Would you agree that there's not a whole lot of overlap
in the style of comedy that you present
as opposed to what Conan O'Brien presents?
I mean, I think we're exactly the same.
If he ever retires there's just like
this knack (speaker drowned by laughter)
(laughs)
waiting in the wings.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
[Narrator] A lot of work goes into a short,
late night stand upset.
Join me, JP Buck as I spotlight the comedians
who came up with some of my favorite point sets.
This is, The setup.
[ Announcer] Please welcome back to the show.
Very funny, Jena Friedman.
(upbeat music)
Your first said focused on,
I mean, it was sexual assault and took on Nazis.
Yeah.
And I would actually say,
that this one was even tougher to pull off.
This one was a lot tougher to pull off weirdly enough.
Yes.
I think the last one was a little,
it started off a little delicate.
I'm actually half man
(crowd laughing)
on my dad's side.
(crowd laughing)
So,
with this one the subject matters so morbid
and I couldn't even imagine it ever going on late night,
but I think you were like, let's try it.
(upbeat music)
I think as female comics,
it's such like we're all so like what do we wear?
How do we dress?
How do we look cool, but not intimidating.
And how do we look likable but not like schlubby?
All these dumb things that take up space.
My only regret,
I wish I had worn like a pastel color shirt
or just something a little softer.
I feel like wearing black, talking about murder
just like there's a lot.
That hairstyle was so nice.
And she put my hair back.
Cause I had it in just like a ponytail.
And she was like,
don't do this cause it'll look weird.
And the first thing I did just out of nerves, it's so dumb.
I'm sorry I'm talking about that.
But that was what I was thinking about
as I'm like delivering massage and murder.
I'm like, what does my hair look like?
(laughing)
(air whooshing)
Hi it's so nice to be here.
The news is pretty depressing lately.
So to lighten the mood, I've started watching, "True crime."
(crowd laughing)
You've all seen "Making a murder."
If you haven't, it's a documentary
about how a woman's death made so much money for Netflix.
(crowd laughing)
and then the podcasts, Their cereal,
My favorite murder, Missing and Murdered, Up and Vanished,
Wine and Crime, White Wine, True Crime, True Crime Brewery,
True Crime all the time, What the crime, Crime town,
Crime junkie, Cold Case killer
and things to live and die in LA.
Someone knows something, Man in the Window,
Body and the more
(crowds cheering and clapping)
Southern crime, True-Crime, Junk women's solving crime
which I'm actually on pretty cool.
These are just a couple
of this American death doesn't exist yet
but that's gonna be my retirement plan.
How long could you have actually made that joke?
At the time I had like a whole page back front
and back of just different podcasts
and I had done it in different country
I did it in Edinburgh.
And so it just like, the timing is slightly different
and every crowd is slightly different.
So, and then there are some podcasts
like Southern Fried True Crime
which is just a funny phrase.
So it's like, but the timing always was different
depending on the crowd when to get out of it and when not?
But yeah.
I mean, I think I could have done a five minute set.
(laughing)
Which it just goes to prove your point.
(upbeat music)
I didn't realize how obsessed America was
with dead white women in particular,
until it occurred to me
that Ted Bundy has two Netflix specials
and yeah I'm jealous.
I don't know if you've seen the Ted Bundy tapes.
I keep wanting to call them the Ted Bundy mixed tapes
something about the graphic design.
It's just so seventies.
So retro it almost,
it's like they want to make you a nostalgic for an era
when men could just murder women and get away with it
because there was no Google earth.
And then
(crowds laughing)
I tend to do that sometimes where you throw out your line
and then quickly move on
and almost don't allow them to laugh.
Is that something that you do on purpose?
Is that like a conscious decision?
I think being a female in comedy for 15 years
you just can't ever expect the audience
to be rooting for you.
So I think, or maybe just my own personal experience.
I pad it with so many jokes that I just am like,
blah, blah blah. Okay.
Laugh, or don't laugh, I don't care.
I'm like, I'm going, I'm still going.
Like you don't, you know
I never just walk on stage and people will be like
yeah, you know, like it's very different.
It's like defensive comedy.
The scripted movie on Netflix,
starring Zac Efron written and directed by men
where they made the craziest person in that movie.
Carole Ann Boone.
The woman who dated Ted Bundy while he was in prison.
They made Carole look so much crazier
than a man who murdered 30 people.
(crowd laughing)
And I was watching that thinking,
Carole Ann is not crazy.
She's just a woman dating in her thirties.
(crowd laughing and clapping)
Carole Ann's crazy?
Carole Ann's crazy.
Really?
What does that say about all the men outside of prison?
She would have dated, but Ted Bundy was nicer to her.
(crowd laughing)
There's a lot there.
And I really love that.
I just heard my friend Ruth left.
(both laughing)
I see where your focus is.
No, my focus is not in the content
because I sit with the content for so long.
My focus on the content for like six months or however long
it takes you to write this chunk
that when it's time to perform it
the last thing you want you're in autopilot.
Carole Ann care Bear just wanted to meet a guy
who wasn't gonna ghost her after she slept with him.
It's hard to ghost someone from jail.
(crowd laughing)
unless you're Jeff Epstein.
(crowd shouting and cheering)
it's not like he killed himself, you guys.
(crowd laughing)
Backstage before the show,
you still were tinkering with the wording of that joke.
I mean, I wrote that Epstein tag
like five minutes before I went on stage.
Remember I was like, it's funny?
(laughs)
Which I wanna say this is a compliment.
That my favorite thing about this set, is that tag.
It really is.
I mean, the tags are supposed to be disposable
in front of you easily throw away.
And that tag is really for me.
What makes this it's a cherry on top of this set,
(laughing)
I mean, rarely do you wanna get groans from an audience,
But come on. I got to say, that's gotta be pretty.
I think groans are honestly we could get into it,
but I think groans are cooler than laughs.
Because especially when you do club comedy for a long time,
there's a rhythm and a formula to getting laughs.
If you can invoke, invoke, evoke, I don't know.
Another kind of visceral reaction from people.
I love groans.
I'll take a groan cause that means they're still with you.
They're just uncomfortable
which is a good, which is really why I do what I do.
(both laughing)
The docu series was even worse
because there was all this archival footage
of Ted Bundy in the courtroom
with all the police officers and Ted was just killing it.
(crowd laughing)
That's comedian slang for slaughtering.
He murdered in that courtroom,
he basically slayed.
He had all the cops just doubled over in stitches
laughing at not even jokes and the lights were on
and his audience was giving him way more love
than you guys are giving me for this bit.
(audience laughing)
I love that that's pre-planned.
Cause you know what's (indistinct) this.
I know that every audience I did this set for, freaked out
and also this set was like in my hour show,
"Miscarriage of Justice."
And it was like towards the end.
So I had never done this set just cold.
Like you don't know me.
Here or this guy?
The guy never told her.
Ted Bundy were alive today,
He'd be on his third Netflix special.
It would be his apology tour.
(audience laughing)
And he'd be traveling around the country
being like,
'When my friends and I realized it was wrong to kill women,
we found some (Indistinct) about it.'
(audience laughing)
You and I know what news it comes next.
Forgetting the person I'm even teasing lightly.
It is crazy to me all the kind of meet you people
who get apology tours
and I just kind of wanted to tease them about it.
Or I'm just saying what he said, you know,
but with Ted Bundy.
I didn't appreciate how the cops painted Ted Bundy
as a criminal mastermind.
He wasn't a criminal mastermind.
He was white and they weren't looking for him.
(audience laughing and clapping)
I'm not saying cops are racist,
just that maybe cops are as racist as comedians are funny.
(audience laughing)
Not all comedians are funny,
but if someone's like I'm a comedian and you were like,
Oh, you're probably pretty funny.
(audience laughing)
(speaking faintly)
Where you just wait
and you're like, can you just make the connection?
You don't have to do it for you.
(laughing)
They made it.
I mean, it's also crazy to see that joke in this moment.
That's like, ah,
Ted Bundy also not an evil genius.
Here's how I know Ted Bundy wasn't that smart.
He was a Republican politician in Utah
as he started murdering women.
And if he were really ahead of the curve,
he would've just stayed the course of politics,
risen to the top,
and then killed so many more women with his policies.
(laughing)
Picture a version of the movie sliding doors
but Ted Bundy actually made the train
and then his Ted Cruz.
(audience laughing)
Thank you guys so much, have a good night.
(air whooshing)
That whole set was really fun.
because I knew it was material I was really proud of.
It was something that I thought
was like very much in the gut Zeit guy.
So, I'm so glad that we got to do this,
put the set out there at that time,
because now it's almost like a cliche,
but with the sheer crime thing.
But I think that was the perfect moment
to really just talk about it.
I was really impressed how you were able to pull this off.
And I do wanna just thank you again
because both of my late nights sets again
I've been doing standup for about 15 years.
The only time I've really had my late
like my sets on TV are because of you.
And this is what I do performing
to crickets and groans all the time.
And it's become my thing and I have been into it.
But I just wanna thank you so much
because I started in late night as a writer,
and I remember what I could and couldn't get on
just in terms of jokes out of like Letterman's mouth.
And I just never even thought that late night,
doing a five minute set on late night
would even be something I would ever be able to do
with the type of comedy that I do.
So to your credit and not just me,
like all the comics that you book I think are really cool.
And I don't feel out of them in other places.
I mean until they're on your show
and then other people hook into it,
but you do take chances at risks on comedians.
I do get emotional sometimes,
watching comics perform on stage
and seeing how well it can go.
It's the most fun.
And thank you so much for taking a chance on an unknown kid.
(both laughing)