Jerry Corley is a professional comedian of nearly 30 years, working nearly every venue imaginable.
George Carlin said he knew with 98 percent accuracy that a joke was going to get a laugh before he got on stage.
Ninety-eight percent! I want to be like that.
However, to get to a level of mastery with your comedy, you first have to understand why people laugh and how comedy works.
And here's where I share with you the biggest secret in comedy...
There's a condition out there that some people have called the "I-know-everything" condition and it's terminal.
If there's one thing in your journey to success that will stop you cold in your tracks, it's being the guy who thinks they know everything.
That's what today's video is about.
I call it "Don't Listen to the Schmucks!" :-)
One night I was doing a set and it wasn't going well. There were these three guys that noticed me failing miserably. I could hear one of them say, "Look, he's bombing! Let's get him."
They approached the stage and stood like four feet from the stage and started heckling me. When one of them ran out of breath, one of the other ones took over. It was like being verbally gang banged by hecklers.
After that miserable set I went to the bar and thought about getting drunk, but then...
I believe that if you think an idea is funny, but it's not getting laughs, then most likely it's funny, but it's just missing an element that is needed to trigger the laugh.
In my classes, part of what we study is WHY people laugh. What triggers that?
When you understand that at its most intrinsic level you can begin to make changes to a joke to take it from a semi-chuckle (because it's a funny idea) to a triggered laugh because it a funny joke.
Here's an example: