The sound of no hands clapping: Coyne,
Forced by Monday’s hurricane, was a refreshing change on the two late shows that aired
As
you may have heard, New York was recently struck by a hurricane, and as you may have seen, among the casualties were the latenight comedy shows. With transportation crippled and the public urged to stay off the streets, most shows went dark for at least one night, some for two.
Only David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon elected to carry on — sans their usual studio audiences. The comedians were forced to tell their jokes to the echoes of an empty theatre, with only a handful of technicians and onstage sidekicks to hear them. Am I the only one who found this an improvement?
As a rule, there is nothing quite so depressing as latenight comedy. The whole thing has become utterly ritualized, almost mechanical in its mirthlessness, the jokes not so much delivered to the audience as fed to them. Even the Daily Show or Colbert Report, as clever and funny as they can be, feel contrived at times, the laughter too tinny, the whoops too ready.
Standup comedy is supposed to have an element of danger to it. It is implicitly confrontational, the most American of art forms: a lone comedian against the mob. Not for nothing does a standup comic exult after a successful night: “I killed out there.” Or, in the alternative: “Man, I died out there.”
As an audience member you can usually tell within the first 30 seconds whether you are going to laugh or not. It depends entirely upon the comic’s ability to establish psychological dominance — or not. People laugh for many reasons, but one part of it is gratitude. Thank you, you are saying to the competent comic. I don’t have to worry about you. Now I can relax and enjoy the show.
Beyond that there is only one test: is it funny? There are no personal bests, no points for trying. You either get the laugh or you don’t. Comedy is the ultimate lie detector in this respect: if you’re not funny, your own mother won’t laugh. As Robert Fulford has written, at some point when it becomes obvious a comedian is failing, the audience senses that its job is to kill him.
When it works, on the other hand, the audience is as much a part of the performance as the comedian. It is their laughter that really provides the punch line, confirmation of the joke’s internal logic. Watch a really good comic at work, and it is the audience’s delight — spontaneous, unforced, explosive — that really makes the show.
But all of this breaks down when it comes to the latenight shows. The audience, mostly out-of-towners, are practically hysterical from the start, so excited are they to be there. Once in their seats, they are pumped and prodded like cattle in a feed pen, subjected to various stimuli — bright lights, cold studios, applause signs — calculated to elicit the desired response. A studio audience is not a partner in the creative process. It is a sound effect. Situation comedies have dispensed, in large part, with the laugh track, but for the late-night shows it’s still 1957.
And still they don’t laugh. This is the remarkable thing. Even in their semi-drugged state, at some sub-conscious level their built-in lie detectors are still at work. It’s not that they don’t want to laugh. They just can’t. So, more often than not, the response you hear after a joke is not laughter. Rather, it is … applause.
To any self-respecting comic, this is the sound of death. When an audience applauds at a joke, this is what they saying: Well, it wasn’t a very funny joke, but we’ve come all this way and darn it, we’re going to have a good time. Silence at least has the virtue of honesty. The joke failed, you move on. But to be patronized in this way …
So when you watch this ritual being repeated — joke after joke, night after night — what you are watching is Faust descending into hell, over and over and over. The comic knows he is not funny. The audience knows he is not funny. But the money keeps flowing and the audience keeps showing up and no one seems to mind that they are not really laughing.
This is what made the last couple of nights so compelling. For the first time in years, you could see them working. Without an audience, without that insipid applause covering everything, they had to really listen to the jokes they were telling. It was rather like when you drop out the backing band, and strip away the overdubs, and just listen to a singer’s voice. Letterman looked put out, at least at first, but Fallon seemed energized by it.
It was painful at times, but it also added a certain intensity. Host and guest really listened to each other, rather than constantly winking to the audience. As Seth Meyers, one of Fallon’s guests, put it, it was “like watching Charlie Rose, if he had a band, and everyone was high.” I don’t know about you, but that’s a show I’d like to see.