Transcript: The Importance of Delivery

Comedy Insider
Episode “The importance of delivery”

Christian Thom: Hi Christian Thom here. We are at one of my favorite haunts, the Strand book store in the village. They have got over 18 miles of books. Form gigantic tomes like War and Peace and Moby Dick. To the nearly microscopic Whose Who in Puerto Rico, if it’s been written you can find it here.
Now it has been famously said that there are three rules to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what those rules are. But one thing these dead bastards don’t have to worry about is delivery. Writers work for the printed page. But a comic, like a musician works for the ear. So no matter how string your written jokes are, delivery is even more important. And tonight we are talking with comic Luke Cunningham, who knows that delivery is everything.
How much of your act is in the writing and how much of it is in the performance?
Luke Cunningham: I feel like the writing and the delivery are essentially synonymous. Like when I start conceiving of a joke in my head. I hear the delivery of it. I hear the rhythms and patterns that I will essentially lead the audience with. Like you have to say it in a way that makes sense to the audience, and also makes them laugh, that’s why comedy is so difficult.
There is an action packed sport that I get to watch every Saturday night. It is fantastic and I think it should be on network television. Fist fights on the Q train, check it out. Awesome, sometimes they are intergender. Well excuse me, and then they just mix it up, you get to see the best action you have ever seen.
Let me ask you a question sir, when there is a fist fight on the Q train, does the guy in the Scarface t-shirt win? No you’re wrong because they are both wearing Scarface t-shirts, sir, both wearing Scarface t shirts. Correction, are you familiar with Scarface. Scarface and Obama for president in 08, every black dude votes for them, that’s all I am saying.
When I hear a joke, like I hear jokes in my head. And it sounds creepy and weird, but like I do, I hear jokes in my head and I hear the rhythm and the pattern of it. I feel like the words that you are saying are the lyrics, but the inflection, the rhythm the pattern that you use to get the audience to follow, that essentially the instrumentation. That’s really the music.
When you’re making a joke really work and you’re delivering it exceptionally well you honestly feel like your singing to the audience. You have them, you have them on the line and you’re just a step in front of the beat waiting for them to laugh.
I always have an issue with meeting the women. I was fine once I was in the relationship. The issue was always that awkwardness of going up and like introducing yourself. But I totally solved that, you take two things that women can’t resist and combine them onto one convenient vehicle. I taught a baby how to ride a puppy. It’s been doing gangbusters for me, take it to the park, and let it run around. And your like oh it must be difficult to teach a baby to ride a puppy, it is, alright soft patch of grass, much better learning environment than an asphalt parking lot. You learn as you go. But the tough part is actually getting the baby, because I have never got anyone pregnant. Even though you and I both know sir, condoms feel like snow pants.
But there are plenty of babies up on the upper west side of Manhattan, and the other day I grabbed one. I realized only grab one when there is another baby that looks exactly like it in the same baby holder so no one is missing out. So I grab this baby, ad this woman who doesn’t even look like the baby starts yelling, No es so Niño. No es so Niño. Which I could only imagine translates as please take this baby, and use it as a convenient device in your comic vehicle.
But no I don’t speak nonsense so I grabbed it, and I actually suit my baby up a little bit. My baby rides the puppy with a t-shirt on the front that says daddy hearts commitment. And on the back it says in real small letters. He has been so upset ever since mommy died in that tragic cunnilingus orgasm accident. Won’t you come home and help him grieve?
Christian Thom: I find I am always trying to get my natural rhythm, my first response, how I react to things into the material and into the audiences head.
Luke Cunningham: Yeah and that’s why you rewrite. That’s why you take things and you recut them. When you recut them you are essentially trying to make them more musical. You are trying to make the more efficient. You are trying to take out the dead spots and the down beats.
When you rewrite, you’re not so much rewriting as you are redelivering. Like you take the words that you put together and you make them more efficient. You find a way that it is just going to resound more with the audience. You are not rewriting to make that premise funny, you’re rewriting to make sure that that premise…
Christian Thom: Lands.
Luke Cunningham: Yeah lands with the audience and works in a way that gets the job done.
I have a gay roommate, which is great, its fine. He is a wonderful person. But he didn’t tell me he was gay. I feel like you should find that out during the tour, you know what I am saying. Just disclose that right off the bat, like over there that’s the double sink, those are the marble fixtures. Any weird noises you hear from that room is me getting plowed by another dude. And the electric is fifty a month. Don’t you feel like you should find that out?
Like don’t make me hear it coming out of your fucking room. Like ungh, ungh. Hey Andrew are you and gentleman moving furniture in there? What’s with all the thumping and banging? Lift up your legs; someone is going to pull a hammy.
But there are essentially three real forms of comedy. There is standup, there is improve, and there is sketch. And that what most people work in and like movies and things are a derivative of those three. Well, improve there is a certain concession from the audience, like we will lower our expectations a little bit because you are coming up with this off the top of your head.
Sketch they essentially have a higher expectation but you have a group of people that you can work with. You have a script; you have rehearsed it a dozen times. The most difficult from I think is stand up because you have all of the expectation of sketch. And they are all, so they expect it to sound like you have just arrived at these points. Like this is the first time you have said this to a group of people.
And that is really true talent. To be able to wrote and rewrite and exercise that material until it is so well delivered that it sounds natural and it is going to make people laugh. And you’re so confident that it is going to make people laugh that you don’t even have to think about it.
Have you guys ever had a friend tell you a story and you find out that’s not the fucking story at all? The way that they tell it to you, like I had a friend tell me. My friend Alex was like, I had my first threesome. And I was like, really? How did you pull it off? And he was like well it was me, and Kim my girlfriend, and this guy she works with. I was like you didn’t have a threesome, your girlfriend had sex with somebody and you watched. Its not, devils in the details Alex.
You cannot practice how creative you are. You cannot control when the jokes come and the premises arrive. , what you can practice is how you deliver them. How you time everything, how you make the word form into a rhythm and a pattern and how you make people laugh. That’s all you can practice.
Alright thanks very much I am Luke Cunningham.