NANTUCKET - An all-star comedy roundtable starring Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman, Andy Samberg and Zach Galifianakis yesterday during the Nantucket Film Festival devolved into a debate over YouTube.
While “Saturday Night Live” funnyman Samberg and Galifianakis, the breakout star of “The Hangover,” owe much of their comedy career success to the online video sharing site, Silverman isn’t a big fan.
“It’s like rollerblading in an outdoor mall,” she said. “We did it because it was fun and new, until there were laws made about rollerblading in an outdoor mall.”
Silverman said YouTube ruins her ability to try out new material - see what bombs and what works - because it all ends up on the Internet before the act is ready for prime time.
“People put your stuff up there and it’s not ready,” she said, adding that old-school stand-up comics such as Richard Pryor honed their acts after months of performing.
But with YouTube, fans who show up at her shows expect to see new material all the time, not the old stuff they’ve been watching on the Internet for months.
Zach was more positive.
I think it’s a cool thing,” said the hirsute Southerner. “It’s a new avenue for people to get into the comedy business.”
When asked by audience member Allison Weiss, 12, of Guilford, Conn., who he liked to watch on YouTube, Z gave props to Andy Milonakis, whose freestyle rhyming vids went viral, as well as Comedy Central’s Bo Burnham, the Hamilton homey who recorded his shtick from his bedroom.
Sidenote: Zach was so impressed with the little girl’s question, he took out his wallet and handed her $20 from the stage.
Read about how Zach went on to interview Brian Williams for his Between Two Ferns Internet show:
http://news.bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view/20100620its_a_starry_night_on_nantucket/srvc=home&position=also
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Looks like Zach grew his beard back after he shaved it on SNL. It's a trimmer beard now, though.
So what do you think? I think Sarah has a good point. Comedians spend months coming up with jokes to perfect a routine and then they repeat that routine for like a year. It's kind of like how a musician comes up with a new album every year or two. Similarly, comedians won't have a new set of jokes for about a year or so.
However, that said, there are the truly legendary comedians... the Robin Williams, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Cosby, etc... the legendary comedians actually stole from each other. You could enter them into a room where people have heard their jokes, and they'd simply and comfortably pull out more jokes, often borrowing from each other or improv-ing with the crowd when they felt like their audience knew their jokes. Or Cosby would just remember something else that happened to him in his life, and boom, he would instantly be down a new tirade of a story, over-expressing the characters from his life.
And then Zach and Andy wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Internet videos. Ben Stiller is doing more Internet videos now, but he got his start with digital shorts on TV. And Sarah Silverman even owes a lot of her popularity to YouTube videos like "I *** Matt Damon."
What do you think?
Enjoy!
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