This was not a, what you would consider a TV friendly set.
Yeah, I would agree with you there.
I'm not a TV friendly person on average. (laughs)
You've got racism, homophobia,
sexual assault, imperialism,
critiquing your founding fathers,
attacking the Disney corporation (laughs)
And then he tags these three genocides.
They didn't bring that up.
(upbeat music)
[JP] A lot of work
goes into a short late night stand-up set.
Join me, JP Buck as I spotlight the comedians
who came up with some of my favorite point sets.
This is, "The Set Up".
Please welcome the very funny Solomon Georgio.
(upbeat music)
Usually I have a story of like
the first time I saw this comedian,
and I don't really have that for you because for me,
it was the first time I heard the reaction to this comedian.
Let's tell the story from the beginning JP,
you were in the bathroom while I was on stage.
Back up a step, let's back it up a step.
So, the meltdown County, meltdown comics was a comedy,
it was a was a comic book store
that Kumail Nanjiani and Jonah Ray
used to host a show every Wednesday
in the back storage room,
and it became the best comedy night in Los Angeles.
And it ran like that for number of years.
Yes.
Whatever I had seen, I was like,
I was going to take a break,
and so I stepped out to use the restroom,
and as it wasn't even 10 seconds after I closed the door
behind me that the audience lost it.
And I just thought I've got to get back out there
and see what the heck is going on.
And I come out and it's you destroying onstage.
I got off the stage and I think I went to the bathroom,
came back and Emily Gordon,
who also one of the producers of the show at the time,
she was like, Hey Solomon, by the way,
the booker from Conan was here,
I'm like, uh-huh..
and he asked me for your email.
And she asked me if that was okay,
I was like, oh yeah,
am I going to be the first I'm going to be that comic
that's like, sorry, who try to talk to you?
The booker for what show? (JP laughs)
Because I was like, eight, nine years in and it wasn't easy,
and like I was like barely making any money,
and like that, that's the thing is like,
as a comic, there's a lot of ability
to being as a black gay comic at that time,
specifically, like I wasn't being featured for anybody.
I was getting college shows and they were very sporadic,
but I was like, I'm like nine years, almost 10 years in.
You just kind of get in your own head about whether or not
you should be doing this.
And especially if you're working as a server
with a college degree, and you're like,
what am I doing with my life?
And this was just a quintessential moment
that made me understand that I am doing the right thing.
I'm good at what I'm doing,
and I don't have to be a server forever. (chuckles)
(audience cheering)
Thank you.
Hey everybody.
(clapping continues)
I'll give you a moment to adjust.
That was me going, "Holy, this is going-
this is happening right now."
(JP laughs)
Like that walk from the green room to the curtain,
I feel should be at least 20 minutes long of like people
in my life coming to me and letting me know
it's going to be okay,
but it's all a 10 seconds (laughs)
It is.
(JP laughs)
Me running out was like,
feels like I look prepared,
but it was more along the lines of like,
I'll give you a moment, which is like,
Oh, give me a second. I think I'm going to die (chuckles)
My name is Solomon Georgio. That is my real name.
It's a very beautiful name for a very beautiful man.
(audience laughs)
My last name Gorgio is Italian, I am Ethiopian.
(audience laughs)
Some people wonder
how does an African get a European last name?
Well, (audience laughing)
it's a lot like a fairytale,
except in this fairytale,
there happens to be an Italian army occupation,
a brutal civil war,
a few decades of famine and no happy endings.
(audience laughing)
But my first name-
Can you hear that right there?
Yes. It's my favorite part of it (laughing)
It is Andy's laugh.
Did you hear that when you were on stage
actually performing?
I turned to him, I think,
cause specifically,
I heard a groan in the audience,
that was the boost of confidence I got
for the rest of the set was Andy's
approving laughter where I was like, all right,
I guess yeah.
Cause it is-
Yeah, that joke, it is definitely a hit or miss sometimes.
It hit more than a miss,
but when people were just like..
right off the top,
you're already getting into (indistinct).
(chuckles)
(upbeat music)
I recently watched the Disney animated feature Pocahontas,
because I'm a grown man and no one can stop me
from doing whatever I want.
(audience laughing)
However, I feel that movie should come
with a written apology.
Firstly, the native Americans as a people
have some of the worst genocide in human history.
Some may say, "Hey Solomon, what about the Holocaust?"
And I wouldn't take that away from anyone,
the Holocaust was a terrible, terrible tragedy.
However, I have seen 10 or more Jewish people
in the same room.
(audience laughing)
I haven't seen tentative Americans in my life.
(audience laughing and clapping)
You're threading a needle there.
Yes.
When you're basically trying to qualify the difference
and quantify there between both multiple holocausts here.
I think for me there was sort of like
a need of comprehension of the weight
of what happened in this country.
Sometimes I feel like whenever
we talk about native Americans or in general,
whatever happens in this country,
we always find a way, some say it's worse than other places,
and I'm like, no, it's not worse than other places.
It is just as bad here.
And I don't, I never expected to do it with comedy,
but it's also, yeah,
it's always very weird to me whenever anyone
talks about what goes on in this country historically
as if it's always just like a less,
less than aspect, and I kind of-
I do like talking about American history
in that way of like,
we should be deeply ashamed of this. (laughs)
I definitely want the joke to exist,
but I also want a better joke
to have nice little layer of like,
you should not be happy this ever happened.
There's a national reckoning of history
and what, you know,
how white people have been benefited
from the persecution of a lot of others
and I think that's, you were in.
This has been going on for a long time,
but just to see you in a short five minutes said
being able to sort of hold up a mirror and say like,
and the jokes have a way of being a little bit silly
at times and you tag your joke,
there's a tag in here,
but it comes after the applause break.
So you didn't even need it,
but yet it's still so great that you had that built in.
Yeah, I can't help it.
Sometimes I'm too strict on the writing.
(audience clapping)
I used to live right her.
I know what I'm saying,
sometimes there's always just a lot for people,
so I kind of have to be like, well,
here's a nice little down (indistinct),
be it's- I kind of had to lift the weight a little bit.
I can't just have people walking out morose
every time I do a bit.
Secondly, Pocahontas was a real person
in this nation's history.
She looked nothing like the Disney character
because she was hella busy being 12.
(audience laughing)
She was sold to John Smith and his men,
suffered years of sexual assault,
witnessed the death of most of her tribe
and then shipped off to England
to die young death due to the smallpox.
Now someone at the Disney corporation
caught wind of this tale.
(audience laughing)
A complete 180,
like you're going down such a dark road
and yet so quickly turn and run around.
Probably like the most benefit I've ever had
doing comedy ever was doing it.
There was like an understanding of where people can be,
go away and not be okay with you doing a bit,
and where you have to be a certain amount of silly
and a certain amount of serious,
and it's-
This joke has benefited me the remainder of my career sense,
cause it's the best conversation I ever had
of my salad coffee.
And they thought, "Hey,
how do we make this family friendly?"
(audience laughing)
"I got it,
get rid of that part where white people look bad
cause that is just gross."
(audience laughing)
"Then we'll throw in some singing,
some dancing and a raccoon, huh."
(audience laughing and clapping)
I apologize the only impersonation I can do
is a blacker voice.
(audience laughing)
Another moment where you're just being a little silly.
Yes. But also that moment is because of you.
I've never really listened to myself,
I never listen to recorded versions of myself,
and because of the recordings that I sent to you,
I would have to listen to this impersonation
of this fake self like, (JB laughs)
each person and I'm like, why is,
why do you sound blacker at this moment?
And I'm like, oh, that's cause the only voice
that I ever, ever attempted to impersonate,
and it's like, oh yeah,
that's that's all I got. I don't really have-
(JP laughing)
And then I realized, oh yeah,
my speaking voice is the whiter voice,
I forgot that. (both laughing)
Let's not forget the fact that I forgot my own joke
halfway through.
My cue cards are right in front of me,
with my actual joke to tell me what I'm going to say.
And for some weird reason,
there's a point in time during my set,
where I realized the exact, exactly what I was doing,
which is like,
oh, you're performing in front of these people
and it's gonna be on national TV,
and then my joke literally just evaporated.
It didn't matter what was in front of me,
then there was like-
You're not the only one,
it's happened.
It's happened a handful of times.
That's why I'm always going to be so grateful
to that kind of audience
because the immediate need to make me feel good
when I said, I forgot my own joke.
And like that was-
That was missing an applause break from there,
cause it was an audience applauding me
to remember my own joke instead of being like,
"Hey you idiot. Why did you forget?"
And it was like, no, you've got like this.
I'm like, I remember now.
The joy that came out of everybody's face.
What other movies did they have?
This one is about a young African princess named Sally,
who falls in love with a young man named Thomas Jefferson.
stay on board.
(audience laughing)
They get married and she helps him
write the declaration of independence,
with help from a friend,
Roscoe, the singing, frack chicken.
(audience laughing)
Now Tom the dancing watermelon.
Naming the movie "Zero years a slave."
(audience laughing and clapping)
That tag there.
Originally you had,
from what I remember the last time I heard that joke,
I think before we just had to go with it.
You had called-
said the name of the movie was
"That's exactly how it happened, don't you dare debate it."
Which is a mouthful. It proves your point.
However, when did you come up with this alternate title?
Something just clicked during one of the transcripts,
cause also the first time I ever wrote
and looked at my jokes was during this process
and I was like,
yeah it was like a very, like-
that's a heady ending.
It's a great idea, like don't do that.
So I was like, yeah, he was a slave to make sense
cause I had a joke about "12 years a slave" in this journal,
because it's like that's-
And it was like, how did the other slaves
at the time feel about this?
It was just like that's-
And yeah. So I was very much like, yeah,
it's like zero just makes the most amount of sense
to throw right here because it's a disregard
for how long they were actually slaves,
which was none of the years.
(audience applauding)
Great job.
That was terrific, you have great material.
Thank you.
This very moment right here,
this is the moment where you finally get to see
my body say you don't have to go to the bathroom anymore.
(both laugh)
It was the most orgasmic feeling in the world,
because I had-
your whole body gets so tense with nerves
and then all at once, every single nerve disappears,
you have an audience that loves you and you have your hero
coming up to you at the same time,
and it's just-
I wish people can understand the level of joy
you can get out of these situations.
It's better than tantric sex of a feeling,
like when you're done.
Like it's just, I've never-
There's not enough drugs in the world to relive the how high
and great I felt at this very moment.
So I'm going to be happy to have gotten to do it,
and if I will do it again and I also don't recommend it,
but I also recommend it highly.