Depression the Comedy by Jessica Holmes

Author:Jessica Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989025147
Publisher: Jessica Holmes
Published: 2018-03-07T05:00:00+00:00

...and not because I’ve entirely disappeared from the comedy community. But there’s a reason I relocated in the Comedian Protection Program: I found my peers intimidating (even more than the icy, sexy people at the gym who wear muscle shirts and pay for extra oxygen in their water). Maybe my fearfulness stemmed from the culture shock of going from modest Mormon to beer-hall clown, or insecurity about my material being less joke-based and more character-based than theirs, or from an incident at the start of my career when I was recording my performance on a tape recorder placed in the green room and the next morning when I listened to the tape, I discovered the recording had picked up other comedians mocking me backstage.

Pat: Oh, that’s awful. Like, I wanna throw up.

Me: Wait, there’s more!

At one of my first open mic nights, the emcee was whipping a rubber chicken at any performer who wasn’t getting enough laughs—while they were still on stage!! The flogged amateurs skulked away as the emcee merrily picked up the chicken and introduced the next potential target. I didn’t get hit with the chicken but I felt so anxious I might as well have been. I was in awe of comedians individually—so quick and daring and brave. I was inspired by them when we hung out solo, but in a group setting, the one-upmanship made me anxious, and to quote Michael Jackson quoting someone else, “I’m a lover, not a fighter.” I withdrew from the social side of my job, going against the expression “don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater” (which, by the way, is surely the worst expression ever, and we need to find an equivalent—maybe “don’t throw out the remote with the recycling.” Meh, I’ll keep working on it) and mostly kept to myself at the clubs.

Years later I’d become so far removed from my comedy peers that I didn’t turn to them when I needed support for what many in our industry go through—tough crowds, dry spells, depressions, humiliations.

Ahhhh, the humiliations.

No matter how successful you are, everybody has a price for which they’ll do something they know is artistically a terrible call:

Cher’s repetitive hair infomercials went on to be mercilessly mocked on SNL, which I can only assume is what led to her singing, “If I could turn back ta-ham!”

Rob Lowe was midway through a cringe-worthy duet with Snow White at the 1989 Academy Awards when he looked into the audience and saw director Barry Levinson mouthing the words, What the f#$k?

Bill Murray did Garfield because he was a big fan of the writer/director Joel Coen, who, he was told, had written the script. When he showed up to voice Garfield and didn’t like the script, he realized the movie was written by Joel Cohen, the guy who directed Monster Mash: The Movie, and not Joel Coen, the guy who co-wrote and directed Fargo. What a difference an “h” makes!

George Clooney kept a photo of himself as Batman, complete with

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