Noam Dworman on Stand-Up Comedy and Staying Open-Minded

Conversations with Tyler is produced by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, bridging the gap between academic ideas and real-world problems. Learn more at mercatus.org. For a full transcript of every conversation enhanced with helpful links, visit conversationswithtyler.com. Hello everyone and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler. Today I'm here with my very good friend Noam Dworman in Comedy Cellar. Noam is owner, empresario, and CEO of Comedy Cellar. 3 places in New York, 1 in Las Vegas, commonly considered America's leading comedy club. Noam, welcome.

Hello Tyler, thank you very much for having me.

What is the perfect room temperature for comedy?

Ah, that's a great question. The originator of the Comedy Cellar named Bill Grundfest, this was a very important issue for him. He felt that if it got warm, this was a— had a serious effect on how the comedians went over. I think a little bit colder than comfortable is what is best. 70, maybe? Something like that.

So it's like how stores often feel people buy more when it's cold?

Yeah, the problem is that the kind of air conditioning systems that we have You take what you can get. You know, on a very, very hot day, they underperform, and then the thermostats, as you know, they're slow. They don't keep things at a perfect temperature, so it hovers up and down around things, but we try to keep it cool.

What's the biggest thing about audiences laughing at comedy that you do not understand?

Well, what's interesting is always that the entire audience, or most of the audience, at the same instant in time seems to react the same way, to know whether something is funny in a way that nobody can explain. And this will happen even if it's the same comedian telling the same joke 4 days in a row. I will find myself laughing harder at, at the same joke, just as the entire room is laughing harder. But I could go to the video and it's very difficult to pinpoint what he's doing differently. But there's something on a micro level that they do differently, and everybody perceives it the same way at the same time. And it's, that's the magic of it all. I don't know if that's a direct answer to your question, but that's what it makes me think of. I don't know how to explain that.

And there's something about human synchronization of the audience in there. If you have to extrapolate that to broader social situations, what do you conclude?

People pick up on very slight cues in an instinctual level, kind of analogous to pheromones, I guess, that they can't account for. They don't know they're doing it. Probably affects who seems like a likable person, an unlikable, who you trust. I mean, there's a million different ways these things present themselves, but it's real. It's very real. And, and I would say some people are kind of oblivious to these clues, and they probably suffer for that during their lives as well.

Circa 2023, can comedy still shock us? So simply using the F-word, trying to be like Lenny Bruce, it's all a big bore, right? Is there shock value left in comedy?

Not funny shock value. I mean, at some point I've been expecting that somebody will channel Lenny Bruce and start defiantly using the N-word again or something like that to make a deep point. And at some point may get away with it. But no, usually things that are shocking now are trite and not that funny.

A reader suggests to me that people don't tell jokes very much anymore, but they watch YouTube or TikTok for humor. How does that affect comedians?

What that makes me think of is that at some point comedians started referring to their bits as jokes. And that happened gradually. And I remember waking up and realizing, well, that's not what a joke is. A joke is a setup and a punchline. A joke isn't one of your descriptions that is a funny thing. And yet, that's right. The kind of setup punchline of joke is rare. Old people do them sometimes, but it's what's considered jokes today are comedy bits, and people don't tell each other comedy bits. So I think you're right. Fewer and fewer people tell each other jokes.

Why aren't jokes funny anymore? Like, I don't ever want to hear jokes. If someone walked into the room, sat at the table, "I'm going to tell you a joke," I'd be like, tune out, or maybe this is anthropologically interesting, but funny is the last thing I would expect from that.

No, well, you know, I travel in different circles than you do. A lot of comedians at the table will tell jokes, and these guys are very good at telling them sometimes, so I enjoy jokes. My father told a million jokes. They were funny to me. So I, you know, but in your egghead circles, maybe they're not good joke tellers. I don't know.

How has social media changed comedy?

Well, it's changed. It came to the rescue in a certain way because just as wokeness put a cloud over everything, social media allowed some of the most successful comics working today to distribute themselves directly to their audience and find their audience. And I think even this includes even Joe Rogan to some extent. And there's no gatekeepers anymore. People like Andrew Schultz and Chris Stefano and, and Tim Dillon. So it's given comedy a lifeline. In a certain way. It's changed everything, not just comedy, but our business. I mean, like, years ago I had a music club that was hugely successful, the Café Wah Wah. Lines around the block to get in. It was a huge, like, local New York thing. If we had had social media, I mean, the sky would have been the limit. So, I mean, we used to have to stamp postcards if we had an event. And send out 100— it was expensive. And now you can announce something to a billion people. So it's rippled through everything, including the ability of comedians to present themselves directly to the audience in a very meritocratic way. You know, you can't argue so much with who rises to the top when people are forwarding things they find funny.

But say in the NBA, some people charge— well, dunks, layups, spectacular 3-point shots have replaced watching actual games. You just pull out bits and you watch highlights. Is comedy becoming just a thing of highlights? And is that in the longer run good for comedy, bad for comedy?

Well, it's taken everybody's attention span on everything, right? Yeah, I would say it has been— it has done that. Although, you know, our club has always been a showcase club as opposed to a headlining club. So we've always opted forced shorter bits. I've always found it hard to sit through an hour of somebody's comedy unless it was a classic Richard Pryor thing like that. But I think you're right. I'm overthinking it. Yes, everybody's attention span is shorter and everything, and that's forced comedians to— well, you know what? Having said that, still, the real kings like Louis C.K. and Chappelle and Chris Rock, they really still do take their time with their bits. They spin out long things, and they're still on top. They really are. But they're the geniuses.

If you take a top YouTuber and put that person on stage at a comedy club like the Comedy Cellar, how does that person fare?

Very badly. Why?

What's the difference?

It goes back to what we were talking about before. It's not as easy as it looks. When Twitter first started, there was a very famous tweeter. I can't remember his name now. He had a huge number of followings for that era, and he was funny. He was very funny on Twitter, and he would do some shows, and it was just Tumbleweeds and, you know, crickets, just crickets. It's just, it's, it's not that easy. There's a timing, there's a charisma, there's an—

But isn't YouTube harder in a way because you've got to pretend there's a live audience there? So it takes all the more effort, energy, dynamism. Is it that they overshoot or that they come off flat? Like what exactly happens?

I think YouTube is just different and I wouldn't, I've never done it. I don't know that it's harder or easier, but I know that there are certain people who just can fill a room and have— I'll give you an example. Like Chappelle, he has a talent. He can just talk for 3 hours, doesn't have to be hitting punchlines, and people will just sit there and listen to him. It's hypnotic. He's magnetic. I can't account for that. It wouldn't work on YouTube. I don't think anybody's sitting and watching on YouTube. And the only other person I know who has that is maybe like Howard Stern. Somehow he can just talk and talk and talk and people will listen. And it's just a different talent, I think.

On Twitter, why are just ordinary people so often funnier than the comedians?

Well, that's a great question because this frustrates comics to no end and they won't talk about it. So for instance, I'm pretty funny. If I'm at the comedian table and I say something that's funny, there's a large number of comedians who will not laugh because it makes them uncomfortable to see a civilian be funny because you're a civilian.

You're, you're the boss.

Well, boss, but a civilian in the sense that, you know, I'm not supposed to be the talent. A lot of people are extremely funny in person, as funny as stand-up comics. What they, what they don't have is whatever it is that's driving stand-up. Well, they might have a few things. They're not comfortable on stage, they may not be charismatic, and they're not compelled to to be in front of an audience getting laughs. This is something the comedians love. My father used to talk about it. They want to be on stage. They want to be the center of attention. It's not just about being funny. There's a need that they have for this that the average funny person doesn't have. I can be funny. I don't have the urge to be on stage being funny. Matter of fact, I'm scared of that.

I don't follow any comedians, and I sit there, I read Twitter, and I giggle. So there's maybe a person who's funny once every 4 years, but the funniest thing they say becomes viral on Twitter. How do comedians compete against hundreds of millions of people who are mostly unfunny, but they have one funny moment every now and then, and then it gets elevated to the top?

Yeah, you're asking me questions about things that I've actually thought about Even recently. I don't know the answer to that.

Exactly.

I've been wondering, how is it that some of these Comedy Cellar comedians are on top even though they're not actually funnier? And especially since you're only getting the cream of the crop of these tweets. But I guess somehow they are. That's all I can tell you is somehow people who are at the top of this field— now, there's a lot of overachievers. In this profession. It's not like the NBA. If you want to be in the NBA, you got to be in the top 1/10 of basketball players in the country, or it's immediately obvious. But you can scratch out and work hard and put together a good 15 minutes. So there are a lot of overachievers working in comedy, but the real super talents, the real, the real gems, like the Chapelles, like the Louis CKs, they really are on another level. And The world sees that. I don't know if that's a good answer or not.

Why are there so few great comedy movies today? And TV shows for that matter. It used to be top TV shows were comedies. Not all of them. Seinfeld, the clearest example. And now, for a long time, HBO dramas. What happened?

Well, I mean, the obvious answer that would— most people would say is that because you can't make those jokes anymore and most of the classic comedies had jokes which would be considered off limits today.

But they're not mostly that politically incorrect. Like Seinfeld is less politically incorrect than Curb Your Enthusiasm. But there's not a Seinfeld of today, is there? I don't— In movies you can go pretty far out, and most of the funny movies from the past, like Bringing Up Baby, it's pretty funny. It's not politically incorrect at all.

It's coming around, that kind of comedy. But I don't know, Tyler, do you have a thought on that?

We seem to be getting funny bits in different ways, and they're more condensed, and they come at a higher information density, and we can pull them off the internet or TikTok whenever we want. And it seems that sates us, and we enjoy the feeling of control over comedy, which you don't quite get when you're watching, say, a 100-minute film. That would be my hypothesis.

Does that mean that there's movies that have been made which are funny and would deserve the success of a classic comedy. They're just not getting appreciated.

No, they don't get made.

They don't get made at all.

Maybe some of them are made for TV, but even there, it all seems less funny to me. But it could also be audiences are themselves less funny, right? They're more depressed, they're more neurotic. We see some of that in the data, at least for young people. So I suspect that's not the main reason, but part of it. I don't know.

And, you know, sometimes there isn't a reason. Sometimes there's just a Golden Age. There's a period where— let's compare it to music. Why is music a little bit stagnant now? Maybe that's just the ebb and flow of, of where it's at, and, and we're trying to correlate it to something, but it has nothing to do with that. Maybe there's just the, the great talents are doing other things now, or a lot of the jokes have been told. I don't know. But there's definitely golden ages of Every art form.

But comedy's still in a kind of golden age. It's just not in movies and television.

But not in movies.

But not in movies. Yeah. How do you think it changed comedy to be moved away from general outlets? So it used to be there'd be a vaudeville show. You would see something on a showboat, in a saloon, a circus, and parts of it would be funny, but sometimes you'd just be watching the dancing bear. Whereas now today, people go to a comedy club in capital letters. Did that evolution matter?

Yeah, I don't think it's better. I know that a lot of comedians became a little snobby about that. So, for instance, in the Village Underground, we have a band that brings the comedians up on and off the stage. I don't know if you've been to the Underground.

I think you have. No, not yet.

And when I first introduced it, I really introduced it because I had to let some musicians go when I was changing the club over to— so I tried to include them. And Related to what you're saying, the Black comics who came up in much more raucous rooms and rooms which were not dedicated, they immediately embraced this. They liked it. They liked the energy. The more clever white comics, clever is in scare quotes, were very resistant to it at first because this was not purist. In retrospect, most of them have come to me and said, "No, I was wrong. The music is great." And we even allow the band a little feature thing. So I think it's not an improvement. I think that a mix of things is better. Catch a Rising Star, which was considered to be the greatest of the New York comedy clubs back in the '80s, they actually did have music acts, and the Improv had music acts at one time. So now it's true that if it's too, if it's too much, it can be difficult to settle the room back down to comedy. So there are practical reasons, but I think in general this kind of snobbery of the art form as opposed to just being entertaining to an audience. I'm on the side of entertainment. I would love to see a vaudeville show.

Here's a very difficult question that I've never heard a really good answer to. If you take broadly American comedy and then broadly British comedy and you had to boil down the difference to as small a number of dimensions as possible, what would that be? I don't— You're laughing at me, but I'm not funny.

I'm laughing at you because you should be, because you know more about this than I do. No, I don't. You're a—

You have British comics in, right?

Yeah, we have British comics in. They're less politically correct. They are more word-oriented, like Jimmy Carr. But I don't know the difference between British stand-up comedy. I don't know enough about it. I would assume it's similar difference between Monty Python movies and Caddyshack, that there's just a different sensibility about it. But the British comics that I see are a self-selected bunch of comedians who come to the Comedy Store.

For America, yeah, sure.

And for the Comedy Store. They're friends of Louis. They're friends of somebody. Somehow they've gotten in the door, and they've decided for themselves that this is a good audience for them. So I don't know the answer, but I enjoy British comedy.

I think of the Americans as more explicitly presenting themselves in your face as entertainers. And the British comics start off by positioning their class relative to yours in some way. That's one of the fundamental differences.

So when Ricky Gervais did those famous— was it the Golden Globes or whatever it is? Right. Was that particularly British, would you say? Was there something about that that an American comic wouldn't have done?

I didn't see it.

Oh, you didn't see it?

I don't know.

It was so funny. I mean, just eviscerated everybody. I don't know if that's because he had more felt more latitude because he's not from the country, he's British, whatever it is. But it seemed different than an American comic would have done. It was different than the way Michelle Wolf tried to do the same thing for the Correspondents' Dinner.

If I think of the earlier history of comedy, I see a lot of comedy double acts. Laurel and Hardy, George and Gracie, Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen. Those have mostly vanished. What happened? Is the straight man or woman out of fashion? Are they too— is it too slow when you have two people and we need this higher information density of comedy?

Those acts came up not in comedy rooms, as you say. Usually they'd be part of a bill. Sometimes one of them sang, but they would do radio plays, so they had to be able to do a plot on a— maybe I'm trying to think of reasons why it would be that we've had some comedy duos over the years at the Comedy Cellar. Very few. Some of them were very funny. But they eventually went their separate ways from each other. I think the vehicles that are being used now are just not conducive to a comedy team like they once were.

Is it a Simon and Garfunkel problem? Like, someone thinks he's too good for the group?

Well, that's what happened with Jerry Lewis, right? And Dean Martin. I remember my father telling me nobody thought Dean Martin would last. Everybody assumed he would. It turned out he did. Yeah, I'm sure there's— I, I don't know if there's a rule of thumb. Everything, every one of these scenarios might be unique in its own way, but definitely the idea that the radio was a central way of presenting things in those days, I think that probably dictated that a duo was a smart thing to have because you want to have a conversation on the radio and a plot. Abbott and Costello had plots, right?

Right. And they were in movies with plots.

Yeah.

Who's the oldest comedian, oldest in the sense of going back in history, that you can watch today on YouTube or listen to and still laugh?

It's funny, comedy doesn't age well, right? It's not like music. It's amazing how it doesn't age well. I find old Don Rickles still funny sometimes. I find old George Carlin, I will still find like the Class Clown album. Funny. I thought that the Judd Apatow documentary had a lot of footage of Carlin back in the '60s. I still found that funny.

But Cheech and Chong, like, they're not funny anymore, right?

I haven't listened to it since I was in high school. That's endogenous. But I probably— no, because all the weed jokes and whatever. No, it seemed very, very dated. It would have to.

Jack Benny, is he still funny?

Yeah, I think Jack Benny is still funny. I've seen some. But again, that's mostly— he's still funny in some of the old clips. I haven't heard Jack Benny's standup. Bob Hope is not still funny. No, I don't remember thinking Bob Hope was funny back.

No, ever. Even when I was a kid, I was like, who is this guy?

Woody Allen. Old Woody Allen standup is funny for sure. I played some old Bill Cosby stuff for my kids. I think this was before Bill Cosby went out of fashion, and they loved it. Now they're kids.

And they didn't know the backstory.

They didn't know the backstory. But we loved Bill Cosby as kids.

I don't know if To me, it was never funny. It was too boring mainstream. And you know, my dad used to always tell me, "Bill Cosby's a creep." And he would say, "You know, someday you'll agree with me." That's amazing.

How did he know?

He said there were two people he would say they were creeps: Bill Cosby and Woody Allen. He had a remarkable intuition for human character.

Well, this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning about these cues.

That's right.

It's amazing.

And he never met either one, of course.

Now, he didn't say this thing about 100 other people, right?

No, no, those were the two that he signaled out and demonized.

That's remarkable. Yeah.

Bob Newhart, was he funny? It's so low-key to me. I tried listening to some to prep for this conversation. You know, it's like funny for square people in 1963 or something.

Yeah.

To me, it wasn't funny.

No, I, I don't find it that funny. I went back and not so long ago and listened and watched the Richard Pryor movie where he does the monkey and Leon Spinks and that stuff. And I still found that funny. But it's rare. Comedy does not age well. And I don't know why. Well, I will tell you this. It's not stand-up comedy, but Chaplin, we play Chaplin all the time in the restaurant.

Right.

There are nights when the entire restaurant will be laughing at Chaplin.

It still captivates me. I'm not sure I'm laughing, but it's very powerful, I think, to this day.

And the end of City Lights where he holds her hand and he realizes, and she realizes that he's a homeless guy or a bum, but She thought he was this rich man. Anyway, trying to encapsulate it, but it's too complicated. But anyway, and you'll see multiple people with tears in their eyes at the end of this Chaplin movie in the restaurant.

And what accounts for that in your view?

Genius. There's no other way. I mean, he was—

But he spanned Europe and America, right? He was not quite at home anywhere. Outsider, a little tramp, refugee.

I don't know, but he's the only— We've tried, Buster Keaton. We tried Laurel and Hardy. You know, they did a lot of silent movies before they did talking. We tried sampling all the greats of the silent era, and none of them seemed to attract attention from the patrons other than Chaplin. Also, you know, he's acrobatic. There's roller skating scenes and boxing scenes and trapeze scenes and amazing stuff.

W.C. Fields, the bank dick, I thought still was funny.

Yeah, W.C. Fields is funny and way ahead of his time. And actually, I named Well, I didn't— it wasn't my idea, but the name Fat Black Pussycat, which is one of our rooms, is named after the bar in the movie Bank Dick. Although I think it might just be called the Fat Cat in that movie.

And what about comedy across borders? Forget about the Anglosphere. Brits are funny. Canadians, of course, are funny. But people from Israel, France, wherever, Germany. If comedy doesn't age well across time, how does it for you age across borders?

Apparently people like American comedy all over the world. Americans are not so keen on comedians from other countries. That's, that's it. When we have comedians come here from other countries, I don't think anybody's done that well. Gad Elmaleh did pretty well for a while.

And they're too culturally specific or they're just not funny or how do you account for the difference?

It has something to do with the power of American culture. Like, you know, American culture has been integrated by all the other countries in the world somehow. They've just grown up and they get it. They get us. We don't get them. That's my best guess at it.

But you think they're quite funny for their local audiences?

They clearly are.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They clearly are. Now, for how many years have you been running the club?

Since 2003. 30 years.

Over those years, across time, do comedians, to you, are they nicer? Are they meaner? Like, how have they changed as a group or class of people? And none of them will be listening to this podcast, so you can say what you really think.

How have they changed?

Have they changed? They're more aggressive. They're quieter.

They are less aggressive. They are more careful. They're less bro-y, you know, which is considered a bad thing, but the bros were fun. You know, there was a, there was a this kind of bro atmosphere, like the Bill Burr types. Now, Bill, a lot of these people, they're famous now, but they're grandfathered in. But a young Bill Burr would have a tough time. People look like, dude, you need to chill out. You can't say that stuff anymore. So those people, they've changed in that way. But in many ways, they're the same. They're still smarter than most people. They're still less easy to offend. They're still much better company. They, they still, you know, much better conversations, much less boring small talk. There, there's a, comedians only like to hang out with comedians for these reasons, and they die a thousand deaths when they have to go to a dinner with people who are not comedians. They really don't like it because they cut out all the, all the nonsense, and they're very, very honest and very, very direct. It's coming to me as I'm answering you. They'll share very personal details with each other in a way that most people won't. Even people they don't even know that well. This is just part of their culture and part of their ethic to be very, very honest. And that's a very kind of captivating conversation to be in.

How often do they marry each other?

Not that often.

Don't they end up unhappy then?

Well, there's like Tom Papa is married to his wife Cynthia, and they've been married for a long time and very happy. There's some couples that usually break up. Listen, comedians, it's not about marrying other female comedians. Male comedians are notoriously bad at love.

Why is that?

One might say it's because they're, they're, a lot of them are damaged in some way and that's what makes them funny. Could be the lifestyle. I don't know, but they're not like my law school friends who were all happily married when, you know, for a long time with children. The comedians, they get divorced a lot or they don't get married at all.

So as a group of people, you think they're less happy than, say, your lawyer friends?

Less happy? That's a good question. I think there's a lot of depression. There's a lot of psychotropic drugs. Is that the phrase? You know, a lot of mood drugs being taken by comedians. But if you read the papers, this is common throughout American culture. So I don't know if it's more or they're just, again, more open about it because comedians will tell you, I'm taking this, I'm taking that. I would have to say they're not less happy because they love their work and they can't wait to go to work. And like my father used to tell me, most people live their whole lives for the weekend. They can't stand going to work. And those people, I have trouble believing, are happier than comedians because anybody— and I have a job similar to this where my whole profession is on my own terms. If I'm interested in computers, I can make that work for my profession. If I have music, whatever it was I wanted to do, this is happiness. So unless they are chemically depressed people, as some people are, I think comedians are probably happier than most people.

If there's a truly beautiful woman, can she do stand-up comedy, or are the looks an obstacle?

Oh yeah, absolutely. Whitney Cummings is very, very funny. I think she's beautiful. She was a model. I know what you're saying, but I don't think it's an obstacle. I don't think it would be an obstacle. Yes, it's true, there haven't been that many truly beautiful women doing stand-up comedy. I would not say that that's the reason.

Does the comedy have to change?

It might. You know, I think so much of this defies these rules of thumb. And I think that when somebody comes along who has something original about them, something about their take on things, something about the way they speak, the way— whatever it is, and it's real, they will become big regardless of what it is. It, again, it's like, you know, somebody with a super musical talent like Django Reinhardt. They're missing fingers. They figure out how to play with their toes. When you have real talent, you will make it. The problem is always that that's the, the top 5%, whatever you wanna say. And then there is the more mediocre category of people who are successful in standup comedy. And in that group, then yeah, then you could maybe attribute these kind of things that you're talking about. But among the people with super talent, I don't think it matters what they look like. I don't think any of these things hold them back.

And if you do stand-up comedy for decades at a high level, but not the Louis C.K., Chris Rock level, but you're successful, you appear in your club all the time, how does that change a person? But not so famous that everyone on the street knows who they are.

How does doing stand-up comedy change a person?

For 25 years, yeah.

Well, first of all, it makes it harder for them to socialize. I hear this story all the time about comedians when they go Thanksgiving dinner with their family and all of a sudden the entire place gets silent. Like, did he just say— because you get used to being in an atmosphere where you could say whatever you want. I think probably because I know this in my life, and again, getting used to essentially being your own boss, you get used to that, and then it just becomes very, very hard to ever consider going back into kind of like the structured life that most people expect is going to be their lives from the time they're in school, 9 to 5, whatever it is. At some point, I think if you do it for too long, you would probably kill yourself rather than go back. I've had that thought to myself. Like, if I had to go back to— I never practiced law, but if I had to take a job as a lawyer, and I'm not just saying this to be dramatic, I think I might kill myself. I can't even imagine at my age having to start going to work at 9:00, having a boss, having to answer for mistakes that I made, having the pressure of having to get it right, otherwise somebody's life is impacted. I just got too used to being able to do what I want when I want to do. Comedians have to get gigs, but essentially they can do what they want when they want to do it. They don't have to get up in the morning. And I think at some point you just become so used to that, there's no going back.

I've known a few people who casually— they're not comics, but they do improv comedy at local clubs a few times, and they think this will help them master social situations or give talks. Is that naive, or is there actually some benefit to trying that? I don't know.

John Podhoretz, the commentary, he apparently took improv classes for that reason. And I know that public speaking is apparently the number one phobia. I've read that. So I suppose getting used to being in front of an audience in some way would be helpful. But I think the law of diminishing returns probably kicks in pretty quick. It's probably something good to do a little bit. I don't think It's gonna help you much to do it for a long time. But I don't know. I don't know.

If there's a young comedian appearing at Comedy Cellar for the first time, you can see they're very nervous. Do you say anything? Can you help them? What do you do?

What I try to do is, you know, make them— put them at ease if I can. And, you know, they're sometimes watching you when you audition them. My booker, Esty, does this way more often, and we speak about it. We try to laugh, try not to let them look out and see a stone face. Try in some way. Now I know this, you know, sometimes it's common that the people auditioning people, I don't know if it's a power trip or whatever it is, they don't do that. They'll purposely not show any emotion to the person auditioning, which I think is counterproductive because you're trying to find out how good they are. So why would you not want to do as much as you can to bring the best out of them? So I try to bring the best out of people as much as I can. This was the same thing when I was auditioning musicians. But it's hard because when they're nervous, you know, they're really nervous. It's hard.

And just telling them, "Don't be nervous," is counterproductive?

I don't know if it's counterproductive. I don't think it works. Like, I was very nervous to do this interview. You could have said anything you want to me. It would have gone in one ear and out the other, you know.

And I didn't say anything to you, right? We just talked about other stuff.

It wouldn't have—

We talked about the Beach Boys.

Yeah, take my mind off it.

Yeah. How is New York City stand-up comedy different from L.A. comedy?

Well, they say, you know, I don't know, I'm, I'm repeating only stuff I've heard, that New York standup comedy is more battle-tested, is quicker and funnier and more highly regarded. That's within the, the standup community. I would also say that the, there's a lot more celebrities at the LA clubs, people like Joe Rogan and, and as opposed to here where they're drop-ins, they're on the lineups there. So it's much more diff— it's much less stage time. For an up-and-coming comic in LA. That's what I'm told. Part of the reason I was nervous about this interview is because I don't think anybody realizes how uninformed I am in a certain way about anything that happens outside my little kingdom here. That sounds arrogant, but my little environment. And I'm focused on everything that happens around me and A huge amount of that has nothing to do with comedy. It's about customers being happy and people being friendly and the hummus being made right and whatever it is. So I don't know that much about LA comedy.

How does Las Vegas comedy fit into the picture? And there you have a club, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, Vegas audiences are, you know, can you have more conservatives, more Trump supporters? It's riskier to have a too political comic there who will start offending the Trump supporters and whatever it is. But other than that, I've found, to my surprise, or not to my surprise, but to the surprise of other people, that audiences are the same, that the people who are funny are funny in Vegas just like they are in New York. Hacks, Hacks will do a little bit better in Vegas than they will in New York because more people in New York realize that they're hearing something that's not original. But funny is funny. And like people say, maybe you can't send somebody out too Jewy or too whatever, you know? No, doesn't matter at all.

How important is the seating arrangement for a good comedy show? Do you think long and hard? How close together should the seats be? How far away? Looking down, looking up? What's the deal?

The most important thing is that everybody should be a little bit closer than they want to be. The claustrophobia of the room, I think, is extremely important. It is not good to have people spread out. We do get complaints from time to time about people being— that the seats were too tight. And it's the one complaint I will not address in terms of making changes in the room because I know that it helps.

And why does claustrophobia make the comics funnier?

It's just the, the intenseness.

I guess the synchronization is stronger within the audience, or—

well, definitely the laughs are louder. First of all, you are Enjoying it with your friends in a closer physical way. There's just an intenseness to it. I mean, my answer may not be very eloquent, but obviously anybody can just picture as you spread people out, you can just intuitively understand, well, that's just not going to work. You have to be close together.

Louis C.K. once said that in the 1990s, the Comedy Cellar often was empty and there was hardly any audience. Why was that? What happened?

Oh boy, was it. So first of all, weeknights at comedy clubs in general were basically empty. Comedy was not the popular thing that it is today, but the Comedy Cellar was, even then we were the newcomer and the low club on the totem pole. The Improv, the Catch a Rising Star, Carolines, these were the, the go-to clubs. And it was so slow that, you know, my father used to have the waitresses take off their aprons and all sit in the room, pretend to be customers so that if somebody would come to the door, they wouldn't think they were the only customer. You know, we went through all, all sorts of things to try to, to seed the room. The weekends were always busy because people want to go out on the weekends. But yeah, it was, it was very tough and actually, Those were good old days in a way, because the comedians had much less pressure on them in those days. So they would take chances. They would be hilarious, improvised things. I just sent a whole wall full of VHS tapes to a digitizing place in Boston. They actually came to pick it up. It's gonna cost a lot of money. And I'll have a lot of those, of that period on video.

And you own the IP?

Uh, no, I don't.

You don't?

The comedians own it.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

But I will then share it with them and to the extent that they want to, you know, have it released or given to a museum in some days, but there will be clips there of people like Louis C.K. performing to like 5 people. And it'll be a different aspect of Louis C.K. than anybody's ever seen. And it's fascinating, like seeing the Beatles and, you know, the Cavern Club or something.

So if you were not the top club back then, And please feel free to be immodest. And you are the top club right now. What is it the Comedy Cellar did in the meantime to get you to be the top club?

Yeah, that's a good question. And I don't— I mean, what I think it is, is that we were the most dedicated. I say this, yeah, it's uncomfortable for me to talk this way, but it's This is what I believe. We were completely dedicated, always, always, always to doing things the right way in terms of having the best comedians and, and being and treating the customers the way we wanted to be treated ourselves. And this is like, to this day, it's an obsession with me. It's harder and harder. To keep that mentality as we're so busy among the staff, we become complacent, whatever it is. I regard this as a big challenge and a very important challenge that I have to overcome. But it was the way we treated the comedians. My grandmother was a very warm host. My father was an extremely warm host. He always—

And they ran the club before you did, right?

Not my grandmother, but just like a Dorman family kind of tradition. My father knew how to take care of people, treat them nicely. He was a performer himself. He understood the stage from a performer's point of view. So I'll give you a perfect example. To this day, every comedy club has a check spot, which is during the last comedians, they give out the check. Now, the comedians hate this because how can you pay attention to the comic while you're figuring out your check?. And from day one, my father said, we're never gonna have a check spot. I don't care what it takes. I don't care if it takes longer to turn over the room. I don't care if we lose a show. We are not gonna have a performer having to compete with paying a check, especially if he's talking. Like, music is bad enough. So this was something he dug in on. And to this day, our competitors have check spots, even their last shows where there is no time constraint. Why? I cannot account for that. And from that you can extrapolate many things that they're probably doing wrong because they don't have their priorities straight.

Why don't you charge a higher price for Saturday nights? More people want to go, right?

Dude, I just found out today that one of our— one of the other clubs is charging $38. New York Comedy Club is like $38 plus a $5 ticket fee, which is just, you know, why would there be a ticket fee? It's just a rip-off. And an $18 minimum. You're talking about almost twice as expensive as we are. It just seems too much to me. Doesn't it seem too much? Who wants to pay that much money?

It sounds like a bargain compared to a lot of alternatives. Try going to see the Knicks. Now, that's comedy of its own sort, but—

I don't know. I have to take a look at raising my prices. I had no idea. I didn't mention this to you, right? That you didn't know. I just saw this today.

I didn't know this.

$38. And also, I went to a piano bar called the Nines. A drink is $26, and our cover charge on a Saturday night is $26. So Maybe I'm outta touch and I do have to raise the prices in some way, but it's always better to be full. It's always better for people to think that they got their money's worth. The longevity can't be measured for that kind of philosophy. And you only know you've blown it when it's too late. You only know you've raised your prices when it's too late. What I do keep track of in terms of metrics for my business is not how much money we take in, is how many people we turn away every week. Because I know if I see that number dropping, that's when I have a— now I have to react to that. So this is all kind of related to each other.

Now, Esty is your gatekeeper for comedy talent. What makes her so good at that job?

I always say it was my father's genius to hire a booker who didn't speak English. Listen, she gets mad when I say this, but I'm going to be very honest. Knowing who the good comics are, is not the challenge. It is obvious to anybody who the good comics are. You could not speak the language, be in the room, and know who the funny comics are. You could— you hear the laughter, you see the audience. However, she is tremendously good at other things. She is a Jewish mother. She takes care of them. And I know you can make me cry if I start— she's extremely loyal. This woman bleeds comedy cellar blue more than me. She worries about the club more than me. She broke her rib a few weeks ago in terrible pain. I said, Essie, how are you doing? She goes, oh, in terrible pain. I'm paying. I said, well, you need to stay home. She goes, stay home as long as you need. She goes, I'm at work. I said, what are you doing at work? She knows now. She knows she's gonna get paid. This is a dedication. You cannot find this anywhere. And people see that in her. And they respond to it. I mean, the most famous people in the world, Judd Apatow, John Mayer, they're texting with SD. They go out to dinner with SD. They adore her. And that is the magic that she brings to it.

How is it that you notice when the level— Sure, sure. Please, more.

When Trump used to talk about the deep state, it always rang true to me because every boss has a deep state in his business because Anybody. So for instance, I have a general manager, I'm not talking about my general manager, and a customer's complaining. Now the general manager doesn't want to let me know about the customer complaint because in some way this reflects on her management of the place. So, so there's immediately the incentives are all bad. That's why it's always better if you're a customer to ask for the owner, cuz the owner is the only one who really, really cares, who has no— Esty is completely loyal. There is zero doubt. Deep state with Esty. And this, as a boss, is something you may never have. And when you do have it, it's priceless. I cannot tell you the sense of ease I have that I can speak with her totally candidly, totally frankly about any comedian, about anything in the world. And I know it stays between us. She'll never, ever let it on. It's an amazing thing.

How is it that you notice when the level of the light in the club is dimmed ever so slightly?

I just notice. My father had it, I have it. I can walk into a room and I notice it immediately. People I've trained who are there every day don't notice. I'm like, "Don't you see that?" "Oh yeah, you're right, boss. I didn't see that." This is just— it's like, you know, it's a talent. I'll cop to it. It's a talent.

What's the craziest government regulation Comedy Cellar has to follow?

Well, the, the dumbest thing, it's, it's not, uh, huge to me, is that when they raise the minimum wage, they raise it for tipped employees rather than the, the people who are working hard in the kitchen, let's say. Now our servers, I think finally it caught up with the everybody. Our servers make, as a waitering job, quite a bit of money. You know, some of them can make. $100,000 a year. They would pay me to work here. I'm not suggesting they do, but regulations really didn't take care of, for a while, and as I said, I think the minimum wage may have caught up now. They did not take care of the people who were really laboring hard at low wages. I thought that was a tremendous mistake. The sum total of the regulations is crazy. It's death by a thousand cuts. So then we wanted to move a wall downstairs to expand the kitchen by, I don't know, 7 feet. This was something we could have done without even closing. In order to comply with the law, we were closed for like 6 or 7 months. The landmark permission, one thing after another, after another, after another. We can't put in a bathroom because then we'd have to renovate the bathrooms downstairs. We don't have room for— there's so many things. We're very, very fortunate because we're established and we're successful. But you wonder how it is that an, a new business can overcome these costs. My, my father started his first place. He was drive, he was a cab driver. The notion that a cab driver could aspire to opening a restaurant in the Village now is, it's, it's impossible. You couldn't do it.

Coleman Hughes says I should ask you for your 9/11 story.

Oh my God.

He gave me hell. I, I spied on you.

Did he really?

Of course he did.

All right, well, this is not a flattering story at all.

I don't know that. I guess I will.

I'll try to do it short. So when I was younger— not anymore. Listen, I was a musician. I'm not proud of it, but I caroused. I was not faithful to girlfriends, whatever. I'm just copping to it. I can't believe— because I texted Coleman today. He's like, it'll be fine. Don't worry about it. The only bad question was from him. So I had decided that the only way you could have an affair— I wasn't married, God forbid— was that you and the woman had to be the only two people who know about it. So I had this girlfriend. I said, we're going to go to Washington, DC. And I didn't tell anybody. I can't believe you're doing this. And I was in a hotel. And my cell phone is ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing, and I don't want to answer it. And finally I answer it, and it was somebody working in the office calling on behalf of my father. Where are you? Where are you? Your father's gone. I said, I'm in DC. And then I spoke to my father's wife. I'm in DC. And they're like, don't you understand what's happened? I had no idea. Turn on the TV. So I turn on the TV. It was 9/11. The World Trade Center has fallen. I said, well, I'm in DC. That's all I say. So then my girlfriend, now my wife, my wife knows the story. Her mother, I'm really trying to condense the story, shows up to the Olive Tree.

That's the attached restaurant for the listeners who don't know.

Looking for her daughter, and she sees my stepmother and she says, have you seen Juanita? And Ava, my son, she says, it's okay, they're in DC. And my wife's mother says, she's not in DC. I just saw her 2 hours ago. And then it dawned that— so I got busted on 9/11. And I just remember you couldn't get back into Manhattan and it was burning. I was like, I hope it burns and burns. And I just kept putting it off and putting it off. It was the most horrible thing. But I will tell you an interesting— aspect of that story. And this story's been written up in a book, by the way, if anyone wants to get the long version of it. When we went out into DC that day, there was nobody at the White House.

Sure.

And we began to walk down the path realizing we could walk into the building like January 6th. I walk right into the— And then I got scared. I said, you know what? This is probably not something we should do. And I chickened out and I went the other way. And if I— it was before cell phones had cameras, but if I had, it was like I Am Legend or something. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It just happened to be there and I couldn't capture it, but deserted. Just like you could just walk right into the government buildings. It's crazy. Anyway.

Is there an alternate universe where you become a professional musician, a guitarist?

Yes, there is. I would say that. I mean, I was a I was a very good musician in high school. I was hired as an accompanist for a classical oud player, and I played Carnegie Hall and a number of important of those types of rooms. I was recommended to study with Segovia. I was considered to be a—

A lute player.

A lute player?

No. Oud.

Oud. Oud.

Okay. Oud. Yes.

Which is, you know, la oud is oud.

Yes. Yes.

The oud was a forerunner to the lute. And then I had a whole career playing music. Pretty successful at it. And I was good. Not a genius musically. Like, I play with some people who I could never play like they can play. But I was always the leader. I always became the leader in any situation, even with musicians who were better than me in certain ways. It was something about— it's related to knowing when the lights are up and down. There was something about my sensibility musically I will say this about myself, which was unique to me and very good. And that's why to this day, like, I still play with the very, very best musicians in the world will come down and hang out in the Olive Tree.

And you're playing electric guitar then?

No, I play like a nylon electric guitar.

Yeah.

But as a band leader more than anything else, that was really something that I was just naturally good at.

The old Burt Bacharach song, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. What are the chords?

Oh, I know the C, C major 7, C7. I could tell you all the chords.

For, like, all the songs by anyone? Coleman says you can.

Not Coleman. No, not all the songs, not by anyone. I'm pretty good at it. I don't have perfect pitch. People with perfect pitch are always better at it. I'm not as good as this guy Nick Cassarino, who plays with me. He will have a higher batting average. I'm not a genius. I'm not. But I'm very good. But, you know, a lot of people, like, like you hear old Beatles records, Paul McCartney's making mistakes. You know, there's a— music has so many different aspects that go into it in terms of what it means to be a great musician. There's artistic aspects to it, there's strategic aspects to it, there's, there's sensitivity aspects to it, all sorts of things.

Beach Boys, I Get Around. What makes it a great song?

Well, it, it's just, first of all, that introduction, it's so fresh, barbershop kind of sound with this rock music. I mean, as a kid, I can remember vividly the first time I heard it. I'd never heard anything like it. It's always impressive to me when something comes out of nowhere and you can't even trace it as a progression of what came before it. That's what those Beach Boys songs were like to me. That's like the first time I heard I Want to Hold Your Hand, these kind of things. I'm not exactly unique. The first time I heard Teen Spirit, the Nirvana song.

Right.

There's just something about— and again, I'm saying this, but everybody says that.

Right. First time I heard Strawberry Fields Forever, maybe I was 10. I couldn't believe it.

Yeah. So I Get Around has that. Now, I Get Around is very sophisticated harmonically. It's got a key change and it goes down a step afterwards, and he finishes— I think he finishes where he started. I mean, you can't say enough about Brian Wilson. Right. This guy's a real genius.

Who's the most underrated guitarist in your view?

The guitar players who are not fancy, like Paul McCartney, whose touch is magical— you can tell it's him immediately— like Paul Simon. James Taylor gets more credit but is also not understood to be the genius that he is because he basically invented an entire style. Nobody plays like him, nobody sounds like him, and nobody played like that before him. Willie Nelson's soloing, I know that people like Miles Davis, they get it because it's so simple. It's all phrasing. It's something that anybody would think they could do, but they can't quite do it like him. It's kind of like Sinatra's singing. Nobody gets that, but yet everybody can't believe how good he is. But he's not singing like Ella Fitzgerald. He's not singing like Tony Bennett. It's almost approachable. You'd think you could almost sing like Sinatra. But you can't. The guitar players like that, I've listed some of them, those are the people I really admire. I really don't, I never did enjoy the fancy guitar players like the guitar gods because that's not really my approach to music. I'm more song-oriented. I like the songs. I like the, I even like the solos that are not necessarily improvised.

The fact that you mastered the oud, which is unusual, right? How has that shaped your understanding of rock and roll and popular music? What is it that you see differently?

Well, I'll broaden out that answer because I don't think I mastered the oud. I can play it.

But you played it well.

Yeah. That I was very, very lucky. I wish my father were alive for you to meet him. I had very, very broad influences in my home and a total lack of snobbery about anything. And actually, this is why I take to you in a way. I think you have that too. So anything that was considered to be great within its culture, the greatest Arabic music, the great— whatever it was, it was assumed that it was upon me to learn why it was great. And you can do that. You bury yourself in it. You'll always have an accent at it in some way, but at some point you get used to it, and then you begin to be able to discern the good from the bad. And then somehow that becomes part of your vocabulary and how you play, and that just happens. You can't really plan that. So in some way, having all these influences made me unique in a certain way as a musician, but unique in just in everything that I do, I like to think, because I don't know, I try to be very, very open-minded. I hope the answer meanders a little bit, but I do think These things are connected. It's an idea that's not limited to music. It's just an approach to the world. And you're the best example I know of this.

Thank you. The Greenwich Village live music scene, does it have a future? Aren't the rents too high? Too many tourists come here? Will it all just become stupid?

I think it's done. When I started a music club in '88, everybody had live music. I mean, there was live music everywhere, not just on Bleecker Street, but Throughout the city, few things happened at the same time. First of all, fewer and fewer people play the kind of music which is practical for live venues. Much more electronic and hip-hop and whatever it is. Number one. Number two, rents got higher and landlords don't want noise and neighbors don't want noise, and it's almost impossible to control the noise. And DJs became super popular on their own, and DJs are way cheaper and more predictable in what they're going to do. You know, you hire some live band, you don't know if they're— what they're going to play or if they'll show up. There's so many reasons that, like, when I was a kid, McDougall Street was so— now this was, you know, during the folk rock era when Love and Spoonful was around the corner and Dylan was— McDougall Street was so busy you, you couldn't even walk down the street. The cars had to go, you know, like at a tiny pace. Just, it was a flood of people. You could see this a little bit in the movie The President's Analyst. I don't know if you ever saw it.

No.

Lee Marvin. There's clips of the Village in those days. And then it just has decayed ever since then. I think live music, I don't think it's coming back anywhere in New York. I don't think so. I mean, I shouldn't say never, but I mean, like my Monday Night Live music that I do with Coleman and It's pretty popular, but it's very small. And I couldn't even imagine succeeding at a live music club now. You can do it with famous acts, but the kind of non-famous live music club, no. I think that's partly why comedy's gotten busier too. Comedy in certain ways replaced music as a thing people go to do.

Final question. What will you do next?

Well, we just closed on the biggest thing I've ever done, which is a new building on 3rd Street was the former McDonald's. And I want to open a room that hopefully be the flagship room, which will be a very, very intimate 200-seat theater-ish kind of place with a mezzanine. I'm doing that also largely because I have kids and I want them to, I want to have enough that they don't have to fight over it. I've seen so many families torn apart fighting over estates and things like that. I'm trying to keep having fun. Again, one of the things I admire about you, and I think as I get to know you and I'm more comfortable speaking with you, but I think that we're similar only in the sense that I think you're trying to live life on your own terms and do exactly what you want to do and enjoy exactly what you want to do when you want to do it. And, uh, that has really been the joy of, of my life so far. And that's what I'm trying to do now. I have kids, that's a huge joy in my life. So I don't know exactly what I'll do next after that. It'll be whatever I want to do that I'm interested in at the time to enjoy myself. That's really the way it's been all along.

Noam Dworman of Comedy Cellar, thank you very much.

Thank you, Tyler. Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm @TylerCowen and the show is @CowenConvos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning.