It's like the difference between watching porno and having sex."
That's veteran comic and Letterman regular Jake Johannsen, describing the advantages of live stand-up comedy over its televised counterpart.
Maybe the idea that any live form of entertainment is better than its digitized alternative is not surprising. There's no reason to think that live comedy-like live music-wouldn't be more conducive to a good time, absorbing the electricity of a crowd and thriving on the thrill of the moment.
What may be more interesting is that, thanks to a club called Charlie Goodnight's, Raleigh happens to be a prime location for live comedy. Since opening its doors in 1983, Goodnight's has attracted top national talent, from the likes of Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres to Chris Rock and Robin Williams. Their pictures hang on the walls of the waiting area outside the comedy room, and some parts of their souls still seem to inhabit the dimly lit room itself.
Cluttered with tiny-topped cocktail tables and tall chairs, aisles choked thin like fast-food arteries, Goodnights' interior is intimate and slightly uncomfortable, with multiple parties often packed together at single tables, chairs turned toward the stage. But once the drinks start coming and the comics get onstage, the laughter makes the cramped space not even matter.
"In a comedy show there are two pieces of the puzzle," said Goodnight's owner Tom Williams. "What makes comedy great
Watching Johannsen's act last weekend, I discovered that he and Williams are right: There is something inherently more hilarious about watching comedy go down right in front of your face, even if you've got the perfect god's-eye view on a T.V. screen. A club has the advantage of immediacy, allowing a more direct appreciation of a comic's personality and physical presence. Fifteen minutes of Johannsen's first opening act, Amy Crossfield, who mulled everything from ex-boyfriends to taking a crap in the kitchen sink, had half the audience near tears-and observing her taller-than-average physique and disaffected, tomboyish demeanor helped.
Second opener Darrel Joyce, a regular on BET and Comedy Central, relied even more extensively on physical comedy, his facial expressions matching exaggerated gyrations. Joyce's joke about why Texans have big pickup trucks was funny, sure, but it was watching his imitation of a 10-gallon hat cracker rolling a joint, with the slurping noises booming over the P.A. system that made it priceless. Part of what gives comedians their wit is not only that they say funny things, but that they look funny and act funny. Despite television's best efforts, the full effect of a comic's appearance and gestures is too often lost onscreen.
And then came Johannsen, who Williams describes as one of the "top five" comedians he has hosted in his club.
"I like
As headliner, Johannsen had the mixed advantage of a crowd whose majority had spent the last hour (and probably dinner beforehand) drinking and laughing. With a slightly drier and quirkier brand of comedy than his openers, Johannsen faced the danger of his humor being lost in the haze. But among his weirder riffs on alien invasions and missile defense systems, the wise-cracking Midwesterner located the more mundane dramas of everyday life that made T.V. shows like Seinfeld such a success. And when the jackass two seats over made some drunken racist wisecrack after one of Jake's jokes about his trip to China, it reminded me that a comedy club's unintentional humor can often be as entertaining as the scripted part.
Even at its slower points-I could have done without Johannsen's obligatory election recount joke-the live comedy experience had me falling out of my seat more than any movie. Maybe it was the especially obnoxious laugh of the guy behind me, maybe it was the alcohol. But whatever the reason, my night at Charlie Goodnight's left a lot of laughter-and a longing to go back-in its wake.
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