mean yeah no the the storytelling comedian is perhaps the most common kind of comedian nowadays um because before i get to storytelling i'd like to talk about the one liner oh okay yeah yeah the one line oh yeah yeah and so this is these are jokes that generally are less than 20 words in the in their full scope right one of my favorite one-liners is actually from a spanish comedian named luis albaro and he said that uh sabias que la mayoria de la personas que entran uh accidente[Music] yeah right it's a but that's a one-liner it's just it's a very short joke and it contains all the parts of it yeah so there's a little hand grenade right and so like this is a standard joke a traditional joke what the spanish people call the chiste popular has uh some aspects of the one liner because you try and keep it short you give as much detail and as few words as possible and then you get to the to the pay-off the punchline but and then one-liner comedians can't really tell stories but on the other side of the spectrum you have the storyteller right where it's a very involved every character is like real right and and and not only that but my jokes don't if i'm telling a story my jokes don't have to be complete jokes and we're going to talk about the the structure of a joke and the set up in the punch line um but if i'm telling a story i can use other kinds of of tools to be to be funny okay interesting i i was just thinking of a one-liner that i loved i think henny youngman was his name he was like the king of one from goodfellas dr jones wonderful doctor gave the guy six months to live couldn't pay his bill gave him another six months you know i mean it's like like you said he's like he introduces the guy this is the doctor here's the boom and so i'm gonna i'm gonna and yeah yeah we'll talk about that in the second part so bring that line up again later if you will i love i'm i'm a big fan of one liners cause i might let's be honest my attention span that's my problem there that's why one-liners are great for me puns i love puns obviously as a language lover yeah no and one-liners uh can include some kinds of puns and a pun is a play on words uh play on words where uh you uh make fun of a double meaning because you you're about homophones aren't you yeah homophones in english all over the place oh yeah and so you can get a lot of homophones uh to give you a double meaning or a double understanding of the situation so uh very good very good awesome so we got puns slapstick but that's not really with comedy that's a kind of more of comedy for sketches well slapstick depends a little bit less on the verbal and a little bit more on the physical or on the acting like speaking of seinfeld uh michael kramer michael kramer yeah cosmo cosmo cream i'm mixing the actor's name with the character michael richards right um cosmo so he he um or if you look at old movies with the cops these black and white movies with the tubby cops who are falling over the play all over the place sure and whatever stooges yep there you go and so slapstick is a little bit more physical than verbal but there's definitely room um in inside stand up as an artist to mix them to mix or even to rely quite a bit on on slapstick so any like any art what i'm getting from you here is like any art it's not i don't just do slapstick i don't just do ed you know observational humor it's not just tongue in cheek yeah well i wanted to stop in that what is tongue in cheek well tongue in cheek at first it doesn't seem to make sense but if you think about each word individually it is when you push your tongue on the inside of your cheek kind of going it's a joke and tongue-in-cheek tends to be a joke that's a little more subtle right that isn't as obvious and so the person kind of gives you that facial expression so that you understand that he's joking and that that was a joke right and tongue-in-cheek is is good it just it means insincere in a sense sure sure sophomoric it's my favorite kind of gamer which is poo poo and peepee jokes right no and uh farts yeah is my my son came home a lot when he was younger with kakaku lopez and he would just laugh at that that's timeless dude sophomore humor is timeless in some way all right so here's what i want to talk about because most of us have been in the audience we've been to shows uh stand-up comedy shows uh you know any kind of shows to be entertained and i know myself it can be very nerve-wracking dealing with stage fright and especially you're trying new material that you haven't tried what is the whole tell us a little bit about the process of how you create a bid or a joke and i don't know some of the do's and don'ts because i'm sure many people don't don't understand what goes into coming up with your next let's say you're planning your next bit what would you do now well um try not to force myself okay you know this is like if you're trying to write a novel and you sit down you say i'm going to write a novel and you sit down at the computer and where do you start right now so so it's good to to draw on experiences or ideas or reactions that you've had in your real life and go oh you know what i think i could really expand on that idea um so um i'm trying to think of something that i did recently that isn't to do offensively we're not going to get cancelled or anything no i can't get cancelled i don't have anything to begin with how am i going to get canceled we can maybe talk about that too but so you you draw on something where you were funny in your real life or had a funny idea in your real life and then you sit down and from there what i would do is try and talk it through with some friends okay not but as a conversation yeah yeah see if your friends think it's a funny story drop it in conversation and then feed off of their reactions you're testing them a little bit okay right and well but the other thing is that comedians really work well when they're bouncing things off of people absolutely sure all right well that's the whole thing stand-up comedy doesn't work without the audience exactly and and there's so many important factors in involving the audience in your stand-up so that your stand-up can be good um so i bounce it off of my friends with some conversation um and then i go home and i try to structure it and there are different uh typical joke structures that comedians use a real typical one is the afterthought okay um which is like um we're having the kids for dinner we're going to make them at the but we're going to make them on the barbecue right we're not inviting them we're going to eat them okay both sure sure and so this afterthought is like that funny thing that you say after somebody else finishes a sentence it's very typical in your work conversations or in your in your friend comments like a comeback of spirits exactly like that i want something funny to say there and so you'll see yep something witty of course you'll see a lot of comedians use the afterthoughts considerably uh quite a bit and also the um the rule of three so i give you three examples then the first two examples start to set a line they start to set an expectation thinking a way of thinking and your brain thinks that it has reached that final conclusion but then my third option is a surprise and that's where the fun is all right right you're like i've been eating really healthy lately i had for breakfast i had some oatmeal and i had some kiwi and a six pack of donuts yep exactly you know it's like wait whoa what happened there that's right that was the big turn and that's where the surprise is so you want to catch them off guard too comedy's a little bit about catching people off guard it's all about surprise surprise the element of surprise i love it yeah we're trying to sum up something think about this we're trying to sum up something that's hard to sum up because comedy is so many different things it's sense of humor is something you know cultural sometimes i wanted to talk about that not right yet we only have a few minutes left but continue with the creating the joke and the do's and the don'ts um and then the do's are talk about what you know about don't talk about what you don't know about it will be obvious to everyone that you don't know what you're talking about so do that uh another thing is to um you said you mentioned uh stage fright nerve wracking well uh for me it was really big at first i thought i saw the audience as an like an enemy or an opponent that i had to to win gotcha that i had to beat them somehow i had to win over them yeah right um and then i realized that that's not true at all people go to a comedy show made plans bought the tickets ahead of time usually spend some good money together parking they're gonna have dinner they're gonna park maybe they have kids so they have a babysitter so they they have a lot invested in in the fact that the show is going to go well and they're going to have a great time and they want to have a good time so i i had to convince myself that i don't have to win them they're on my team this is my living room they came here to have a good time right i know how to make them have a good time oh okay we can do this right you have that contract that unsigned contract yeah sure yep so excellent interesting interesting and have you ever had to deal with hecklers i love it okay so hecklers are these people who feel like they came there to be the comedian but they're not on the poster yeah no absolutely it's it's the person in the audience who yells out comments at uh inappropriate and inconvenient times right uh but that's not true all the time you're like yeah this is comedy we're generalizing yep exactly exactly and you've i guess you what you would do is uh knowing you incorporate them into the show you're right i mean uh uh there are different ways to go about it but the first the first thing you you remind them that they're in the audience and you're on stage right but you do it gently gently you know you're like hey excuse me um i don't know if you noticed that you're in the dark in a chair and i'm on a raised platform with lights and a microphone so everybody can hear me do you remember so that's how this works is you be quiet over there and i talk up here i don't want to talk about hierarchy but if there is one here right and um and if they keep going uh then you can turn it up you can get a little bit mean with them you can get a little bit more aggressive but the best thing is not to get aggressive yet to just say talk because when whatever they say they're going to say something so stupid you're going to get a great laugh exactly i've seen some of the best you know bits come from a heckler that spontaneous reaction and it goes back to what you said about okay you should have an idea a script an order your stuff worked out right but your script is only there for when you don't have something funnier to say right now as our buddy bill hicks said well guys we've reached the end of the first part we're going to come back in the bonus part we're going to talk about the cultural differences in humor we'll talk a little bit about cancel culture okay we'll talk about bill hicks and some of our favorite comedians that we'll recommend some vocabulary some idioms and so much more if you guys are interested in finding out more about the bonus part and getting vocabulary pdfs with vocabulary and tons of expressions everything that we looked at today and weekly and monthly classes with me you can find out more on patreon.com alberto alonso and a quick shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students javier roberto david jose maria mila alex patricio edgar and don't forget about my interstellar students isabel paco diego carmen and diana thank you so much guys and to all of you who are going to join us in the bonus part of today's f y i[Music][Applause][Music][Music][Applause] you