Born Standing Up

591 Words3 Pages
It has been said that the creation of good comedy requires careful observation and in the novel Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin, it is proven to be true. Martin shares many significant events in his life that were crucial in leading him to become the great, and very iconic, comedian that we are all familiar with today. All throughout his career, Martin never stops searching for material that would be most suitable for his act in order to get great responses from his audience. He observes closely and takes note of the performances of other comedians and magicians, and even makes a huge effort to observe himself, always look for methods of improvement. Through this observation he develops a completely new style of comedy that made him the successful comedian he became. More in depth there was a time when martin was studying philosophy and he applied what he learned to comedy, to better understand the thought process of his audience. He noticed that when a comedian provides a cue or a punch line, the audience would feel that that would be the only appropriate time to laugh. A man appeared on “The Tonight Show,” and Martin carefully observed the comedian’s performance. He said, “I noticed that several of his punch lines had been unintelligible, and the audience had actually laughed at nothing but the cue of his hand slap.” (111) Martin felt that the audience was forced to laugh not because of the joke or because the man was being funny, but because of the cue that was provided. He strongly disliked this and wanted his comedy to be unpredictable and Rodriguez 2 more importantly memorable. This caused Martin to take a deeper look into his own act to make sure that it was set up in a way that the audience would laugh when they actually thought it was funny and not when they felt it was expected of them. He started doing odd unpredictable things to accomplish

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