Bill Hicks's Principles Of Comedy

Bill Hicks is a name I found after about a year into stand-up. I didn't ever hear of him until one night when I totally F'ed around at a small Irish Pub, where the bartender told me to go up and fill time being funny between the band's sets, and he'd let me drink free for an hour. He lost.

(pointless rambling about how I found out about Bill Hicks in 1999)


Bill had died by then. Like many of the high-vibration creative artist souls, he was gone way too early. He was 32, and passed away from pancreatic cancer in 1994. He had quit smoking and drinking and drugging before he found out he was ill. The day he got his diagnosis, he got in his friend's car, tore the butt off a Marlboro Light, and lit up. WTF, indeed. There are videos of him performing his ass off until the final few days, noted by his consistent rubbing of his right side. The show must go on.

Reading up on him (American Scream, great read, and "Love All The People," his writings), he was widely regarded as the most-honest, unflinching, intelligent, socially-relevant, funny, and brilliant comedian of his era, and top-5 of all time (Pryor, Carlin, Cosby, Bruce, Hicks). That was the Sam Kinison era. The Dice era. The pre-"Seinfeld" Seinfeld era. The Denis Leary era. (Denis Leary's "No Cure For Cancer" is based heavily in material stolen, lifted, nipped, whatever you wanna call it but truly TAKEN FROM Bill Hicks.) He despised Gallagher and CarrotTop, Michael Bolton, and commercialism.

And after hearing Bill Hicks, I stopped doing comedy for 3 years because I realized how far away I was, and I sucked that bad and wasn't close to the principles below. So check these out. This is a philosophy. I love it, and find that I have been working from these for quite some time. Very validating, and all the same, just a flag to fly. So here ya go...


BILL HICKS’S PRINCIPLES OF COMEDY
1. If you can be yourself on stage nobody else can be you and you have the law of supply and demand covered.
2. The act is something you fall back on if you can’t think of anything else to say.
3. Only do what you think is funny, never just what you think they will like, even though it’s not that funny to you.
4. Never ask them is this funny – you tell them this is funny.
5. You are not married to any of this shit – if something happens, taking you off on a tangent, NEVER go back and finish a bit, just move on.
6. NEVER ask the audience “How You Doing?” People who do that can’t think of an opening line. They came to see you to tell them how they’re doing, asking that stupid question up front just digs a whole. This is The Most Common Mistake made by performers. I want to leave as soon as they say that.
7. Write what entertains you. If you can’t be funny be interesting. You haven’t lost the crowd. Have something to say and then do it in a funny way.
8. I close my eyes and walk out there and that’s where I start, Honest.
9. Listen to what you are saying, ask yourself, “Why am I saying it and is it Necessary?” (This will filter all your material and cut the unnecessary words, economy of words)
10. Play to the top of the intelligence of the room. There aren’t any bad crowds, just wrong choices.
11. Remember this is the hardest thing there is to do. If you can do this you can do anything.
12. I love my cracker roots. Get to know your family, be friends with them.


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Do Me A Flavor

The past year of living in Los Angeles has been weird. I've grown a lot as a person. I've had to learn to ask, persevere, promote, and deliver comedy in weirder situations than I've ever been in. That includes the time I did comedy in a cut-out of a wall over a bar, standing on a 12-inch ledge. And everything I've done in Tukwila.

I read a book earlier this year called "The Go Giver." My friend & helper-angel Ann turned me on to it. The premise of the story is that when you can, Help. It greatly changed the way I look at helping, being helped, and the entire WHAT Helping Is. A subtext that I picked up on is that there's a BIG BIG BIG OPRAH EGO-HUGE difference between Helping, and Imposing Your Will With Best Intentions.

Somebody offering to swing a hammer to erect your weekend bone-shed, that's a Helper. They are there to help you get Your thing done.

Somebody bringing a set of blue-prints and one shovel and asking you "Why are you doing it that way? Shouldn't the drain be in the middle of the floor? Are these walls sound-proof? What grade are the leather restraints?" That's a NiceHole. They are coming to help you get things done the way they would like them to be done.

And if you question their intention, up their own ass they go, pursing their lips and saying "Well...
I WAS ONLY TRYING TO HELP."

Would you let somebody pay for your groceries for a month?
If it meant they got to do all the shopping, also?

Would you let somebody buy you a car?
If it meant they chose it, but you had to gas and insure it?

Would you let somebody get you a job that paid pretty well?
If it meant you didn't know what the job entailed?

I believe deeply in helping somebody when you can, simply because you can. It just MIGHT put you out, but you can handle it. Not talkin' kidney-donation, or even any kind of organ trade.
But never, ever helping somebody "on your terms." There is help, then there is Politicking.

Nobody elected you to be a Friend.

Give. Or Get. Graciously.

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