Lucas Zelnick

you know you get older into it and once you have good jokes it's like you understand that crab work is a risk because it's not always funny and if you write good jokes those usually are funny at least more consistently than the crowd work so these days i do a lot more jokes just because i think the jokes are better than you know the average result i'll get from doing crowd work but

Crowdwork's still fun and then every once in a while, it can be pretty magical when whatever set of circumstances line up, when multiple people have something in common or someone's got a crazy story.

When that kind of stuff happens, it can be the highlight of the night for sure.

I always start with a dude because it's easier to be mean to a dude.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like, pretty much, I hate to go back to this, but pretty much calling a guy, like a straight dude gay is pretty much always just going to be an easy in.

Calling a gay dude gay, not as funny, I've found out.

Actually, a hate crime.

But, yeah.

That's where I start, but a lot of the time the things that I get known for are interacting with people that maybe people are more sensitive around, maybe a different type of group, whether that's someone of a different race or gender orientation or sexuality.

I typically have a skill in walking down a road that's going to make people nervous, that's going to make people think I'm going to say something really bad and then subverting that expectation.

So I like that, but I do think it's not for the weak of constitution because you've got to trust me and also not be – I like to treat everyone like they're normal people.

So some people do have the view that you can't treat certain people the same way as other people.

I don't really subscribe to that for the most part.

So if people don't like that, that can be an issue.

Depends if it works.

You always got to listen to the audience.

If the audience can get a bigger laugh than you, you can't be the guy who's like, well, that wasn't funny.

Like you listen to the audience.