Best examples of dealing with hecklers NSFW

[lankyguy95]

Norm Macdonald:

"Everyone's telling me "you gotta see Bill Hicks."
So I sit there watching him; two hours, I don't laugh."

[earl_sleek]

Hicks is still one of my favourite stand ups, but he hasn't dated well in a lot of ways. It's easy to say nowadays that he went for easy targets or that his actual positions weren't particularly developed, but I think in the context of his time that's less true.

I can definitely imagine him becoming a angry right wing MAGA type if he'd lived, but just as equally growing and refining his targets. I find his heckler response funny in just how much that isn't the right way to deal with a heckler.

[jobotic]

He'd be doing another one of those circle jerk American bloke podcasts wouldn't he? Like everyone else.

[Sonny_Jim]

Oh god, he'd be another Marc Maron, wouldn't he?  Although I could never see him doing the whole 'SCHTAAAMPS DAHT CAAAHM' promotional stuff.

Sir, request to split 'Bill Hicks was a bit of a wrong'un, wasn't he?' into a separate topic.

[Pink Gregory]

Can't remember the context or the full quote, but Brendan Burns recalls thus -

*heckle*
Brendan - Yeeah I facked ya mam
Heckler - My mother's dead
Brendan - Yeah?  Well I dug 'er up and facked the dust

[Brundle-Fly]

Hicks is still one of my favourite stand ups, but he hasn't dated well in a lot of ways. It's easy to say nowadays that he went for easy targets or that his actual positions weren't particularly developed, but I think in the context of his time that's less true.

I can definitely imagine him becoming a angry right wing MAGA type if he'd lived, but just as equally growing and refining his targets. I find his heckler response funny in just how much that isn't the right way to deal with a heckler.

I was a big fan back in the nineties but used to find the Bill disciples a bit much. Now, it's the Hicks haters that have filled that role. If he was alive today?  I'd like to believe he'd have moved into acting and everybody would be raving about his portrayal of The Riddler or the tenth season of his detective drama, 'Valdosta' on HBO.

[Sonny_Jim]

Bill Hicks IS David Koresh.

[dead-ced-dead]

I think maybe we should have a split topic about Hicks, as I think we're drifting from the original topic.

[JaDanketies]

What was Kramer thinking when he screamed racial obscenities and referred to lynching a black heckler? I don't get it. I feel like it made more sense when it happened than it does now.

[Retinend]

Kramer's meltdown is a great example of a bad heckler reaction - he got this surge of anger which came out as this racist tirade. Who knows what he was thinking but I would guess that he felt that he could transform that blatantly racist notion (shutting up a black man by lynching him) into something alchemically non-racist through the power of comedy. You can see him attempting to introduce absurdity with the "fork in your ass" line, and then hoping the repetition of the taboo word would, as I said, somehow transform something racist into something non-racist because it would be too racist to be real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKMGjvGBsVs
Michael Richards racial tirade Nov 2006

I mean, the alternative is that he is a genuine old-school wannabe "yee-haw" southern racist and was just suppressing it the whole time, but I doubt that because he would be insane to expect the liberal Comedy Store audience to join him in cries of "he's an n*****, he's a n*****": more like it is that he just fucked up big time, expecting his mouth to clear a cheque that his arse had cashed, so to speak.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2012/oct/02/michael-richards-daniel-radcliffe-jon-hamm
Michael Richards revisits his racist rant... and the bonuses of being Brucie
Guardian article I haven't read yet

[St_Eddie]

I mean, the alternative is that he is a genuine old-school wannabe "yee-haw" southern racist...

Well, yeah... evidently.  It baffles me how you can watch that clip and come away from it with an interpretation of 'doing a bit'.  The man was clearly fuming and bellowing unfiltered, deep-rooted racial hatred.  "50 years ago, we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass" is a reference to KKK lynchings, not an absurdist piece of comedic whimsy.

[lankyguy95]

I broadly agree. He'd clearly lost his temper completely. Possibly some deep-rooted racism there but I also think at that point he was so angry that he was just saying the worst things possible because he knew it would sting.

[lankyguy95]

This isn't a heckler per se but I respect how the comic here treated this woman. He almost fell into the trap of responding with cheap shock humour but he restrained himself and was respectful to her whilst managing to alleviate the tension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8XhzG_rAg&ab_channel=GregStone

[selectivememory]

Well, yeah... evidently.  It baffles me how you can watch that clip and come away from it with an interpretation of 'doing a bit'.  The man was clearly fuming and bellowing unfiltered, deep-rooted racial hatred.  "50 years ago, we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass" is a reference to KKK lynchings, not an absurdist piece of comedic whimsy.

Yes. Was about to say the same thing. The "fork up the ass" bit is probably the most disturbing (and revealing) part of the entire rant.

I do think he tries to style it out when he realises just how much he's fucked up. "You see there's still those words..." But he realises he doesn't actually have a point to make and slinks off stage.

[Retinend]

Maybe I'm too generous, but I feel like you can hear the doubt in his delivery as he persists. I think he immediately seems regretful (for his own ego) even as he digs his own grave deeper. I think the outburst was racist, which he knew, but as a professional comedian he had a belief that he could somehow hide in audacity and ride it out by somehow making it land. Or maybe hes just an old fashioned yeehaw racist.

[St_Eddie]

I think he immediately seems regretful (for his own ego) even as he digs his own grave deeper. I think the outburst was racist, which he knew, but as a professional comedian he had a belief that he could somehow hide in audacity and ride it out by somehow making it land. Or maybe hes just an old fashioned yeehaw racist.

A little from column A, a little from column B.

[Retinend]

This isn't a heckler per se but I respect how the comic here treated this woman. He almost fell into the trap of responding with cheap shock humour but he restrained himself and was respectful to her whilst managing to alleviate the tension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8XhzG_rAg&ab_channel=GregStone

ooh this was a very good example of crowd work - I agree that he was equal parts humane yet still essentially mocking her. Like Lear's fool.

[Utter Shit]

Yeah he dealt with that about as well as could be hoped...although having said that he was helped by the woman being an astonishingly good sport about it. I mean even if you aren't the type to kick off when someone offends you, she would have been well within her rights to make it obvious through body language that she wasn't comfortable with it.

I was a little worried at first when he made a couple of slightly dodgy comments about it, but he really turned it around by cutting her off when she tried to apologise and took the blame for creating the issue and mocked his arrogance in assuming he could deal with whatever she said.

[St_Eddie]

This isn't a heckler per se but I respect how the comic here treated this woman. He almost fell into the trap of responding with cheap shock humour but he restrained himself and was respectful to her whilst managing to alleviate the tension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV8XhzG_rAg&ab_channel=GregStone

He knew how to handle that situation...

[Twonty Gostelow]

I haven't clicked on the Hicks link because I've seen it so many times. It's almost all depressingly unedifying, but I still think male stand-ups even now secretly resent women hecklers more than they do men. Men who've had a bit to drink are being laddish and showing off to their mates, women are drunk out-of-control harpies with no sense of humour. I think Bill Burr has gone that way once or twice.

The ridiculous cross-stage prance that Hicks does is funny though.