Satiristas by Paul Provenza

Author:Paul Provenza [Provenza, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061959875
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

DAVID FELDMAN

AS AN EMMY-WINNING writer behind the scenes at The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, Dennis Miller Live and Roseanne, David Feldman is responsible for some of America’s most biting satire and comedic commentary of the past decade. You’ve just never heard of him. Perhaps because in his own stand-up career, Feldman’s taken the ultimate contrarian track, making sure at every turn that the audience hates him. He explains why an audience’s visceral reaction is more important than any joke itself, and why “cunt,” “nigger,” and “kike” are so bad they’re good.

DAVID FELDMAN: My next project is a documentary called I Hate My Cleaning Lady. I interview white people who complain about their cleaning ladies. It’s like the ultimate pornography: white people complaining about someone who crawled through a sewer and ran hundreds of miles through a desert, dreaming and hoping to make their life better by cleaning people’s toilets. It’ll just be all these white people bitching and whining.

I think that’d make a great documentary. I’m just afraid that half the people who see it will walk out, going, “Wow. It really is tough to get good help.”

PAUL PROVENZA: I will never understand why you’re not bigger in this business, Feldo.

DAVID FELDMAN: I know why I never made it big in stand-up: I make people feel dirty for laughing.

It’s been an interesting spiral downward. When I started, the audience hated me before I even said a word. I think it’s because I look like the guy who fired them or gave them an F. I tried to get onstage and just be silly fun, you know: “I was going to get a new car today, but they were all locked.”

But people were, “Ah, fuck you. We hate you; we don’t need that shit from you.”

So I put on a clown suit. Actually wore a clown suit onstage and did political humor. I discovered hiding behind a character gives you all kinds of freedom. Eventually I took off the clown suit and began doing this faux Right-wing character, kind of my version of what Stephen Colbert’s doing now with far greater success and way bigger paychecks.

Then I heard Dana Carvey say in an interview, “You need to ‘slide into the skid.’ Find what people hate about you the most and pursue that.” To find your biggest fear on stage, dive right into it, and poke around there.

I thought, “The audience absolutely hates me, so maybe if I make myself so despicable, so hateful, they’ll tolerate laughing at me.”

I asked, “What do I find most despicable about a human being?” Self-righteous ness, immorality, lying, hypocrisy…and I decided all my jokes would reflect all that and reveal a horrible human being.

It doesn’t matter if I mean any of it or not, it’s how does it affect you when I say it? If you think something’s offensive, I’ll play with that—and with the fact that I know it’s offensive; I know I’m being an awful person.

I want to provoke; I want you to go, “Ooh,” and then antagonize you with it.

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