THURMON One time I got to an event and
someone said “Our people really like blue
humor.” It didn’t fit. I don’t know how to do
that.
FUTCH Give ’em Rizzo’s card.
IRVIN To be confident and eloquent,
you’ve got to match up to your audience.
You know, you’ve got to know who your
audience is and match up to either what
they’re expecting, or what you think that
they’re going to buy. You know, because a
room full of truck drivers is different than a
room full of nuns.
CULBERSON Take Richard Pryor.
RIZZO I was just going to say, he’s extremely eloquent.
FUTCH Absolutely.
CULBERSON And see, to me it’s a combination of his language plus his cleverness.
The cleverness has to be there.
RIZZO That’s an excellent example. That’s
right. But here’s the difference, Richard
Pryor was coming from his heart. He was
coming from pain. It was so him. Am I
right?
FUTCH And he knew what was funny. My all
time favorite Richard Pryor line was after he
had his accident and he said “People will
IRVIN The same with (George) Carlin. Carlin
could be very eloquent. His routines are
very finely crafted.
RIZZO It’s the anger...
IRVIN Yeah, he’s ticked off at everybody.
RIZZO And that’s what makes him eloquent, I think. George Carlin is real. The
way he vents that anger, and it’s anger we
all have, to a degree. Because, if we didn’t
have it, we wouldn’t be able to laugh. We
relate to what he’s saying.
CULBERSON Bill Stanton did a special a few
years ago on how to create humor, and
he said the definition of humor is “pain.” It’s
finding your pain and turning it around. I’d
heard about people coming from a
“place of pain” and using humor as a
defensive mechanism. But I had never
thought that the humor itself as being
crafted out of pain.
RIZZO I think it is. Absolutely.
FUTCH If you see somebody put on a
brand new suit coming out of the clothing
store and falling right in a mud puddle, it’s
funny as hell. I mean, the man’s in pain,
but it’s funny.
RIZZO That’s a good point. I think Neil Simon
is brilliant. In his play, The Prisoner on Second
Avenue, Jack Lemmon went through hell.
There was a point when I was watching and
I’m laughing my ass off and everyone in the
room with me was laughing, and I’m wondering “Why are we laughing? This guy’s
going through so much pain emotionally
and mentally.” But I think we’re laughing at
extensions of ourselves. That’s what makes it
eloquent, that we can relate.
CULBERSON That’s where Dale is masterful.
He’s using comments that everybody
heard, but nobody took the time to see
the humor in it. That’s eloquent. You use
real-life experiences, expose the comedy
