Product Description

No one knows more about being funny than The Friars Club, and now they reveal their personal tricks of the trade-and give away their favorite material-in this easy-to-use manual for aspiring comics, comedy writers or just plain show-offs.

The funniest men and women in showbiz discuss the art of being funny, and author Barry Dougherty puts it all together in the first and last Friars Club manual for anyone who wants to be a comedian-or just act like one. The book covers such important matters as:

- What's funny-and what's not.

- The many forms of comedy: jokes, one-liners, anecdotes, stories, impressions, puns, ad-libs, wisecracks and more.

- Choosing material and putting together a routine.

- Developing a personal style.

- Writing your own material-and much more.

In-depth, personal interviews with a host of well-known comedians punctuate the text, along with lots of examples of their funniest material.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1037937 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
BARRY DOUGHERTY is the editor of the Friars Club's magazine, The Epistle. Since 1991, he has been covering the Friars events, writing jokes for the Roasts and speeches for the Testimonial Dinners. He is the editor of The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes and The Friars Club Bible of Jokes, Pokes, Roasts, and Toasts, and the author of the New York Friars Club Book of Roasts. He lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Yeah. I wanna do it standin up, sittin down, on the phone...
I have a friend who thinks she is funny. She isn't. I think one of the hardest things to do is teaching someone how to be funny. This book comes very close. It's more than just "timing" (that trite often used excuse some use in explaining how to amuse others) and it's more than just having that innate natural ability. Through the many interviews with those that are professionally funny, Mr. Dougherty manages to highlight and tie together the lessons that these jokemasters, prop comics and humorists relate. With their varying comedic styles, Mr. Dougherty successfully documents these truths in a way that they make sense. Comedy is hard. Teaching it is harder. Will this help my comedically-challenged friend? God...I hope so. But it's a good book and I liked it.

Life on the comedy club circuit, not a guide to being funny
First of all, what this book is not: It is not about how to be funny, nor is it an analysis of what humour is. The title is blatantly misleading. The book itself is not funny, because these are comedians describing things that happened to them, not attempting to get the reader to laugh.

This is a collection of first-person narratives in which comedians reminisce about performing in comedy clubs, especially at the beginning of their careers when they were unknowns. Their stories are surprisingly similar - struggling for stage time, desperate for money, honing their craft, and so on. The stories are repetitive and, after awhile, seem interchangeable. At times the narrators engage in a bit of introspection about why some things are funny and some are not, but one has to search for those analytical moments. To a large extent, these comedians just kind of "wing it" and have trouble articulating why one joke is hilarious while another leads to dead silence.

Of the 30-plus comedians interviewed for the book, I've heard of about one third of them. The most famous participants are Richard Belzer, Phyllis Diller, and Lily Tomlin.

Standing up by standing out
I love this book and I love learning the back story i so many comedians i know and didn't know. but thanks to this book now do. So many up and coming comedians assume whats so hard about stand up? Well for you not a lot as long as you have fifty friends you can bring to your show over and over again. But to get you this far were so many comedians who paved the way. I liked reading about for runners of today's comedy world. If your thinking of becoming a comedian or always wanted to know more about the inside world of comedy its a great read. And for you newbies do your homework buy this book! You'll appreciate the laughs you're getting even more!