I watched a documentary (Comedian) about being a stand-up, with Jerry Seinfeld in the foreground and an intriguing mess called Orny Adams as counterpoint.
Right off the bat, let’s stipulate that there isn’t too much of the actual stand-up, and, frankly, while I often find Seinfeld amusing I’m not sure he is someone I’d seek out for the funny. The same is true for the array of folks around him–we see Colin Quinn, Mario Joyner, and a few others pop up and discuss “work”–but we get little of their acts, beyond a small clip of Quinn and (oddly) Joyner’s entering or leaving the stage. We do see actual comedy from Seinfeld, and from the young car-crash Orny Adams who seems to be playing note for note Tom Hanks’ brittle comic from the film Punchline. What is interesting is that we see them build a joke up to success; we see, as well, their uncomfortable slips, failures, even outright freezes. Continue reading Seinfeld?