“To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.” – Lenny Bruce.
Though annoying to most patrons, heckling in comedy clubs – when done smartly and not belligerently – used to be a thing of beauty, a loud, drunken way that an audience member could show one’s approval or disapproval of the stand-up on stage. Though offensive, such unplanned and unscripted back and forth banter can be a highlight of any (hopefully) impromptu comedy club adventure.
“Sometimes heckling can almost help a set, because it ratchets up the tension in the room… can even bring things to a climax,” once said avant-garde stand-up Demetri Martin.
In my time, I have watched the oldest masters of the put down (and the heckler shut down) such as Don Rickles and Joan Rivers reduce a holler-er in their audience to a puddle. While one late, great stand-up, Gilbert Gottfried, would find a mind-bogglingly absurdity to silence his hecklers, Sam Kinison would simply utter a skull scrambling scream to shut down anyone bothering him while on stage. And I am not sure if it was stand-up Martin Lawrence or the sketch comedy team of a pre-Better Call Saul Bob Oedenkirk and David Cross – as Mr. Show – who came up with “I don’t come to where you work and slap the dick out of your mouth,” in response to a heckler, but it is a rude, crude classic.
“There are two types of hecklers,” stand-up comedian Jim Jeffries once said. “If someone says something really funny, it’s normally them heckling as part of the show. They are trying to add onto one of your jokes. If someone says something really funny, I’ve never seen a comedian abuse them, you always sort of tip your hat a little bit if they nail it.”
Not every old school comedian is, however, a fan of the heckle. Take Scottish stand-up Billy Connelly who once said, “Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, do not sit in the dark hiding. It is easy to hide and shout and waste people’s time.”
The one thing that radically affected the more friendly aspects of comic-to-audience banter in the last decade was the divisiveness of political thought and rhetoric that came with the 2016 election, all things MAGA vs. alt-left, on the heels of a pandemic that turned everyone soft and miserably insular. By that reasoning, if you do not think what I think, you are wrong, and I am going to tell you why. And while that might be OK on Twitter (not really, but stick with me for the sake of the argument), it became a sticking point when attending stand-up shows at your given comedy club of choice. If you dis Trump, you face a flurry of obscenities. If you rip on AOC, expect a wrath of pain.
So along with most live comedy clubs and theater/arena stages offering warnings ahead of each show – that those yelling out to the performer will be silenced or ask to leave the building – stand-up comedians themselves will offer their own quiet brand of silencing a brash, heckling offender. In the last several months, at various comedy clubs, I have witnessed right-leaning stand-up comic/live podcaster Shane Gillis and hardly political (but probably left-leaning) comedian and author Doogie Horner quietly shutting down their detractors, until each comic’s audience assisted them in ceasing the drunken shouter. In the case of both Rob Schneider and Adam Sandler on one Atlantic City stand-up bill, while the former – the more controversially political and non-PC of the two – would groan loudly at each insult hurled at him (as if to say “am I hurting your little feelings?”), the Sandman would just mumbling-ly make the heckler a part of the act, conversationally, until telling them nicely to, OK, go away now.
Most famously in 2022, this autumn, came the case of stand-up comedian Ariel Elias who won much online attention for a video of her handling a heckler during a comedy club set and chugging a beer thrown at her by an audience member The show took place on a Saturday night at a comedy club in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. after Elias opened the stage setting for a Q&A with the audience. When one Jersey attendee shouted, out of the blue, “Did you vote for Donald Trump?,” the stand-up simply yelled back at the heckler, “Here’s a question for you. Why would you ask me that knowing I’m the only Jew in this room? Are you trying to get me killed?”
Apparently, the heckler continued to bait and push Elias on the topic of who she voted for, until the comedian tried to shut down the situation saying, “Alright, make some noise if you want her to shut up.” The crowd applauded, and Elias returned to her set, only to have a full can of beer thrown at the stage from the audience, narrowly missing the comedian. Smartly and comically, Elias quickly picked up the can and heartily chugged the brew. Then the club stated it had planned to file charges against the person who threw the booked Elias to perform again in Point Pleasant next April. Jim Gaffigan, Patton Oswalt and Whitney Cummings praised Elias online and when Jimmy Kimmel also offered his “five stars for this flawless performance,” the late-night television host turned his kudos have into an invitation for Elias to appear on his ABC program.
Picking up on the heckling vibe as something to work with, roll around the tongue and make one’s own, famed, young British stand-up comedian James Acaster, currently on his first ever tour of the United States, is selling out rooms on his 2022 “Hecklers Welcome Tour,” with a series of gigs that kicked off in Seattle at the top of November.
“I’d say I get heckled quite a lot because I look quite like an easy target,” Acaster is quoted as saying. “If you’re an alpha-male and you think you’ve got something to prove to your girlfriend, I think I’m the perfect person to prove your worth….‘I had some people who, during routines (about my mental health) would start heckling and shouting out. When I said about having suicidal thoughts, I had some people shouting “man up”, I had others call me a crybaby and things like that. It wouldn’t upset me, it would just surprise me that this person had such a visceral, angry reaction to it. Some people accused me of being an attention-seeker when I was talking about it.”
Though regarded for his four-part stand-up Netflix special, Repertoire, the food podcast, Off Menu, and the British game show Hypothetical, now Acaster will be best known for integrating an audiences’ jibes into his comedy club sets.
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