Anthony Jeselnik Says No One Has More Creative Freedom Than Beginning Comedians

Anthony Jeselnik loves David Mamet, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who spends most of his time these days storming out of podcasts. “He talks a lot about the creative process,” Jeselnik told Ron Funches on the Gettin’ Better podcast a few years back, and Mamet believed artists are never freer than when they’re just getting started. 

Jeselnik thinks that theory applies especially well to stand-up comics. “Let’s say you’re starting out as a comedian,” he said. “You go onstage for the first time at an open mic. You have a hundred percent creative freedom. No one has any expectation of you. You’ve never done anything before, so you can do whatever you want.”

The irony: The more success comedians enjoy, the less artistic freedom they have, at least in some regards. As comics become more established, they develop funny personas. They develop fan bases. Those are good things, but “you almost become beholden to them,” Jeselnik said. “And you spend the rest of your career trying to get back to a place where you can have a hundred percent freedom.”

Jeselnik speaks from firsthand experience. If he were to decide to get on stage and talk about an experience from his life, he knows his audience will expect the story to take a Jeselnik turn. “Everyone’s waiting for the punchline,” he said. “They don’t do well, you know. I have to have a hard joke at the end.”

Funches suggested there’s another way to look at those expectations: Instead of Jeselnik being limited to a particular kind of comedy, isn’t he just specializing? Think of it like a surgeon — they don’t get frustrated because they don’t operate on every part of the body. 

Point taken. It reminded Jeselnik of advice that Tina Fey offered in her book, Bossypants. Fey said that after completing a big project, artists should wait at least six months before deciding on their next one. If they don’t, their instinct will be to choose a job that’s the opposite of the one they just completed — change for change’s sake. 

In Jeselnik’s case, he might follow up a stand-up hour featuring one-liners with one in which he gets personal with his comedy. Six months later, he might ask, “Why am I getting personal? I didn’t want to do that.”

Conversely, Funches specializes in material about his personal life. “If I were to switch and try to do jokes like you, it would just be very disingenuous.”

With apologies to David Mamet, maybe 100 percent creative freedom isn’t the ideal after all.