I do two shows on back-to-back nights where the premise is “no material.” On one, only audience suggestions. On the other, only crowd work.
I love doing shows like this. Not just because I enjoy the challenge of being forced to improvise and stay in the moment; I love seeing how comics handle the vulnerability that springs from ditching material.
The crowd work show – the brainchild of my friend Mike – is one I have seen for months in pictures and clips on social media. The hook is more than just “only crowd work.” We’re performing in the round, totally enclosed by the audience. When I enter the club, I am immediately struck by how intimate this setup makes the room feel. Everyone in the circle is barely out of arm’s reach, which, considering the format, makes total sense. Physical closeness is a precursor to psychological closeness. Lean in, and you’ll connect.
I get the privilege of going up early. I quickly find myself chatting with a young couple – exes who are still sleeping with each other. “Maybe you still have a shot,” I say after trying to drill down into why they broke up, but failing to hit oil. “I’ll let y’all discuss that on your own.”
After the show, I get burgers with my friend Zahid before we relocate to a bar. We score a booth on the empty patio, one that we realize is deceptively high off the ground as soon as we sit down. He has a beer, I have a club soda, our feet dangling like elementary schoolers.
We talk for a while. He's new to LA, but an old friend. We've known each other for something like seven years, having first met at a festival in Detroit and bonding over our Texan-ness. We have similar philosophies on life and comedy. We’ve become close enough to talk on the phone, comfortable enough to never get stuck in surface-level small talk.
Eventually, we find ourselves discussing an Achilles heel of life in Los Angeles that we’d both recently discovered: caring about optics. In a city of big fish from small ponds, of dreamers trying to become doers, how others perceive you can feel more important than anything tangible.
Daisygreen and I are at a movie night hosted by one of her grad school friends, in his snug West Hollywood apartment. Between the gaggle of AFI alums, the handful of plus ones, the array of big bowls piled high with popcorn in a myriad of flavors, and the hundreds of books stacked on shelves and spilling onto the floor, with an organization system that’s clear to their owner and opaque to everyone else, there’s not much room. But the conversation flows easily; the atmosphere never feels cramped.
There is barely enough room for a dozen people to watch a French musical from the mid-2000s in Max's living room, but we make do. We spread onto the floor, cozy up on the couch, contort ourselves awkwardly onto wobbly dining chairs. Before we begin watching, Max explains his love of this movie: Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs. He hasn't seen it since high school, but he remembers that viewing experience as seminal. It seemed to open his world to unconsidered possibilities, both as a filmmaker and as a young gay man. He wonders how it holds up now. He hopes he didn’t block out anything massively anti-Semitic.
Just before he presses play, he adds one final thing: he’s happy we're all experiencing this together, even with the cramped confines. He waxes poetic about being a weird art teen, seeing shows in basements with leaky pipes or at venues in alleys behind twenty gates off the street. Sometimes, he argues, art benefits from being experienced in an uncomfortable space. We nod in agreement. We're all uncomfortable together, awakened by our touching limbs and jutting elbows and distorted postures. There is no nodding off at this screening.
I'm at the Comedy Store, in the parking lot, waiting to go inside to watch a roast that's being taped for OnlyFans. There's a motley crew of comedians, porn people, middlemen, and hangers-on chilling outside, drinking canned cocktails, smoking, and talking shop. The major differences between any average night at the Store and tonight is that the drinks are free, and there's a red carpet.
I find myself in a conversational blob containing a shifting configuration of two TV producer friends, two porn gals who met making stuff together on OnlyFans, and a soft-spoken comic who is, I learn later, very high. I am not dressed in the "White Trashionista" theme suggested on the invite, and am in stark contrast to my flannel-and-denim clad cohort, with one of them sporting a pair of gigantic fake boobs meant for a drag queen, repurposed to burst out of too-small overalls. They get lots of compliments.
We meander through several topics while waiting for the doors to open – podcasts, how to not get sucked into TikTok ("I try to spend more time creating than consuming," one of the porn gals suggests), wedding proposals, comedy, road trips, and on and on. We haven't made much progress towards actually getting seats, so I text a friend in the writer's room to see if he can sort out a spot for the six of us. He pops out, looking frazzled, then leads us into the back hallway. It's crammed with other friends of the show, all vying for spots.
We weave our way to the big double doors in the back corner of the Main Room. My friend points us towards the "friends-and-family" seats we sat in for the last taping, only to be shot down by a frazzled member of the production staff. There are a lot of overlapping conversations happening, but I hear the words “at capacity” thrown out a lot.
I’m still by the double doors, waiting for an answer. A big guy wearing dark clothes and a surveillance earpiece looks to me.
"What's your name?"
"Jay."
"Jay, you need to get the fuck out of the way."
I back off and he closes the double doors, locking out the 25-or-so people waiting in the hallway. Moments later, the club's manager tells us we all need to leave the building, there's no more room. So it goes. A few people keep trying to plead their way inside, but I know a "no" when I hear one.
“I thought that guy was joking with you,” the soft-spoken comic tells me. “He was talking to you like he knew you.”
“Nah, he was just doing his job,” I reply. Audience coordinating isn’t a cakewalk.
The porn gals ask me to take a couple more red carpet photos of them, then say I should jump in after. "Just like on set," one says, giggling.
My friend comes out to apologize to us. One of the door guys theorizes that this time, the taping was less for "comedy people" and more for "OnlyFans people", which seems to be confirmed when a young rapper (so young, "Young" is in his stage name) and his entourage are also turned away when they try to get in 45 minutes late. After the six of us decide against going to Jumbo's Clown Room together, we go our separate ways. We’re not quite that close yet.