Oct. 17, 2024

What drives Matt Rife?

Show Notes
Transcript

This episode of 'Daily Comedy News' with Johnny Mac discusses Matt Rife's decade-long journey to real success, highlighting his self-starter attitude that led to his smash hit YouTube specials. Dane Cook offers insights into his comedic process, dealing with hecklers, and his admiration for Dave Chappelle and George Carlin. Sebastian Maniscalco and Sheng Wang share their methods for developing comedy material, while Vulture-recognized comedian Nico Carney talks about the challenges of being a comedian, such as airport inconveniences and misguided advice on crowd work versus genuine self-expression on stage. The episode ends with a look at lessons learned from personal and financial hurdles in the comedy industry.

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Callaroga Shark Media. Hi there, Johnny Mack with your daily

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comedy news. Matt Reiche tells Formes his overnight success was

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a decade in the making. He was fifteen when he

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landed on Wild and Out, remember that on MTV. He

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was in sixteen episodes. He said, I got Wilding Out

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and that was a phenomenal launching platform from my career,

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but it's not what I want to do forever, which

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is why I left the show. Trying to make his

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name in comedy, he said he was getting a few

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hundred dollars a show and paying for his own flights,

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while sensing that he was capable of a much more

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Raife says, nobody wants to pay any attention. How am

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I to get in front of people? If nobody wants

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to give me a chance. I'm not asking you for

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anything drastic, just an opportunity to get in front of people.

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My friend was like, want you to do yourself. You're

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sitting here complaining about how nobody will give you an opportunity.

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Why don't you create your own opportunity. Man, You have

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a little bit of a following and comedians are starting

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to put their stuff out on YouTube. Wyann't you just

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do that? That was the advice that led him to

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call his first YouTube special OnlyFans. That was a playful

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response to fans frequently asking if he had an only

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fans page. People kept checking to see if I had

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an only fans page, and I was getting tweets all

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the time asking about it. That's when the adult theme

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platform exploded, and I thought if I named the special OnlyFans,

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it'd be a number one Google. He funded the special

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through a go Fundme. He raised close to thirty grand

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and says, I think fifteen or twenty thousand was what

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I was really praying for, And for some reason, people

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were so supportive. People really believed in me and wanted

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this product. Only forty people attended that taping. Only Fans

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now boast thirteen million views on YouTube. His second special,

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Matthew steven Rife has twenty one million views. His third,

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Walking Red Flag is thirteen million. You may recall he

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sold out two hundred and sixty dates in forty eight hours.

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He said, I remember lying in bed his tickets went

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on sale. My phone blew up with a message from

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my agent. This sold out, This sold out, and I'm like,

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didn't go on sale five minutes ago blew my mind.

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Adding Ford my passions in film and television, acting and development.

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That's really where I want my career to go. There

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might be a day where I'm only doing movies. I

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don't have the time to do stand up anymore, at

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least tour the way I'm doing now. Touring has been

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my life for thirteen years now, and it's all I've

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ever done. But it might not always be that way.

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Interesting Whilston Magazine asked Dane Cook about TV shows about

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comedians like Has or Missus Mazel. Dane said, I think

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Ax is wonderful. I had the real privilege of sharing

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the stage a couple times with Hannah Einbinder. She was like,

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I'm such a huge fan. That made me feel great.

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I forget that I had been around for a minute.

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We had this fun back and forth talking each other up.

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With Mazel, I'm so far behind, but I love it.

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I grew up loving films like The King of Comedy

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Anything I kind of pulled back the curtain of funny

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people in the world of show business I was infatuated with.

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In fact, I'm developing something now that's kind of similar

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and I've never had so much fun failing miserably trying

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to get something off the ground. They asked Dane, what's

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your process? And Dane said, this is my favorite question

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because I wish you could get me and ten other

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comics on a call and say how do you write?

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Because it's so different. I found it in ninety seven.

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If I wrote something down, when I looked at it again,

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I'd say, I'm unfunny, I stink. I realized that when

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I wrote something down, I hated it and thought it

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was terrible. But if I went on stage and just

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tried it on a dead Monday night, somewhere there was hope.

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If I organically talk about the first thought I have,

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instead of trying to write things that I don't even

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know if they're funny or not, it's better. Had his

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Dane deal with hecklers, He said, I had a Heckler

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moment a few weeks ago and she said something about

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my wife, something about my relationship, and I got really angry.

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But I learned something in therapy years ago. When someone

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makes you angry, respond with honesty. So I enjoy that

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process instead of just hammering them, I'm gonna invite them

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to the table, so to speak. I shoot the hecker,

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like I know you need to get something off your chest.

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I'll invite them, We'll go back and forth, and at

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the end of that, I'll hit them with some final zinger.

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But if you're talking about people who are just disruptive

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and rude, they're ruining the show for people around them.

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I get emails from people ten years later saying, we

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still think about the night Jonathan I got drunk at

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your show and you just scarlet letter to him Dane Cook,

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who's the funniest person you know? Dane says, it remains

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Dave Chappelle. He makes me laugh. I had the luxury

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of doing TD Garden with him back in October. He

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asked me to be a surprise guest, and I hadn't

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been on stage in the Garden since I did Vicious Circle.

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I do my twenty minutes and I killed. Honestly, turned

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to my wife and said, no way, Dave's gonna be better,

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but he comes out. My wife and I were wiping

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tears away. I was giving him a standing ovation mid set.

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Who's the comedian that you weren't four but he'd most

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like to meet? He said, Oh Man, George Carlin. At

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times in my career when there was pushback against me

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and people were not happy to see you succeeding, he

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inspired me. I remember Carlin doing the hippie dippy weather Man,

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and then the day he went on TV and killed it.

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He brought the cardboard cut out and threw it out

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of the frame and said he's dead. I'm not this guy,

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and he literally kind of killed his career and allowed

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himself to say I'm changing, and if you don't like it,

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I don't give a rat's ass. Worst moment on stage ever, Dane,

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He said, I was in a comedy group and we

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did The Garden in nineteen ninety two as part of

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wbcn's Rock of Boston show. Fish was the closing act.

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This is a good show. They put us on, not

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at the beginning of the show, but two plus hours anyway,

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right after the spin Doctors and before Fish. Being huge

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Fish fans, he'd sig here crowd through lighters and sandals.

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I got a welt on my neck. I got hit

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so hard with the lighter. I swear to you, if

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it hit me in the I would have lost my sight.

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When I describe it, I say, you ever see the

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opening of Saving Private Ryan you picture of that but

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with sandals and lighters. Dane All liked this question. For

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a Sebastian Maniscalco, who was asked how do he put

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the material together for a new tour, Said've probably been

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working on it for two years. It's not like I

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go in some room and start writing down funny things.

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It's more of living my life, extracting the humor in

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everyday occurrences, whether it be hang out with my kids

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or my take on Amazon. He tells a story. I

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got two kids, five and seven. We don't bring the

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iPads to dinner. But that being said, if you don't

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bring out iPads, you basically become the iPad and or

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just doing whatever you can at the dinner table to

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entertain your kids, like I'm doing things from the eighties

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to try and entertain my kids. That's a little morsel

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of something that I might be working on. And what

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you're seeing now is not where you're going to see

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at the end of the tour in April. Because as

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I live life, material kind of comes. And I've noticed

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as a comedian it seems that people really enjoy crowd work.

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I'm like you know what let me lean into the

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crowd work a little bit. I think it personalizes the

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show a bit more. You got to know where to

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put it. I not, it's just from trial and error.

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If you put it too early during the set, people

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all of a sudden think they're part of the show

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and they might yell stuff at you. So it's kind

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of science. Were we drop it in? The Texas Chronicle

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asked Shang Wang, if you hadn't discovered comedy, or if

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comedy hadn't discovered you, what you'd be doing today. Shang

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Wang said, I don't really know. I don't think I

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would have been happy if I'd fall through with the

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business track. I was in a poetry and photography and

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maybe i'd be some kind of a photographer perhaps, So

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I'm not really sure. I still like to dabble in that.

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I'll still shoot pictures all the time, and sometime in

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the future I might try to combine the two. One time,

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Scheng was asked best and worst comedy advice, and his

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answer to worst advice was that he should do more

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Asian jokes. I don't know if things have changed or

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things are changing, but I think something you come against

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when you perform for the general public. I feel like,

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especially if you're somewhat of an ethnic minority or just

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some kind of minority in general, in our society, you

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feel pressure to do certain jokes, to dress certain issues,

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to be a certain way, and I think that advice

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comes from that phenomenon. Like people when they see an

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Asian person go on stage, they assume that these are

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the type of jokes they should be saying. And I

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think whoever gave me that advice at that mentality, I

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think it's terrible advice because it's not my nature to

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do those type of jokes, and I grew up hearing jokes,

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stereotypes and stuff like that that I find to be

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very limiting because it doesn't allow to be who you

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really are, to be a whole person. I think it's

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much more free to do the jokes you really want

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to do, and I think it's bad advice to limit

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yourself in such a way. Nico Karney is one of

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Vulture's comedians you should and will know. Nico says, the

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first stand ups I love growing up where Tig Nataro,

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Mike Berbiglia, John Mulaney, Brian Reagan, and Jim Gaffigan. All right,

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we see the lame there. I love comedians who use

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language and cadence that is very specific to them. I

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love Greer Barns. He makes it look effortless. I'm also

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a big fan of Julio Torres. Worst show Ever. I've

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done plenty of shows at restaurants where the audience was

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expecting a meal in surprise, there's a comedy show. Now,

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they could prepare you for doing anecdotal material about coming

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out as trans to a room full of people who

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just wanted to eat their burritos in peace. One time,

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he did a bar show where the mic was so

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close to the end of the bar and the only

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audience members were all seated at the bar, so it

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was kind of like giving a toast group of strangers.

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If I had to pick one worst show ever, it

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was probably a college gig. They put me in a

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massive auditorium. I performed to silence for less than a

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dozen students, most of whom left. How many times have

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we heard how horrible these college shows are. The faculty

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member who organized it wanted me to stand in the

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elevator before the show to promote it. The only thing

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more humiliating than doing stand up for a group of

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uninterested college students. Is barking for audience members and an elevator? Yikes?

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Interesting answer here. Biggest financial hurdle you've ever encountered since

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being a comedian travel in taxes. I'd just shown Ohio,

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and even booking three months in advance, it was going

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to cost nine hundred dollars to fly from New York

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to Cincinnati. No offense to the good people of Cincinnati,

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but who's going there for nine hundred dollars? The Cincinnati

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airport isn't even in Cincinnati, It's in Kentucky. The airlines

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need to get a grip. Taxes were also higher than

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I expected. I didn't realize the government needed so much

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money from an up and coming artist, but I guess

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we have to fund this failing nation somehow. Best comedy advice,

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worst comedy of ice, best not to do crowd work

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for the first few years of comic I think we're

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on the come down from the crowd work trend thanks

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to a very successful comedian who special maybe didn't quite

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live up to the hype. Hmmm, is that a slam

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at Matt Rife? But Matt Rife's special is pretty good.

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I don't know who's slamming there. That's interesting. Hit me

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in the Facebook group if I forgetting somebody, But that's

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got to be a rife dig right, Yes, No, Facebook

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group is daily comedy news podcast group. I think a

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lot of young comics. He isn't a quick way to

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go viral online. But starting out, it's so much more

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important to find your material in your voice than it

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is to learn how to do crowd work. Worst advice

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I've received was to talk less about being trans. I

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could make myself more palatable for larger audiences. From what

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I can tell. The man who told me this has

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never played a large audience. I'm not sure where he

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was coming from. I hope his open mics are going. Well,

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that's your comedy news for today. If you enjoy the program,

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tell a friend about it. They might like it too,

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And I'll see tomorrow.