Name: How Louis CK Makes Everything Funny
Uploaded: 2017-07-16T08:39:16.000Z
Duration: 11 min 17 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Louis C.K. is one of the most respected comedians in the world

Adverbs of degree

and part of it is because he seemed so effortlessly funny.

There's no big action like with Jim Carrey or Robin Williams —

no elaborately clever setups — just simple truths that make audiences crack up.

...kids are mean and it's because they're trying it out.

They look at a kid and they go, "You're fat,"

and then they see the kid's face scrunch up and they go,

"Ooh, that doesn't feel good to make person do that,"

but they got to start with doing the mean thing.

then they just go, "Mmm, that was fun. I like that."

But it's not that simple because while the truth can make for great art,

Louis, though, has developed a way of delivering his stories

and jokes in packages that are very different from what most of us do

and because of that, he's able to create hilarious moments from everyday commentary.

So today, we're going to explore three of Louis' most common techniques

that are going to allow you to make just about anything that you say funnier.

For instance, one of the most basic yet difficult things that Louis does

is to nail his timing and that means, specifically,

that after his jokes, he leaves a beat for people to laugh.

Yeah, google pearl necklace, you'll see a bunch of pearl necklaces

This might seem like a small thing but it is absolutely critical

because unless a joke is hilarious, people will need

And using this space often allows Louis to get double from his punchlines

meaning that first, he leaves that space before punchline and he gets a laugh

and then again, he finishes his point and people laugh.

So take a look at this next clip and you'll notice

that the first laugh comes as Louis pauses and the second one comes

when he actually says the punchline that people were anticipating.

...and then the kid from the other— he took another—

his other hand had a paper bag and he put the glue in

and he (Louis huffs)... and he huffed it...

and then the group kept going and I couldn't believe what I just saw

that the misery in this country at that time

was so calculable and so predictable that this guy thought,

"My shoe's broken... oh, there's a child,"

he's sort of have some glue in his hand...

So you can see that silence is a very important ingredient to humor.

The problem is that many beginning comedians, and maybe even yourself,

typically try to fill any silence that they hear

because they think that they're bombing — that people do not like their jokes —

and unfortunately, this is exactly the opposite of what they ought to do.

For an example of how over-talking can actually hurt your sense of humor,

watch this earlier clip of Louis C.K. —

he's doing stand-up and he blazes through a number of punchlines

which could be funny but don't get much reaction

because they don't have a chance to hit without a moment of silence.

I'm doing okay and actually I just got over the flu

which is kind of crappy but a the worst part is that I smoke

and I think it's one of the stupidest to feel about being a smoker is

when you're sick and you still smoke, you know, no matter how sick you are.

I mean you can wake up in the morning you're coughing up little furry animals, you know,

you're coughing up tickets to the Ice Capades but

you're really in bad shape and first thing you reach for is a cigarette,

(sound of huffing a cigarette then coughing) "Jesus."

You force yourself to smoke all day long no matter how much it hurt.

And in case you're wondering, even comedians that are well-known for being fast talkers

purposely leave space for the audience to catch up and laugh.

Check out this clip of George Carlin and notice

how the audience is quiet when he's speaking

I'm a non-believer and an overachiever, laid back but fashion-forward,

upfront down-home low-rent high-maintenance,

super-sized long-lasting high definition fast-acting oven-ready and built to last.

I'm a hands-on Footloose knee-jerk head case,

prematurely post-traumatic and I have a love child who sends me hate mail.

I say all of this to make one major point —

a critical component of humor is leaving space for people to get the joke.

And in a group of friends, that means that you can come across as funnier

if you just stop speaking after you've cracked a joke.

But of course this feels like it can backfire because you might hear crickets

and an awkward silence if the joke doesn't go over well.

So to avoid this you, need to combine that short bit of silence,

usually only as long as it takes to take one breath, with another technique.

And this is a technique that Louis uses all the time.

It turns dead jokes into riots and it's the repeat punch line like this —

...and the joke was that the basic premise was that I think we don't keep...

we don't need to keep making porn — there's enough porn...

So this is the first punch line and the one that Louis is going to riff on —

The first time, it gets only a few chuckles in the audience

but watch how Louis expanding on that punch line will get more laughs each time.

If we stop no one would, like, run out. No one's going to see it all

It's not like Harry Potter, like, "But then what?"

to give a slight bit of silence and not crowd the end of your jokes

but also, don't abandon your jokes prematurely.

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How Louis CK Makes Everything Funny

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