Budd Friedman’s THE IMPROV and Leading with Your Strongest Material
In the mood to watch some great standup comedy? I’ve compiled a GWS Companion that features 20 of the comedians who figure into the long and storied history of The Improv. Click here if you wish to laugh.
There are so many reasons that I love comedy, but I think the primary one is that comedians have always been the true conscience of a society. The court jester is the only person who can speak truth to the king. Comedians push boundaries and shape how we view the language. (Just this morning, I heard an NPR commentator mention how a politician was using rhetoric that “ratcheted the tension to 11.”)
So much of today’s comedy can be traced to Budd Friedman and his Improv, the first comedy club of its kind. The brick wall in the background? The cutthroat competition and dysfunctional friendships between comics? That was all him. The Improv was the incubator for comics like Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Lewis, Andy Kaufman, Elayne Boosler…everyone. Continue Reading