Drew Hastings

Drew Hastings is a master story teller and an even better interview. His 18+ years of experience provided so much insight into the various stages a comic must go through to reach that final stage, which he described as simply, 'the truth'.

"Great comedy comes from pain," he said. "What you most don't want people to know about you - your biggest fear - is the kind of stuff you should be talking about on stage..."

The truth.

Did you know I'm afraid of public restrooms? Neither did the 300+ people at Friday's show... until I told them. The truth. Baby steps.


Drew Hastings

Side note: 70's porn star Seka was in the audience that night.


Crowds

The second show Friday night was a smaller crowd. Compared to the first show you really had to work for the laugh.

Drew: The smaller crowd is, the more it let's you deal with being 'you'.

AGR: Are there 'bad' crowds?

Drew: I think that's a very dangerous place to go to ever start blaming the crowds. If you do that, then it's very easy to look over your own shortcomings and what you're doing.

AGR: Even if the material killed in the first show?

Drew: It doesn't matter. It's only good material if it kills 99.99% of the time.

AGR: How do you judge if it's really working? If at the first show every joke is getting applause and at the second show, the same jokes are getting little 'ha ha ha's'? How do you judge the material?

Drew: If it's a small crowd and they're drunk, or it's a small crowd and they're tired from working or whatever, then 'ha ha ha' may be the equivalent of 'killing' in the first show.


Adaptation

We discussed how audiences have evolved over the years.

AGR: How have you changed your act over the years to adapt to audiences?

Drew: I've tried not to. Woody Allen once said, "Don't go looking for your audience. Do what you do and let your audience find you." It's a longer journey that way.



Evolution

There's a lineage to it. When you start out you just want to be funny. You want to go on stage and be funny. And then you go into another phase a year or two or three down the road and that might be the 'too hip for the room' or the 'intellectual' stage. You go through that and hopefully that's a passing stage and you get out of it because you realize that's kind of pretentious and that isn't what it's really supposed to be. And then you go through a phase where you're trying to play to the comics in the back of the room. And you get out of that because you realize there's no future or money in that. And then you go to a phase where you do what what you think how the audience perceives you and you try to live up to that. And that's wrong. And then you go through a phase where you act like what you think a stand-up should act like. In other words, you go on stage and you act like what you think a stand-up comedian in your skin should act like. And that's not right. The next phase you do you realize that ultimately you want to be yourself on stage - which is very much easier said than done. So then you act like what you think you're like on stage. But you're not being you. You're acting like what you think is being you. And that's not really quite it. And ultimately if you survive and you stick around long enough and you evolve through the grief, you become yourself on stage - tweaked, maybe exaggerated - but 'yourself' on stage. There are exceptions to that, but I think that's roughly the path.

AGR: If a comic knew that the ultimate goal is to just 'be yourself', could you skip those middle phases?

Drew: No. It's an evolution. Some people get it. Some people partially get it. Some people it takes 16, 18 years to get. Some people it takes 8.


Writing and Performance

AGR: What's more important? The words to be funny or the performance to be the funny part?

Drew: I want to say the words. I would tend to say the words but you have to have words along with the attitude, the performance, the look - everything. That's your way of 'italicizing' your personality, in a way.



Reaching out

AGR: If you could give one piece of advice to an up-and-coming comedian, what would it be?

Drew: Rick Reynolds said, "Only the truth is funny." Think about that. That makes a lot of sense. Comedy comes from pain. What you most don't want people to know about you - your biggest fear - is the kind of stuff you should be talking about on stage. It's hard to do. But once you can do that you can do anything.