Writing Jokes with Jake Adams (Hollywood Improv)
You will learn from your mistakes… good things tend to happen when you actually do things.
[@Jakeums on Twitter]
Did you grow up in a funny household?
My mom did stand up comedy for seven years when I was a kid so yes technically it was a funny household. She was way dirtier than I’ll ever be as a stand-up, though. I remember going to see her in a basement bar in New York when I was eight and she did this joke about giving birth doggy style. There was a big act out involved. I’m pretty sure there was a piano on stage that she used.
What made you certain that you wanted to do stand-up?
Seeing Louie CK at my home town theater, the Cape Cod Melody Tent. I went with this kid Salvator Visali. He was someone I would always make laugh the hardest when we played golf together. After the show he was like, ‘You should do that.’ So the next week when I went back to college in California I wrote five minutes of puns and Jewish jokes and went to an open mic and the rest is not history.
What’s the hardest part about stand-up?
Being around people who are unsuccessful. I always want to surround myself people who challenge me and I admire. But the first six years of doing stand-up is sitting in an open mic every night around people who are just not good at life. It can be depressing yet still all I cared about is getting them to laugh… I may never understand why.
How do you come up with new material?
Any thing that makes me uncomfortable or I find different or weird I’ll try to write about and discover why. And if I can articulate why to myself then the challenge becomes making it relatable to other people.
What advice would you give someone who wants to start shooting sketches?
It’s never been easier to make sketches than it is now. Resources are so easy to come by in 2017, you can shoot and edit an entire sketch on your iPhone using iMovie and make it look pretty dope if you wanted to. You will learn from your mistakes. Every time I make a sketch it gets better and funnier — Good things tend to happen when you actually do things.
How did The Everything Show come together?
The Everything Show started when the former artistic directer at The Improv, Jamie Flam emailed me to start some sort of show or host their open mic. I was on a road trip with my buddy Joey Long to San Francisco at the time. We really became good friends on that trip and wanted to do something together.
We both really loved stand-up and hip hop and wanted to somehow combine the both of them. It was kinda perfect timing, when we got back we went in to the meeting together and pitched the idea of combining both for the show.
Why do you think the Hollywood Improv works so well for comedy?
Todd Glass and candles.
What makes a joke funny?
I think a joke is funny when it makes you feel something.
What makes a joke unfunny?
An unfunny joke is when nothing really happens, just kind of a sentence said out loud in front of people aggressively.
