There are hundreds of stand up comedy
shows in L.A. Netflix shoots dozens of one hour comedy specials a
month. The big clubs like The Comedy Store, Laugh Factory and The Ice
House are full every weekend. Comedians are obviously on those stages
getting noticed, getting paid, and moving up in Hollywood, right?
Not exactly.
For more than a dozen years I've
interviewed dozens of stand up comics. Although they are all different
people with unique imaginations and their own style of comedy,
stories they tell about the evils of Hollywood are often copies of
each other when it comes to the abuses they suffer to get stage time. Extortion is common. Working for free is the norm.
For female comedians it's worse. They
often are asked to exchange sex for stage time and/or payment. Sexual
harassment doesn't even describe it. Dating the host of a comedy show
to get stage time can be mandatory for most women. To even be a part of "the
scene" in stand up comedy if you are young usually means hooking
up with other comics, if you want to move up.
Steven Marcus Releford, the headliner for THIRTEEN
Human greed is also a factor. In real
life you work a job, get paid for it, and with more education and
experience you move up and get paid more. Some people might work
internships in college. Others work for free to get experience before
a new career. At one point you will get paid for working a job,
that's the logic. Not in Hollywood.
Stand up comics often pay for
stage time. Gasoline, parking, and traffic tickets all take a
chunk of money. After that they might buy two drinks to put their
name in a raffle to go up or even pay $5 to perform for five minutes.
Some clubs are generous. Any comedian going up only buys two drinks
for the privilege. They cost $10 each of course.
The worst are bringers. The
producer/host demands each comic bring ten people to perform. Out of
the $200 the comedian brings in they might get $20, while the bringer
host happily brings in their friends to perform, too, without the
burden of bringing anyone. It also does the beginning stand up comic no favors with their peers, who will despise the performer for performing in a bringer, even if they were paid.
It's time to celebrate Halloween early...
If a comedian sees any money from their
work early on, it will probably be out of a bucket or hat the
producer of the show passes around the audience to pay the
performers. Here's your paycheck...$3.72, plus dryer lint. This is
after all the hours comedians spent driving to the event, before they
get a parking ticket because L.A. screwed up the signs again.
Breaking into stand up comedy in
Hollywood also means joining social cliques. Remember the cool kids
in high school that looked down upon you and could ruin your social
status with a word or lie? They are alive and well, producing and
hosting comedy shows. Make friends and you might move up. Make someone jealous and you've made an enemy to your career. Refuse to date the wrong person and they'll make sure you never work in any show they are on. Nobody will defend you if that person is a producer or host known for abusing others...they need the stage time.
Holding a flyer for the show.
If you don't fit in because don't have
the exact, specific, perfect personality to get along with the covert
egotistical narcissists that infect any healthy social scene, you
don't move up and you don't get stage time. Open mic nights can be
miserable for anyone new, even if they are damn good. Every comedian
in the audience is a potential rival, waiting to hold back laughter
to hurt their competition.
Comedians MUST get stage time. Theater
gives any actor hours upon hours of experience thanks to rehearsals,
technical blocking and performance. Film repeats scenes and shots
endlessly. An actor may say the same lines fifty times in one day.
Stand up comedy only has the stage plus the audience. They have to
get up there to get a measly 3-5 minutes, after hours of waiting. At
the end of the month an amateur stand up comic might only perform for
an hour, and they are often paying to do it.
Releford on the mic, entertaining the audience.
THIRTEEN is a safe haven from all that
useless chaos stand up comics usually deal with. Comedians get to work in a professional environment where they are
respected, paid for their work, and not exploited. There will also be diversity, so that everyone is equally represented. While this might
be common sense to the reader, it's brand new facts to some people running stand up comedy shows throughout California.
Guests at the THIRTEEN will notice the improvement in the performance of the comedians
entertaining them. Great money means greater morale. Happy people are
funnier to be around, and get bigger laughs from the audience because of their attitude. Paying stand up comics also means the audience gets the best performance for their buck because our show hired a person worth paying. They are, after all, professional comedians, not amateurs.
Enter if you dare.
Another big influence is theater,
specifically The Grand Guignol Theatre of Paris, France, more than a
hundred years ago. Normally a stand up comedy show is just a comedian
doing comedy until they bring up more comedians to do the same. There
is nothing wrong with this. A variety show featuring comedians along
with other artists using music, magic, improvisational comedy and even
dancing is an experience worth paying to see, especially one like ours with a gothic, macabre sensibility.
A prop from the comedy horror show THIRTEEN.
Theater has a resounding importance
across time and space because of humanity. Plays written hundreds and
thousands of years ago are still performed today, and still matter.
When the electricity stops and it's just fire and humans, theater
will be there, as it has always been. Stand up comedy is theater.
It's also speech, film acting technique and properly done, like a
funny conversation with somebody entertaining at a bar. It doesn't
need CGI to succeed. Fake blood helps.
Some posters for The Grand Guignol Theatre of Paris, France, from more than a century ago.
The Grand Guignol was simply a theater
in France, and a style of drama, that was innovative, bloody and
violent. Gore isn't new to the stage, just watch Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus or Macbeth. Then watch The Little Shop of Horrors and
Sweeney Todd. Add elements of horror and science fiction, like
Dracula, Frankenstein plus The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and you have
the essence of Grand Guignol Theatre.
Audiences in the early 1900's saw shocking displays of blood, severed heads, scientific experiments gone wrong, tyrannical government tortures, executions, vampires, murder, madness, maniacs, werewolves and other dark subject matter worthy of modern Netflix Halloween specials, slasher flicks and Twilight Zone episodes. They were shocking senses and pushing boundaries, paving the way for horror and sci-fi films decades later. It is no mystery why Grand Guignol persists to this day, with troupes like The Molotov Theatre Group espousing it's gory glory.
Stand up comedy vernacular fits right
in with the ghoulish visualizations and horrific concepts The Grand
Guignol Theatre espoused. Comedians "die" on stage, or they
"kill." They "bomb" onstage, or they "slay"
the audience, who were "dying of laughter." They "murder"
the crowd. Even the end of joke is violent...a "punch line."
Bomb too many times in Hollywood, if you are famous, and your career
is "dead."
Our show is a theater production including horror and humor, with comedians appearing throughout to keep us all laughing. As THIRTEEN goes on we can add new acts, live music, belly dancers breathing fire, horror improv comedy and whatever it takes to give an audience their money's worth in an original way through a traditional method...live theater, which never dies. Please donate at our gofundme, if you can. We plan to expand, hiring more people, different acts and innovating our live show as time goes on.
So please join us at THIRTEEN. We've
chosen the perfect lineup for your entertainment. The price is right
and parking is free. Halloween is right around the corner, and our
show is the perfect place to turn up to celebrate such a tenebrous
season. Sure, The Host of the show is a little crazy, and by the end
of the evening there will be blood. Our comedians are complete
killers. You'll never forget the humor, as long as you live! After all, there is
no slaughter without laughter.
This is part three of an interview
with Steven Marcus Releford, Niles Abston and Johnny Mac about Y'ALL
HAD TO BE HERE, a show combining comedy, improv, podcast interviews
and an inside look at the lives of comedians that goes beyond mere
stand up to entertain the audience with layers of humor and
commentary from a team of who knows what they're talking
about. It's an education for anyone who loves the business of stand
up comedy and intellectual entertainment for everyone else.
If you are interested in seeing more
from the very funny people involved in this project check out BASEMENTFEST,
a three day event featuring talent from all over Los Angeles in a
venue unique from the rest. The comedic extravaganza will have performers from Y'All HAD TO BE
HERE and more with a party atmosphere only personalities as
powerful as Niles Abston, Steven Marcus Releford, Johnny Mac, Arthur Hamilton and their fellow comedic performers can provide.
Just like any good TV show, many audience members could never understand the pain, sweat and tears it took to get to the point where Donald Glove could do a show with as much depth as Atlanta.
Niles Abston: You
have to look at all the groundwork Donald Glover has done to make
white people feel safe around him. He is the safest bet for white
people when it comes to a black guy. He's "The Black Friend" to white people. He's funny, he can rap, he's handsome...he's been in
so many spaces from NYU to improv comedy to 30
Rock, to Community
where he's collected all these white tokens in a way so it's like,
"Alright, we'll let you make a TV show." And then it's
like, "Woah! That's not the show we want you to make, but we
like you so we'll let you do it.
Steven Marcus Releford: And
it's making money.
Niles Abston:
And it's making money. He's been able to do what a black film maker
has never been able to do on television because he's been palpable to
white people for so long.
He's had to make sacrifices to. It's
on YouTube. Chevy Chase...
Niles Abston:
He was so mean to him!
Oh yeah. Even Chevy Chase thought
the writing for Donald Glover was terrible because he was portrayed
as a dumb jock. There's also the problem of how Chase thought it was
ok to use the n-word in front of Glover. I'm sure the young man was just sitting
in the middle of all the controversy thinking, "I don't want to
make any waves." He had to suffer without saying anything to
move up in Hollywood.
Niles Abston:
That's what being black is. Picking your battles. "I'm not going
to say anything about this because down the road I want to direct."
I've been told this: "It only takes black people ten seconds in
this industry to be 'hard to work with,'" and once the word
"difficult" gets used to describe you, especially black
women, now people don't want to work with you. Donald Glover was
like, "I'm not going to complain over some TV role, I'll just
leave." He wanted to make a crazy TV show one day. It's crazy
how we have to think like this. White people don't have to do that.
They can just live in the current moment.
I've also been told about how
there's a lot of pressure on black people from Hollywood executives
sometimes to be a stereotype. To be more black. That's part of the
reason John Amos left Good Times. The show became a parody of
itself and the real people the writing was supposed to portray.
Johnny Mac: And
the fucked up thing is that the executives are probably arguing, "But
that's what people want." The fact is the audience is black,
Asian, white...everybody. So a white executive might say, "Our
white audience..." and if they put a black or Asian show on TV,
only those groups would watch it. It's actually that the white
executive wouldn't watch it. A middle aged white man is telling me
that young white people won't watch a show. "Only black kids
will watch this show," he thinks that. It's not the truth.
That's why you need representation in there, or you need to
understand what the big picture is.
Steven Marcus Releford: That's
what's cool about stand up. You can tell your story any way you want
to. You'll tell a joke, and it works, for either crowd, but the
laughs are different, right? It's because it's still a laugh, and a
truth, that needs to be heard. That's the same thing with Atlanta,
it's like, "Oh, we didn't want you to make this type of show,
but we've already green lit it and people love it." It's real.
It's truthful shit. I'm laughing in a way that's different.
Niles Abston: He
couldn't have pitched that type of show. And everything is based on
the pitch instead of the actual product.
He also makes fun of both sides. He
makes fun of African American culture and white racist culture.
Niles Abston: Right,
from the things he knows, though. It's a genuine place. He's not
making up a stereotype to make fun of. If a white person is making fun
of black people it's like, you don't even know anybody who acts like
that. What are you talking about?
It
feels sometimes that Glover is also being very meta. He's making fun
of stereotypes...and also making fun of television stereotypes, not the
real person or predicament.
Johnny Mac:
He makes fun of the white perception.
Niles Abston: Uh
huh. He's a genius.
There's
a part in his Childish Gambino video for "This is America" where
he's dancing shirtless on a car in a parking garage. The camera pulls
back. What's the color of the garage and everything around him? It's
white. He's absolutely surrounded by a white structure. He's in a
giant white parking garage in a white structure with layers going up,
and he's still near the bottom.
Niles Abston: That's
hilarious! I've never thought about it that way.
It's very subversive, if that's what
he meant. He loves David Lynch, he also loves Kubrick. I saw that and
thought, "That's how he feels. Look where he works."
Niles Abston:
And he had to do so much to get to that point. It's almost like he
became a rapper to make that show because he knew one good way for a
black dude to get famous is to become a rapper. He did that stand up
thing. He did stand up before rap.
Johnny Mac: He
did improv, sitcom, rapper, movie star...and then they are like, "What
do you want to make?" And he's like, "Fucking finally."
Niles Abston:
That's the thing, he totally cut to the front of the line because of
rap. It's because he got popular in another place. The only person to
ever do that was backwards, like Will Smith got popular in rap and
then went to TV. Donald Glover had to do the reverse, which is
honestly stupid when you think about it.
Talking to all of you also makes me
realize that even back then, Will Smith had to rap as if he was at a
Def Comedy Jam because of the popular stereotype. "There's no
need to argue, parents don't understand," sounds like a punch line.
The comedian known to the planet as Def
Noodles cannot be described by just a few adjectives or merely as a
noun. A funny multimedia entertainer who knows how to criticize as
good as he characterizes, Dennis Feitosa, aka Def Noodles, has
several YouTube channels, and a heavy online presence, with more
followers than Gandhi and more laughs than humanly possible. Armed
with his own fully operational studio, as well as his own comedy
club, the businessman, producer, director, comedian and successful media
personality is a force to be feared, online or on the stage.
Def Noodles desire to right wrongs and
tell truths has made him some adversaries. That's ok, the ancient
Japanese samurai had a proverb: "An individual with no enemies is probably not respectable." The courage to say what's against mundane cultural
norms is a hallmark of any famous comedian or writer, from Lenny Bruce
to George Carlin to Richard Pryor to Dave Chapelle, today.
With so many YouTube
channels dedicated to denigrating him you'd think he was some sort of
superhero going up against an evil online conglomerate with
only one power...filming themselves complaining about another, more
qualified person's hard work.
His club, his comedy, and the people who love it.
In a recent adventure Def Noodles
hosted a roast at his comedy club in downtown LA, right off of Sunset
Ave. where many legendary stand up comics got their start. While a
traditional comedy roast is supposed to be good fun, where nobody
loses their temper and silver tongues win, not violence, a man
somewhat unknown to the world calling himself Salvo Pancakes
(hereafter known as Mr. Pancakes) decided to try to ruin a fun night
out by trying to start a fight and create a scandal to gain
notoriety, similar to the dumbass that rushed Dave Chapelle months
ago and got so beat up he looked like he lost The Ultimate Fighting
Championship.
Violence is never cool in stand up
comedy, and The Slap, which is what comedians call what Will Smith
did to Chris Rock at the last Academy Awards, has made stand up
comics afraid to perform, especially females. Mr. Pancakes didn't
just act like a kichigai (it's a great Japanese word, perfect for
describing an egotistical narcissist that ruins the party, look it
up) for his fifteen seconds of online fame...the man ruined his
career and endangered the lives of women in the club, trying to start
a riot just because of an online argument that never needed to get
violent. I guess Mr. Pancakes isn't a feminist, aside from not being
fun to work with or funny to others. So what happened?
How did Mr. Pancakes end up at your
show?
Def Noodles: It's
a crazy story. I can't go into all of the details because it involves
a legal situation. Essentially, we did the first roast battle. People
online would chicken out. They would all talk a bunch of shit I would
invite them to come over and they would all find some excuse. We had
one person say, "I'm going! I'm going!" on Twitter space
and then I said I would pay for her ticket to come, and she said, "I
can't." So we did the first one. It was very successful. A lot
of fun to do. A lot of people really enjoyed it and came back for the
second one.
The first Roast Battle was sold out,
right?
Def Noodles:
Yeah, it sold out. The narrative on the internet is that I had
seven friends here. As far as tickets go we sold 38, 39 tickets, we
had all the plus ones and the guests, so it was about 50 people. For
the second Roast Battle we had 55 to 60 people. So the difference is
that we only had one camera angle on the first one because I had some
technical issues so we didn't really show the audience but there were
a lot of people in the building. The whole building was packed for the
second one.
So how Pancakes
ended up at the second one is that as soon as I announced it...I
think I announced the second one after maybe a couple days after the
first. He reached out and said he really wanted to be in it, that he
would fly in from Ohio, which is where he's from...he essentially
invited himself. I was aware he was a troll who works for
people I'm suing. I thought it would be a good precedent to set for
other YouTubers.
You wanted to give others a chance
to back up their words, and also give yourself a chance to do the
same.
Def Noodles:
Yeah. I liked the idea of having somebody show up. This has never
been done before in the YouTube community. Comedy happens all the
time. On YouTube it's usually people talking shit behind a screen
protected by the anonymity or the difference between themselves. So I
thought it would be interesting to have that play out here and that's
how he (Mr. Pancakes) ended up getting invited. I was like, "Let's
have a YouTuber." I like helping out people. We help each other
out all the time out here.
To his credit, he's being
courageous. You are pretty high up up there amongst the clouds with your career and
this guy is still on Earth, so you are being nice to reach down and
help this dude.
Mr. Pancakes, being unhappy.
Def Noodles: Yeah, the entertainment business is not
really built for upward mobility. All of this I had to build myself.
I had to save the money and then surround myself with other people
who are even better at it than I am so we can do more, which is where
everyone else comes in. Everyone brings something to the table.
I like creating
culture. I think creating something fun and cool and funny is
ultimately the objective and incorporating YouTube as much as
possible because it's such an insular thing. What I get from a lot of
people is, "Why did you put up so much of of Pancakes shit?"
Because honestly I wanted to see where it would go because nothing
like this has ever been done in the YouTube community. You're getting
street comics, and YouTube drama from people used to trolling you in
a basement, putting it all together and seeing what happens.
Pancakes had the courage as a troll
to show up and do something. I admire that. It took balls.
Def Noodles: 100%.
As a comic I can appreciate the balls that it took. That's like,
first year comic shit, a lot of the stuff he did, being so
antagonistic, so in your face. I used to host open mics in New York
and I saw the same thing happen some guy walks in and he's with his
friends who think he's funny and he bombs. Those same people who are
funny in front of a group of friends cracking jokes can't handle it
onstage so they start bombing and panicking.
In one case I saw
this guy have a violent meltdown, take off his shirt and start flailing, trying
anything he can to be funny. That's first year comic shit. If Salvo
had any experience he'd know that he's essentially jeopardizing all
the comics around him, and endangering everybody around him, by doing
the shit that he is doing.
Sure, he's getting
a specific audience of trolls to laugh because of the schadenfreude.
They are enjoying, "my downfall." "Yes! Dennis is
taking it!" And at what cost? There's no club in LA or New York
that would put up with that type of shit.
Also, when you listen to him and
look at him in the video of the roast the guy looks unhinged. He
looks angry. A roast is a bunch of guys making fun of each other.
It's not supposed to be serious. Mr. Pancakes looks like Wolverine
going into berserker mode and taking out half of the MCU.
Def Noodles: Yeah,
honestly the way we handled it, outside of me pushing him when he
wouldn't get off the stage...if I could take it back, yeah, I shoulda
woulda coulda walk up onstage and kindly told the dude to sit down
and even if he got into my face like I did before he came onto the
show.
Was Mr. Pancakes angry and violent
with you before the show?
Def Noodles:
He'd been trying really hard to break into the green room and
cause a scene. Two of my staff had to stop him. He was banging on
windows when he first got here. I didn't want to have him in the green room because he had
been antagonizing other comics. I didn't want to have a situation in
the green room get out of hand, I'd rather have it in a controlled
environment where we have three security guards instead of just one
back here.
So he was already trying to create a
scene before he got pushed?
Def Noodles:
100%. Exactly. He was walked off stage two or three times before
anyone walked out. He knew I was going to come out because the show
was starting. So he was looking for a reaction, and he definitely got
a reaction. He got his clip, he got his fight. He got pushed by Def
Noodles and all that . I would have done that differently. I think
that honestly, the whole night, considering the environment we had,
that we had 10 to 15 hecklers at one time...
Def Noodles killing it at Flapper's.
You guys look like you are all
keeping calm.
Def Noodles: Yes,
we handled it pretty well. I think Salvo is going to look back at
himself and be extremely embarrassed if he isn't yet. Unless he feels
absolutely no shame whatsoever or he's that gung ho about clout and
getting attention that he'll do anything for it. I do believe that at
some point he's going to look back and feel a deep sense of shame
because he didn't ruin the show for me, I just feel bad because
people came up to me who had also bought tickets for our next show
and said they couldn't enjoy the show because he was causing a scene
outside and screaming at people outside of the club after he got
kicked out.
So Mr. Pancakes was going out
messing with the show after he was 86'd?
Def Noodles: Yeah, he got taken
out, and after that we wrapped up the show in about a minute after
we got our bearings back together. What he doesn't understand is that
there is a greater spectrum than the one he is insulated in who just
enjoy trolling. There's a greater community. What he did is fucked
up.
What bothers me is
that in the videos where he talks about the roast Mr. Pancakes says,
"Ha! He fell into my trap! Def Noodles totally fell for what I
was going to do!" That tells you he is a guy that walked in with
an agenda.
What people online need to
understand is that in the video, he is trying to destroy the world
around him. You guys are being very calm despite that. You're trying
to protect the world around you. A protector is under an incredible
amount of stress because you are worried about your people and
establishment while he's just shooting everything with a
flamethrower. When you pushed him you were just trying to protect the
show.
Def Noodles: Yes.
That's not the narrative on the internet. The narrative is that I
assaulted him and he's some sort of victim, even though I've shown
how he, a dozen of his friends and some guy who created another show
essentially coordinated this attack, how they were literally trying
to incite a riot in my building, I got an email from the guy who paid
for Pancakes to fly out here tell me a week and half beforehand, "I
hope you have insurance, we are going to burn your place down."
Wow. That's not cool.
Def Noodles: They
were making threats. They were going to have people faking seizures.
The first show we had three security guards work the show. This time
I had four and an EMS. It was still not working. I was advised to get
off duty LAPD cops to do it and prevent a SWAT raid. They still
couldn't handle the situation.
It's more volatile because there are
a million people watching online and anything can make you look bad.
Def Noodles: This
is unprecedented too because we are filming it live online. Our first
show got banned on Twitch because somebody said something that was
against the terms of service. We had to figure out with the second
show how to have a delay in the stream to save my social media
account and not get banned.
I thought his plan
was just to go up there and get me banned on my social media
accounts. He could go up there and yell a slur, or just hold a sign
that has a slur written on it. So I had to be able to censor the
stream, and the last thing you want to do with comics is interrupt
their flow. I'm literally running a television station that has a
delay, like they do for the Oscar's. I can't afford to lose my
platforms because of how volatile it has gotten.
Mr. Pancakes, shortly before he left the show.
If you could do it again, what would
you have done differently to handle Mr. Pancakes?
Def Noodles: I
would have never let him in the building. If I had let him in the
building, I would have kicked him out earlier because he was already
causing destruction and bothering people. It was my curiosity. I
wanted to see the end of the situation instead of cutting it short
and thinking of what it could have been. That often bites me on the
ass.
You are on the horns of a dilemma
too because if you don't let him on, you are a coward who is afraid
to face him one on one. So he gets to show up, destroy the place, and
to a person that doesn't know what's really going on you look like
you just kicked him out. Mr. Pancakes wanted to
blow the whole thing up.
Def Noodles: That
was a dilemma, too. Somebody highlighted that on Twitter. So it's
lose or lose. I got a lot of shit because we got to his part of the
show eventually, and there are a lot of people who didn't even watch
the whole show, so they just see him get onstage and get kicked out
immediately. No, the guy sat there for the whole duration of the
show, to the very end, and towards the end I was advised by people I
trust to not give him the mic.
People
still loved the show. So did people online. So I decided to draw out
the suspense. Will I him give him he mic? So we could draw it out for
the people online and for the whole community. I asked the audience,
"Should I give him the mic?" Some people said, "Yes!"
Some said, "No!" I was going to give him the mic anyways. I
was just curious to see what he had.
So I kept walking onstage and
getting heckled, and then I got a lull where I could talk, so I tried
to thank him for flying over, because I think that took a lot of
courage to fly out from Ohio, spend two nights in a
hotel...apparently he has a nine-to-five job, he has a wife and kids,
he seems like a person who has a full-fledged family and he gave all
that up to come here and cause this scene.
At the roast keeping cool while facing the fire.
At least he looked you in the eye.
He's brave for doing that. He made the journey. A lot can go wrong on
a journey.
Def Noodles: I
respected him for doing that. Then I gave him the mic. His moment in
the sun. After everything he did...he completely chokes. And then he
says, "I'm not going to do any jokes, I'm not going to roast
you. I'm going to monologue for an hour." So he starts to yell,
"Fuck Def Noodles," and everything is chanting with him, so
I jump in and chant too, I don't give a fuck. Fuck me. Fuck everybody.
You were rolling with the punch.
Def Noodles: Then
he starts calling everyone who showed up before him a hack, just
disrespecting every other comedian that was onstage, which is an
asshole thing to do. He's not really a comic. He doesn't understand
what he is doing. Here's the irony. He calls everyone a hack and then
starts to make hack jokes, like calling me old, which is stuff that I
joke about.
There was this
little scandal on the internet that my age was listed as being 37. My
agent listed me as being that young so I could get more jobs playing
younger roles.
In your defense in Hollywood, it's
not your age, and the age you can play. That's what a lot of people
don't get. Everyone looks younger in Hollywood. You're not lying, you
are indicating the age you can play.
Def Noodles: So
ok, I'm old. He had his shot. He had 3-5 minutes. He starts getting
heckled and then turns to me like, "Are you going to do
something?" I'm like, "Bro, I've been heckled for 90
minutes. You can't take getting heckled for two?" Here's a taste
of your own medicine. Eventually security took the microphone away
and dragged him out. He caused a scene. That's all he wanted. To be
dragged out.
In the video people can see he's
trying to peaceful noncompliance act when he raises his arms and just
drops on his ass like he's a protestor at a rally on the streets. The
problem is a person can't do that in a private establishment. That
shows his intent. The owner of a business can legally kick a person
out whenever they want. He's trying to act like a peaceful protestor
because he doesn't understand the law.
Def Noodles: Like
I said, there's plenty of evidence if this ever goes to court. He
says he has a ruptured disc...I've had a ruptured disc once and
couldn't walk for a week and a half. I couldn't get out of bed. He
was running around for two hours after getting kicked out. I was
immediately unable to walk.
It's obvious. If he was really
injured he would have gone to a hospital, gotten treatment from a
doctor, and then filed a police report.
Mr. Pancakes complains, Def Noodles explains.
Def Noodles: He
didn't file a police report. He didn't check in with any local
hospitals. He's just trying to have his 15 minutes of fame.
Yeah, if he's so busted up because
you hurt him so bad, why is he doing all of those interviews? That's
not a person in pain and agony, fighting for his life because of the
injuries. He's just trying to get bad publicity.
Def Noodles: 100%.
Then he gets into his limo afterwards and says he's going to sue me,
and he's just joking around. I have footage of him walking away
perfectly right outside the club here. He stayed around for ten
minutes after the show was over, still bothering people, still
getting into vocal situations with people.
Honestly, I don't
know where that type of behavior leads you. There's not positive
outcome for that. I really believe that there's a cycle of karma.
When he's facing the same shit he's been doing to everybody it's
going to be bad. Karma is ruthless.
In Hollywood, whether it's film or
theater you've gotta get along. He's basically telling every comedy
club producer, "I'm going to start a riot. I'm not going to get
along, I'm going to bust up your show and ruin it," based on
that video of the roast nobody is going to want to hire this guy.
He's proven that he's useless and cannot be trusted.
Def Noodles: Somebody
like that can only exist on the internet. This little tiny bubble on
the internet that values this destructive behavior. That shit gets
old. There are a lot of people that have made their careers doing that
and they don't really last more than two years. There's always
somebody who does that shit better.
That's why it's
cooler to build communities, with cool, artistic shit happening to
try to empower people so you are building everybody up around you so
everybody is lifting each other up and then you have something cool
at the end that everybody can show up for, instead of, "I went
there for a day and destroyed it. That's my legacy." Can you
imagine that? You'd have to be tremendously unaware to think that's
good. There were people who came up to me afterwards who were
literally traumatized.
The video of the roast looks like a
prison riot. It's not cool.
Def Noodles: Exactly,
that's the memory he's leaving people with. There are people who did
enjoy the schadenfreude. They were super entertained. But that only
lasts so long, because if you are just destroying you aren't building
something up. You're not adding value.
I agree. What breaks my heart is Mr.
Pancakes was so focused on hurting you, and look at the people he was
working with? There was some A+ talent on that stage. Steven Marcus
Releford has and all of those other comics have worked everywhere.
They are in films and on Netflix specials. This guy had a chance to
work with talent he never would have been able to work with. He
should have said, "Now is the time to get along." Instead
he's ruining a career he never really had. He wasted the opportunity.
Setting the stage...literally.
Def Noodles:
You are right. People are only seeing only the very beginning stages.
They are seeing just a baby that's three weeks old. By the time it's
5 or 10 it's going to be totally different. It's like a television
show. There are pilots that are shot on a shoestring budget. The
Office only shot six episodes and ended up being the longest running
comedy. In every season they got better, they got more writers, they
got better at everything, the coverage, the filming.
This is just the
beginning. When big companies approve comedies they greenlight a
dozen episodes because they know it will take a while for people to
understand the humor. So people shouldn't see the second roast and
think that's it. We are thinking two or three years down the line.
Everybody else is just looking at what just happened.
You are trying to
grow roots for a community, for people who are poor and need the
money and the stage time. Mr. Pancakes isn't just bothering you, he is
burning down a community. He's the bad guy in every Disney film. He's
just one person trying to hurt everybody else.
Def Noodles:
100%. We're trying to build a platform in a community that would
rather give a platform to sexual predators, right? It pisses me off because
I'm the face for all this, so it's like having a target on your back.
People watching the roast should
really understand the bad position you were in. In the video Mr.
Pancakes looks very angry, his face is red, and you are all doing
your best to smile, look confident and keep the show going on.
Everybody else onstage was being a professional. You did your best.
Def Noodles: It
was definitely a learning experience. I was never in a room that was
that hostile. With comedy shows there is an understanding that
everybody paid their ticket to be there and is there to be
entertained. But there was a large group of people who came and their
entertainment wasn't the show, their entertainment was disrupting
this show as much as possible.
The mighty Los Angeles underground legend and celebrity comedian
Steven Marcus Releford, Dennis Feitosa and friends in the green room.
True.
Def Noodles: That's
like some Twitter shit. That's gonna be a memory that I'll have
forever. There were a lot of comics that weren't really happy about
it and I had to apologize afterwards.
He was like a terrorist with bombs
strapped to himself. If a person is willing to kill their career to
trash your show, and doesn't care about hurting the audience or other
performers, even Superman couldn't stop something that bad.
Def Noodles: I
didn't expect it to go the way it did. We were talking about it
before. He really came here feeling emboldened with all the people
backing him up. If he just came here by himself it would have been
different. If he had came her with a neutral crowd or my crowd it
would have been different. I don't try to use my crowd against
people. That would be fucking terrible. Nobody would want to perform
here. Weaponizing my audience to attack people who come here...
You don't want to be a demagogue.
You want to be a host.
Yeah, exactly. I'm
wondering, if he had come here by himself, would there have been a
different dynamic? Imagine if he's by himself without the 10-12
people supporting him who were yelling and chanting people with him.
Were those people planted here?
Def Noodles: Yeah,
they were plants. I have the facebook posts by this guy from Chicago,
his name is Mike, he runs a show called Red Bar, it's like a public
access show. He's built a career making fun of comedians. A lot of
comedians absolutely despise him and really don't like him. So he
paid for Salvo's plane tickets, he paid for him to stay here, he paid
for his limo, for his security guard and the fans who came over who
were all fans of his show Red Bar.
Mike David, the anti-comedian, and his strange radio show, "Red Bar."
That's how Mr. Pancakes got
assistance. He had a bunch of bots.
Def Noodles: Yeah,
he got a bunch of people but it was Astroturf shit. What politicians
do to each other. They know there is going to be a rally, so they pay
somebody to heckle their opponent. They do that shit all the time,
it's just that nobody expects that to happen at a comedy show because
everyone else is there to be entertained.
Your detractors should also
understand that it's very difficult for anyone to keep their cool
with a dozen people heckling them. Even Mother Theresa would
eventually start flipping them off.
Def Noodles: It's
not even protected speech. It's what they call the heckler's veto.
It's yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I could take
legal action against him for that. For a lot of free speech laws
there's a year long statute of limitation on it. I'd have to look
into it. I'm pretty sure he committed several crimes with what he
did. He said he intended to incite people. That's not protected
speech. You can't go inciting people to act that way.
Mr. Pancakes had no jokes. He was
just angry. People also have to remember this is after Will Smith
slapped Chris Rock at the Oscar's. Every comedian in LA I talk to is
afraid of someone walking up and attacking them for performing. They
don't want Mr. Pancakes at their show.
Is there anything else you'd like to
add?
Def Noodles: I
know I got a lot of shit for pushing him. My conclusion is I had two
options. I should have either not pushed him or gone all in and
knocked him the fuck out.
Get sued. Go to jail. Fuck it,
that's punk rock. Not a good way to host a comedy club, though.
Def Noodles: Honestly,
if I'm going to get accused of something I didn't do then I'm going
to do it. Moving forward I am never going to have a situation like
that. I want YouTubers to be a part of this because I think it's a
cool thing to have. I have to establish limitations. Sure, I'll lose
the public battle on social media because I'm kicking them out of the
show, but the integrity of the show is being preserved because people
get to see the show they paid for. So at this point I'm learning
which battles to choose.
Winning is easy if you're willing to work.
A roast is about having a good time,
being funny and constructive criticism. Mr. Pancakes wasn't there for
any of that. People who aren't at your level will try to bring you
down. It like crabs in a bucket.
Def Noodles: I've
learned that I'm a little too laid back sometimes. Honestly, I could
end up making this all into a movie. There were two times I had to
get off the stage because I needed a drink of water. I was sweating
buckets, it was like 120 degrees in Los Angeles. We had air
conditioning but there were too many bodies.
The moment I
stepped out Pancakes started doing jokes about George Floyd to really
piss people off and get us banned. So when I stepped out there was
just this wave of negativity and all that anger, while back here (in
the green room) it was just chill, but it was like people witnessing
an automobile accident. So I'd step outside and just imagine a camera
on a dolly following me in and seeing all that. The guy said, on the
show, that he flew from Ohio to kill me. That's literally what he
said.
Author's Note: Mr.
Pancakes was not available for comment.
This is part II of an interview with
Steven Marcus Releford, Niles Abston and Johnny Mac, a few of the
brilliant minds behind "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE." For those
who missed their legendary, sold-out show last time, you have a new
opportunity to experience their multimedia music and comedy
extravaganza thanks to "Y'ALL HAD TO BE FREE'D" live at Bar
Lubitsch at 7702 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, CA on June 19th
at 8:30 PM. You can buy tickets for that show right here.
...
Johnny Mac has a good point about
how social media has impacted stand up comedy.
Steven Marcus Releford: Doing
stand up I was apprehensive about social media. "Why do I need
social media if I'm already out there doing stand up? That's not
where it's at!"
At least you had developed mad
skills at places like The Garage before focusing on social media.
Many people don't want to put in the work. Desmond Dekker was a
Jamaican musician and producer that helped create Bob Marley and The
Wailers. To sharpen them up into the perfect machine for playing live
music with no fear Dekker would have the band perform alone in
graveyards at midnight for the dead.
The absolutely incredible Desmond Dekker.
Niles Abston: That's
what an open mic is like. If you could perform for the dead then
having fifteen live people watching you is going to give you that
energy. That's what The Garage open mic was like. If you can perform
for people knocked out in their chairs drunk and asleep...
You know you're ready for the big
time.
Niles Abston: When
I was putting my Netflix special together, I knew that if my joke
made people chuckle at The Garage, than the same joke for one hundred
people who paid to see me will cause the roof to come off. That was
always my gauge, does it get laughs at The Garage mic? If it doesn't
I'm throwing it out.
What you said
about Desmond Dekker making the band perform in the graveyard, if the
band can bring that much energy to a live crowd and they do well it
makes perfect sense. The Garage was our graveyard.
Bob Marley and the Wailers.
Plus, any Los Angeles stand up comic
performing live is going to be tougher because L.A. stand up comedy
is tough.
Niles Abston: You
have to want to be here to be here.
It's a gift for the audience too
because all of you sharpened your acts at The Garage together, so now
you are bringing the finished product to the people paying you to
perform.
Steven Marcus Releford: There
is an element in this group that we have from performing shows
together for years. We've been running shows for a while. We've been
working the scene with feet on the ground so we know what's
happening.
That's the energy
we got from The Garage. With our show we'll all be able to witness
the greats coming up. To have that osmosis between the people and us
is that energy in the name, "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE." Because
if you missed it you missed it, so now here it is, again.
Johnny, have you ever seen an LA
comic that's more focused on creating a character to play in a
Hollywood film, so they don't have real jokes, and then go out to New
York City only to fail because of that deficit?
Johnny Mac: I've
never personally seen it but it is kind of a known thing in New York
City. It's a running joke in the scene. "I had an LA comic on my
show and..."
Niles Abston:
They had a lot of charisma.
Johnny Mac: Exactly.
They were all personality and no jokes. Because in New York it's all
about the jokes.
Niles Abston: When
I moved there in 2019 I would always get the, "Are you sure you
are an LA comic?" I didn't know what that. They really don't
think we can write jokes out here because some people really went out
there and fucked that all up.
There are killer
joke writers up on stage out here, it's just that some people went
out there before they were ready and fucked it up for the rest of us.
That's why I started Basement Fest as a way to chip away at that. I'd
bring comics out from LA for the festival and they'd kill in New
York, so it's not the truth.
So LA can write jokes. I like how
you created Basement Fest to defeat the stereotype.
Johnny Mac: Comedy
is performance plus writing. You are the actor and the writer. And in
LA you got a lot of actors who want to be comedians. They want to be
funny actors. Someone like Will Ferrell, he's hilarious, but we don't
know if he is a stand up comic. If someone wrote jokes for him
though, he would kill it.
The power and fury that is Will Ferrell.
We write our jokes
and perform them. If you are a performer without the material, it
shows. The better writers seem to be better performers. You want to
have a balance. That's the best version. But if you can write comedy
and do it deadpan, that's the best comic. If you are very personable,
but have no joke or punch line, that's not a good comic.
Niles Abston:
We see those people there. They will yell the punch line. They'll
change their voice into a British accent or they'll sing the punch line. Because they know that in their head there's a voice
that's saying their shit ain't funny. So they throw something extra
on it to try to make something else.
I've seen that all
the time. Why are you faking a British accent if you aren't British?
Why are you singing the punch line even though the joke is not about a
song. Oh, because you are not funny, and I'm talking about a specific
person, right now.
You're talking about many. I've seen
a lot of comedians like that. For their punch line they'll use an
emotional, cartoon voice and transform into a different human being.
They'll use a radio disc jockey voice like they are doing a
commercial or suddenly screech their punch line and shock the audience
into laughing because of the cringe factor. They'll wave their arms
like a windsock puppet because they don't have a punch line or much of
a joke. People in mental institutions do that, so it seems funny.
Niles Abston: I
know a lot of comedians that perform in their black voice. When they
are up there doing stand up, that's not how they are in real life.
They are trying to sound like a black person. You see a lot of white
people doing it. Trying to sound black.
Johnny
Mac: Growing up, most of my
favorite comics were black. I did my own voice.
Steven Marcus Releford: I
feel like stand up at large is kind of like the martial arts. LA has
The Way of the Crane. New York has The Way of the Monkey. So it's
like, if you pull back from it there are different styles, but there
is an overlap of what makes comedy, comedy.
I believe that LA comics are under
great pressure to be a character that works on film, instead of a
stand up comic that performs on stage. Some great comedians would
just never look good on film.
Steven Marcus Releford:
My family was visiting the other day, and said, "Look at you.
There's nobody like you on Netflix." It's like I have to fit the
mainstream whatever so people will be like, "Ok, he goes into
that box." Black comedians go through that too. People assume
there are only three types of black comic archetypes.
Niles Abston:
"Is he a crazy one?" One of the biggest comedy archetypes is
what I call, "The Def Jam." It sounds crazy, but white
comedians expected us all to be like that. They didn't even want to
have Def Jam happen. That was invented by Russell Simmons and his
company. They presented it to HBO and it almost didn't get made
because they were trying to explain, like, that black comedy was
synonymous with hip hop because hip hop was popular at the time.
It was the 90's so
black comedy had to reflect that. They couldn't get black people to
watch comedy, but there were these underground spots like The
Peppermint Lounge live in New Jersey where you would go practice
there and end up on Def Jam. If you could kill with the black crowd
in New Jersey, you would end up on Def Jam and so that almost didn't
make it on TV.
And now 20-30
years later, you want black comedians that you almost didn't want
back then? So that means whatever the new wave is right now, you are
suppressing that, and it almost won't happen. Whatever we do in 2022
with our finished product, they are going to make black people do
that in 2040. That's just not going to work.
What you are doing with your show is
a completely different art compared to Def Comedy Jam.With the current technology you'll also be able to present
the show to more people than comedians could 20-30 years ago. It can
be on YouTube, Hulu, Netflix...
Larry Byrd, killing it.
Niles Abston: I
kind of compare everything to NBA and basketball. Stand up comedy is
a lot like the NBA. Back in the 80's Larry Byrd was one of the best basketball guys ever. Everybody was freaking out because he was
making two or three threes a game. Now you got guys coming off the
bench that are making two or three threes a quarter because the
League realized three is more than two so lets just take more of
these shots.
So for a kid
growing up now they would watch a kid from the 90's would think it's
boring because they are only scoring 80 points. Now it's just, shoot
the three, shoot the three. The game has evolved. I feel like comedy
has evolved that same way. Most of the stand up comedians you know
have a podcast, edit the podcast on your own, direct on the side,
write scripts, do stand up, run shows, do all these things and we are
still expected to kill onstage like our predecessors.
Yes, that's right.
The unbeatable Chris Rock.
Niles Abston: I
love Chris Rock. I love Dave Chappelle. I wouldn't be doing what I do
without them. But if you compare 26 year old Chris Rock or Chappelle
to 26 year old me, I would eat those motherfuckers alive because I
have to edit, I have to direct, I have to write. I have to do all
these different things they don't have to do, and I still have to do
stand up.
The audience is also much more
demanding. They have heard it all before.
Niles Abston:
Exactly.
Steven Marcus Releford: Oh
yeah. If we are all able to achieve what we've done now imagine how
high we will fly when we can delegate these tasks to others and have
that weight lifted off of us.
Johnny Mac: We
are training with weights, dude.
Marcus was talking to me earlier
about how just being his own manager takes away from the time he has
to write jokes and perform.
Niles Abston: You
gotta damn near be a company yourself.
Steven Marcus Releford: Its
also a testament to being black on the scene. You have to work ten
times harder and build that shit on your own.
Niles Abston:
You can't just be good.
We were talking about it before, and
what a lot of people don't understand about being African American in
Hollywood is that you do not have the same generational wealth that
white comedians and actors, mostly actors in Hollywood, have.
Niles Abston: We
could do a Top White Actors List. Look at all the kids that are
actors in Hollywood. They are all kids of white actors or executives.
The only kids we have like that is Jayden Smith and he sells water.
He doesn't even want to do that shit. He sells boxed water. He's like
Jesus. Will Smith raised Jesus. He's like this good person that tries
to help people, and then he makes music here and there. Every other
white kid like Jayden Smith is an actor or producer.
It's also, look at the top studios
you think of when you think of the giants even now that affect
Hollywood. They are all white. And then you try to name a famous
black Hollywood studio. You can't.
Niles Abston: Oh
yeah. And they can only make so many projects a year. How many black
kids growing up did you know that wanted to be a P.A. (production
assistant)? They are like, "PA? Is that Pennsylvania?" But
white kids will have families that get them to be a P.A. on a
project, and now they can just sit back and watch a big time director
do their job...
Sun Rise the Divine from "Y'ALL HAD TO BE HERE."
Steven Marcus Releford:
And get paid $700 for a major fucking film.
Niles Abston:
I'm finally going to get to watch a director do their thing because I
had to grind for seven years, to get hired on a TV show, write that
show, make it funny so I could see the words I wrote be directed.
That's how I managed to see a major director work. While some other
kid can just say, "I have an uncle that works here so I'm going
to go check that out." So you just look at the hurdles we have
to go through just to be around to see the stuff. Because you can't
be the shit you want to be unless you see it.
It sucks because people tend to hang
out, by default, with other ethnicities they are apart of, whether
they are Armenians, Jewish or white, although LA and NYC are
more integrated. To make it in Hollywood an African American has to
hang out with those Hollywood industry, generational wealth Caucasians. That can be tough.
Steven Marcus Releford: That's
where the resources are at. There are people starving right now,
crossing deserts, looking for where the white people are at. "I
don't care where I end up, I'm bringing my baby where the white
people are at to find some food."
What bothers me about Hollywood is
that there are no African American Golden Era Hollywood studios going
back decades, but they are more than happy to profit from the African
American, gangster stereotype. Or any black stereotype.
When I grew up, there'd be movies
with African Americans shooting people, and they'd be more than happy
to collect the money based on films like Boyz in the Hood, or Menace 2 Society exploiting the black gangster archetype.
Johnny Mac: They'll
even hire white writers to tell black stories. It's crazy.
I understand how sometimes to tell a
story you have to have an outside perspective, but you still have to
represent that inside perspective without using a stereotype. Paul
Mooney, a great man, understood the black experience, and had to
explain to white people who aren't paying attention, especially
middle class white people, by being an ambassador without insulting
them when he wrote for The Cosby Show.
He provided an example of a happy,
upper class black family to inspire others the way he could because
he was dealing with white Hollywood executives. Hollywood has gotten
better. Reservation Dogs, on Hulu, is doing a good job of
talking about Native Americans without resorting to stereotypes.
Niles Abston: FX is killing it. At the end of the day that is a Native American show with a Native American creator, Taika Waititi, directs a lot of episodes, but they had to package their culture, while there are some rich white people that are like, "Ok, fine." Meanwhile there has never been a show that is too white for TV. You never hear that. But you hear, "Too Asian for TV, too black for TV, too Mexican," because we have to make our experience palpable to them, first.
When you look at Atlanta people think, "Wow, they are really talking about some shit black people don't get to talk about on TV." Here's the thing, you have to look at all the groundwork Donald Glover has done to make white people feel safe around him. Donald Glover is the safest bet for white people when it comes to a black guy. He's the black friend to white people.
He can rap, he's handsome, he's talented, he's been in so many spaces like 30 Rock and Community where he has collected all these white tokens in a way so that they say, "Yeah, we will let you make a TV show," and then, "Woah! That's not the show we wanted you to make...but it's making money." So he's been able to do what a black director hasn't been able to do on television because he has been so palpable to white people for so long.
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