Ben Schwartz
speaker
260 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Ben Schwartz’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And then we ask them. They tell us a story about the most exciting day or night of their life. And then we say, thank you so much. They don't talk the rest of the show. And then we improvise for 70 minutes. And we try to do like the whole thing.
And now I'm trying to give an intermission because I'm kind of learning that to give even more show, and people like going and getting to drink, like we never gave an intermission, but now like the venues are also like, they would appreciate it and stuff like that. So we're doing two halves.
So we're doing two tiny shows, but by the end of the second one, we're calling back everything from bullshit.
When I'm interviewing the audience? All the time. Yeah. Because I can also tell when, like, if they're telling us a story. Like, there's an example of, I was like, tell us the most exciting day in our life. And the guy's like, it was in Chicago. We were playing in the Chicago Theater. And he goes, dude, when the Cubs won the World Series. I was like, amazing. Were you there? He's like, nope.
I watched it on my TV. And I was like, okay. Did anything happen? He goes, I watched the game, my man. And I was like, well, we have to do this for an hour and a half. We need, like, tell us a story or, like, you know. Right. Who are you around or blah, blah, blah. So it's like, so I learn really quick, like, oh, this isn't going to be good.
Or this person's really excited and not really doesn't have anything to say. But I'll like politely go to someone else or someone else. But the most I'll go to is probably three people or something like that. And then I'll be like, all right, we got to figure out something from these three.
This is great. Where did you take an improv class?
Who was your teacher? Nice.
Armando Diaz.
That's great. This makes me so happy for my community. Yeah. You're scared of it. You hate it.
How are you at improv? Were you so I bet you were very you're trying to get the laugh. So you're not the scene. Exactly. For people who start with stand-ups that start, they'll break the scene to make themselves look funny. I'll be like, man, God, it's cold out here. They'll be like, no, it's not. And I'm like, well, it's like now you got a joke and the scene is over, but now that joke is over.
We're like ball hogs.
True. You guys have a thousand examples of people getting paid.
Like what did you think your career would be? We perform for free. We probably shouldn't get into this too much. But at UCB, I perform for free for my entire career. From 2003 to 2009, I never got paid for a show. And then at the beginning, this is why I think it happens. At the beginning, nobody's coming to my shows. Literally nobody.
But I'm still able to get up and do 30 minutes of improv. So they're not making money at all. They're losing money off me. And slowly, as I got better and better, and the shows got better. The word got out. The word got out. Word got out. People started being like, oh, you should come see this guy or our group or Hot Sauce or Shitty Jobs or someone.
And then now we're selling out every show, but still not getting paid. But in my head, it's probably, I mean, I don't even know how much this, so when you go to a comedy seller, how much do you guys get paid? We shouldn't.
Oh, really? Beep it.
Per set. Yeah. And then you guys will try to fit in a bunch of different sets. Yeah.
You still care, but. Still hurts.
Wait, what was that like thing? Because you guys both have specials. You guys both have your own thing.
Showing 61–80 of 260 · page 4 of 13
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