Roasted GOAT

Salva135

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Tom Brady is a VERY public figure, with a strong PR department. You cant go ten days without seeing him at an event or in an ad or commenting about something. Tiger Woods is a very private person, and folks like that won’t ever do a roast.
My point was that Tiger has some REAL demons that would make for epic roast material. But you're right, he'd never do it and I can't see a lot of the other iconic sports superstars doing it. This kind of stuff is really meant for comics. I'm still surprised Brady is walking a lot of this back, though. I get he's still trying to feel his way around a post-playing career, but this seemed an avoidable miscalculation if it really ended up being that way in his eyes.
 

Salva135

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The follow-ups to this show might actually be even better:

Bledsoe on Edelman's podcast the next day is something I could listen to forever and play myself to sleep:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pNsIqr_6m0

Drew: "When I got drafted, I told Kraft how much I loved skiing, and when I got this second contract there was all this language about getting hurt skiing."

Edelman on Pat's show:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olsia42mqn4

"I'm sitting in Brentwood because Brady fed me the rock. But Bill drafted me. I feel like the kid who has to talk about mom and dad after the divorce."

Julian says if transfer rules existed back in his day he'd have transferred to Oregon.
 
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teddywingman

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It’s fucking nuts that he did this in light of what his kids must think watching it and listening to others comment on it. Forget whatever thought process led him to expose HIMSELF to this ridicule - he decided he DGAF if his kids had to deal with it.
Exactly. I pretty much lost all respect for Tom Brady. He's an egomaniacal wad. And he's fucking stupid.
 
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Eck'sSneakyCheese

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Exactly. I pretty much lost all respect for Tom Brady. He's an egomaniacal wad. And he's fucking stupid.
Lost all respect for the greatest athlete in New England sports history, the greatest QB of all time and likely one of the most prominent figures in the NFL for years to come because he let his ex wife who publicly tried to get him to quit playing and then left him for another man when he didn’t, get made fun of at an event where everything in his life was supposed to be scrutinized, picked apart and insulted. Wow…

Letting his ex be the butt of a few jokes at a ROAST doesn’t crack the top 500 of perceived shitty things an NFL player has done after retirement.

I sincerely hope some of you stop watching football altogether because of this travesty. How dare the NFL let this man be a role model for the sport after such injustice. His poor children now have to cry themselves to sleep on their Versace pillows while they question what mommy was doing with Uncle Joaquim all that time. Had this roast not happened they never would have known that mom and dad had some issues.

Please fucking stop with this bullshit. This thread is becoming a bigger joke than anything Glaser could serve up. It belongs in V&N where I won’t have to look at it.

The dumbest thing Brady did was let his smoking hot supermodel wife engage in a sport in which you writhe on the ground and sweatily tangle yourself in your opponent. Shocked, that lead to other things.
 

teddywingman

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Yeah dude. I don't watch the NFL and haven't for about 8 years.

His kids didn't need this as part of their lives no matter how rich they are. No matter what pillows they can rest on.

Tom Brady is a fucking moron. And yes, also the greatest quarterback of all time.
 

johnmd20

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Yeah dude. I don't watch the NFL and haven't for about 8 years.

His kids didn't need this as part of their lives no matter how rich they are. No matter what pillows they can rest on.

Tom Brady is a fucking moron. And yes, also the greatest quarterback of all time.
So you are not the target audience for any of this and are predisposed to hate anything involving the NFL. And you hated something involving the NFL. Surprising, tbh.
 

Eck'sSneakyCheese

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Yeah, he never should have let her do that.
Exactly, because he owns her as a part of the misogynistic rules implied in the unwritten laws of marriage…

Apologies for not putting it in better terms.

It was unintelligent of him to not show more concern over his unhappy wife being taught to grapple by a fit Brazilian man.

Better?
 

dirtynine

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Since Tom Brady himself has expressed regret, maybe he’s also lost some respect for himself. That’s a healthy thing. I’m sure it will come back.
 

cornwalls@6

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Lost all respect for the greatest athlete in New England sports history, the greatest QB of all time and likely one of the most prominent figures in the NFL for years to come because he let his ex wife who publicly tried to get him to quit playing and then left him for another man when he didn’t, get made fun of at an event where everything in his life was supposed to be scrutinized, picked apart and insulted. Wow…

Letting his ex be the butt of a few jokes at a ROAST doesn’t crack the top 500 of perceived shitty things an NFL player has done after retirement.

I sincerely hope some of you stop watching football altogether because of this travesty. How dare the NFL let this man be a role model for the sport after such injustice. His poor children now have to cry themselves to sleep on their Versace pillows while they question what mommy was doing with Uncle Joaquim all that time. Had this roast not happened they never would have known that mom and dad had some issues.

Please fucking stop with this bullshit. This thread is becoming a bigger joke than anything Glaser could serve up. It belongs in V&N where I won’t have to look at it.

The dumbest thing Brady did was let his smoking hot supermodel wife engage in a sport in which you writhe on the ground and sweatily tangle yourself in your opponent. Shocked, that lead to other things.
Laundry is a powerful drug .
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

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My guess is that Brady agreed to do it for exactly the reasons we think he did — money, and because of the powerful pull of the spotlight for retiring great athletes.

I would also guess that he went into thinking he was a good sport who could handle it and so those things made it worth it to him. But he probably did not really understand that when you get roasted, people adjacent to you can be collateral damage. Or if he understood it, it was abstract. Whereas it was real the morning after.

Which probably makes him different from exactly zero percent of all roast victims. Unless they are super desperate for money or a career pick me up, I would think if most roastees truly understood, like it was the morning after, who would take shrapnel and how it would play out, they would probably have thought differently about signing up for it. It is a wonder they get them to sign up in the first place. They must play on your vanity.

All of which is to say that it is easy after the fact to cast Brady as a narcissist who put his vanity above the interest of the people in his life that didn’t sign up for it and for which it was possibly hurtful or uncomfortable. But I just don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate to judge this stuff in hindsight. It doesn’t tell us what was really in their hearts or minds at the time they thought it was a good idea.

We may have to contend with some “I’m ready for my closeup” moments from Tom as the spotlights move to others, but it is also easy to overreact a little.
 

Traut

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Brady is an interesting cat for sure.

Certainly the GOAT. And there’s a Jeter level of Nike corporate polish applied to his image coupled with some eccentricities.

I think part of this is just how fast pretty much every player gets forgotten. In sports card markets values start going down for most players 3 or so years after retirement. Money moves to guys like Mahomes or Stroud.

There will always be a market for Brady in all things but that will shift from Uggs to reverse mortgages. He has already hawked supplements.

He will always be able to do things like Dunkin commercials in New England.

But I’m always amazed when I sign up for some legal conference and Joe Montana is there speaking and signing.

Like Brady, I can’t imagine Montana needs the money.

But I think the relevance is more of the draw as he tries to find himself post playing days.

He’s also kind of an awkward dude who became a cool kid. I remember in what must have been the summer of 2001 listening to Brady filling in for Bledsoe on WEEI. They asked him about dating or what he did for fun and his response was he did what a lot of do which is look at porn online. He didn’t say porn but it was what he meant.
 

BigSoxFan

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My guess is that Brady agreed to do it for exactly the reasons we think he did — money, and because of the powerful pull of the spotlight for retiring great athletes.

I would also guess that he went into thinking he was a good sport who could handle it and so those things made it worth it to him. But he probably did not really understand that when you get roasted, people adjacent to you can be collateral damage. Or if he understood it, it was abstract. Whereas it was real the morning after.

Which probably makes him different from exactly zero percent of all roast victims. Unless they are super desperate for money or a career pick me up, I would think if most roastees truly understood, like it was the morning after, who would take shrapnel and how it would play out, they would probably have thought differently about signing up for it. It is a wonder they get them to sign up in the first place. They must play on your vanity.

All of which is to say that it is easy after the fact to cast Brady as a narcissist who put his vanity above the interest of the people in his life that didn’t sign up for it and for which it was possibly hurtful or uncomfortable. But I just don’t think it’s necessarily appropriate to judge this stuff in hindsight. It doesn’t tell us what was really in their hearts or minds at the time they thought it was a good idea.

We may have to contend with some “I’m ready for my closeup” moments from Tom as the spotlights move to others, but it is also easy to overreact a little.
He’s always come off as pretty naive to me. Roasts are pretty much two things: 1) money grabs and 2) vanity plays. The whole point is to give attention to the roastee and that’s obviously what Brady wanted - attention.

Where he probably miscalculated is the collateral damage piece that you mentioned. I bet he underestimated what comics will go after to make a name for themselves.
 

lexrageorge

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While I don't exactly have a ton of empathy for Giselle, it is fair to criticize Brady for putting their kids in an awkward situation. He could have agreed to the roast while nipping any Bridget/Giselle jokes in the bud early on. But that's his cross to bear, and he has at least acknowledged he could have shown better judgment. On the whole, the roast was entertaining and funny, and it didn't really change my opinion of Brady. As noted, non-NFL viewers were not the target audience. And most sports celebrities aren't the kind of people we would want to hang out with on a regular basis anyway, and that's something I made peace with long ago.
 

luckiestman

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What an incredible way to blow a Sunday, arguing about roast humor and if it went to far.
 

Nick Kaufman

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My hot take is that jokes are jokes, some are funnier than others, some more crass than others, some are complete duds and tasteless, some reveal certain painful truths. Either way they should mostly roll off people's backs.

People -including children- are more resilient than the prevailing culture likes to tell us. Brady's children -like the rest of us- will survive and be fine.
 

teddywingman

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So you are not the target audience for any of this and are predisposed to hate anything involving the NFL. And you hated something involving the NFL. Surprising, tbh.
I mean, Brady was a huge part of our lives. I just think he's become very strange.

When the NFL sided with a certain faction of our society, that's when I stopped watching.
 

NortheasternPJ

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I mean, Brady was a huge part of our lives. I just think he's become very strange.

When the NFL sided with a certain faction of our society, that's when I stopped watching.
He’s been strange for a long time. Like since 2008 and he got weirder and weirder. He’s now trying to undo it which isn’t working great.
 

Ralphwiggum

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I thought some of the jokes were pretty cringey, but it’s a roast so whatever. It isn’t my thing and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable telling some of the jokes but that’s just me.

It is weird that apparently he didn’t understand or anticipate that Gisele would end up being the target of some of the jokes. And I do think it is a bad look for him to squash the Kraft stuff but let everything else go. Kraft chose to be there and even told some (IMO awful) jokes, he should have been fair game. Whatever you think of Gisele, and it is my opinion that none of us knows the dynamics of anyone else’s marriage/relationship so who are we to judge, she didn’t sign up for that.

It’s not that huge of a deal overall and ultimately it is between Brady and Gisele. I just thought that aspect of it did not reflect well on Brady.

Edit: to be clear this does not move the needle even a little in terms of how i think of Tom Brady the athlete, by far my favorite athlete of all time.
 
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NoXInNixon

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While I don't exactly have a ton of empathy for Giselle, it is fair to criticize Brady for putting their kids in an awkward situation. He could have agreed to the roast while nipping any Bridget/Giselle jokes in the bud early on. But that's his cross to bear, and he has at least acknowledged he could have shown better judgment. On the whole, the roast was entertaining and funny, and it didn't really change my opinion of Brady. As noted, non-NFL viewers were not the target audience. And most sports celebrities aren't the kind of people we would want to hang out with on a regular basis anyway, and that's something I made peace with long ago.
His kids weren't put in an awkward situation. They already knew their mom cheated on their dad. Everyone already knew their mom cheated on their dad. It's not that big a deal. Among their social circle, I have no doubt that everyone's parents are cheating on each other. Their parents are celebrities. They have to be used to the fact that people say mean things about them all the time.

Brady's apology is just PR at this point. He had to have watched previous roasts. He knew exactly what he was signing up for.
 

Rovin Romine

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The takes here are a bit odd. This is a roast. It followed roast rules.

That said, only a handful of the roasters were actually funny, even in the wide-open no-holds-barred roast format. Mostly because the fallback was tripling down on gay jokes, which don't get funnier the more over the top they get. . .certainly not after the 20th joke. From what I watched Gronk got roasted more than Brady.

They also didn't really go for the gut - the fundamental stupidity of football. The closest they really got was the crypto thing, which is more like individual athletes blowing money. Which is one of the reasons Glaser was better than everyone else - she sent up the "Perfect QB" line in a couple of ways.

So it wasn't really one of the great all time roasts.

I mean, imagine Gilbert Gottfreid or Anthony Jeselnik up there.
 

BigSoxFan

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The takes here are a bit odd. This is a roast. It followed roast rules.

That said, only a handful of the roasters were actually funny, even in the wide-open no-holds-barred roast format. Mostly because the fallback was tripling down on gay jokes, which don't get funnier the more over the top they get. . .certainly not after the 20th joke. From what I watched Gronk got roasted more than Brady.

They also didn't really go for the gut - the fundamental stupidity of football. The closest they really got was the crypto thing, which is more like individual athletes blowing money. Which is one of the reasons Glaser was better than everyone else - she sent up the "Perfect QB" line in a couple of ways.

So it wasn't really one of the great all time roasts.

I mean, imagine Gilbert Gottfreid or Anthony Jeselnik up there.
There are a million reasons why it wouldn’t ever happen but Belichick getting up there and roasting Kraft over his tugging incident would have brought the house down. Brady taking that off the table was a disappointment to me.
 

Curt S Loew

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There are a million reasons why it wouldn’t ever happen but Belichick getting up there and roasting Kraft over his tugging incident would have brought the house down. Brady taking that off the table was a disappointment to me.
This would only happen with AI. And I would definitely watch.
 

Rovin Romine

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There are a million reasons why it wouldn’t ever happen but Belichick getting up there and roasting Kraft over his tugging incident would have brought the house down. Brady taking that off the table was a disappointment to me.
There's no real reason why it shouldn't have happened. . .except this wasn't really a true roast in a sense. It was a Netflix money-maker-thing in roast-format.

I didn't watch the whole thing (mostly guided by the hilights from this thread.)

I mean, if you list the things that you're going to roast Brady over, there's the vanity, the money, the politics (NOT to discuss them here, but anyone's politics are usually a fair topic in a roast), the cheating scandals, the marriage implosion (and media frenzy around it), the diet, the guru thing, the bad finances - crypto and his TB12 thing. His partner/guru guy Guerrero is a fake doctor who claimed he cured AIDS and Parkinson's and cancer with his quack product. How do you not set him on fire for that? But all of the jokes I saw just suggested Guerrero and Brady were a gay couple. (Not that Brady has a very limited skill-set.)

If you want the Pats, there's a lot of other stuff - Gronk, BB, Kraft. Take your pick.

Then there's NE and the patriots fans and football in general. I mean people have been making football, and football player, and football fan jokes forever.

Feels like they left a lot of fruit on the tree. Like I feel you could set up a joke about blinding generational talent, and odd diet, and a unique dress sense, and money, and Bubbles the Chimp and kind of run down into - oh, shit, this is for the wrong roast - or is it?

Meaning this was really just too full of in-jokes. Too full of the same type of joke.

(How did no one bring a totally deflated football up as a prop? )
 

Fishercat

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I think some of this discussion is circling, a little bit, an issue with Netflix roasts (at least the ones we've seen to this point). The Comedy Central roasts were very careful to not let too many "inner work circle" people on to the dais. Netflix is much more willing to put legitimate colleagues up there in volume. This was the big issue with the Jonas Family Roast - most of the roasters were Jonasas or married to Jonases, so it introduces those "industry blindspots". You're not going to get people taking aim at the stupidity and barbarity of football when 60% of the stage's careers are based in it. You also get jokes that are more "in" jokes - I suspect there were a lot of jokes considered homophobic and juvenile now that were were hilarious to a 23 year old Rob Gronkowski that felt okay for them to do as a throwback no one else really got. You compound that by roasting more "of the moment" celebrity types and you don't give time for a lot of the more roastable stuff to come out, settle, and then be made funny again.

To be clear, I thought the roast was hilarious, and while I certainly acknowledge that the gay / homophobic jokes were not good either in content or spirit, I don't have much empathy for the Giselle scenario. That's roast material - the "guest of honor" usually does get some room to veto topics - but it's hard to imagine Brady making Gisele immune and we've seen nothing to suggest that, once she hard he was being roasted, there was engagement from her or her team asking for that. No one seemed to have empathy for other people over the years who were the other parts of these jokes - the babysitters Rob Lowe slept with, Alec Baldwin's children, the ex spouses of numerous roasted parties, etc. Maybe this was "too soon" or that the children were of younger age, but I do think that the crying foul from these parties is a bit...odd.

I suspect the roast would have veered into one folks here would have liked more if there were four more professional comedians with roasting background on stage and four fewer athletes - but it wasn't so we get this weirdness.
 

Garshaparra

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The Comedy Central roasts were 2 hours (~less than 90 minutes aired due to commercials). They cut the bad roasts and roasters most of the time, and occasionally leave in a bad performance because the other roasters make note of how bad the performance was. The GROAT left everything there for the live audience, and came off overstuffed and hit-and-miss.

The biggest thing to come out of this though was the concept that Netflix can, will, air live programming. They're about to take over airing WWE's long-time syndicated Monday Night RAW show. Most people think of streamers as mainly library or mainly live. Netflix wants to do both.
 

Curt S Loew

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Curt S Loew

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Totally understood. The point is that they're promoting the hell out of it with this event, and that's the biggest takeaway. Wild stuff can, and WILL, happen on Netflix live events. It's clever self-promotion. People are talking.
I was only adding to your WWE reference with NFL. Netflix is joining other streamers already doing this.
 

Tony C

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I adore Brady as much as the next guy, but it’s a little clownish to ban jokes about your 80 year old dirtbag billionaire boss - and literally stand up for the first time I’ve ever seen in a roast and nixed a topic - but not do the same for the mother of his kids, whether she cheated or not.

The Gisele stuff is what it is in a vacuum, but in comparison to him bubble wrapping Bob, it’s goofy.
That's kind of my only take on this, too. Brady is the GOAT, kind of weird, and doesn't seem very smart beyond football smart. I don't particularly care about Giselle or their kids -- they'll be fine -- so no hand-wringing there. But to have stopped the jokes about Kraft, which were totally legit, but to wait until there was a backlash to come up with his "but the kids!" response is lame and just stupid af. Okay, maybe you're too dumb to have realized there'd be jokes about them. But to be outraged in the moment about a happy ending joke targeting a self-important billionaire, but laugh along with the rest until your PR flak told you it was a bad look just shows what an empty moron he is.

Again, I don't really care that he's dumb. He's a great QB and he's smart af on the football field. But in the context of this discussion, that's pretty much all I get out of this except a few chuckles during a generally less than mediocre roast.
 

CarolinaBeerGuy

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Watched the full roast this afternoon. I chuckled a few times, but thought the whole thing was mediocre, at best. I’m not a Patriots fan, so maybe I just don’t care enough about Brady and his bros.

I felt like Hart was fine as emcee. Glaser was good as was Jay. Bert was awful and Tom was barely any better. Schulz was surprisingly decent as was Hinchcliffe. Gronk is awkward and his personality reminds me of Ron from Jersey Shore back in the day (without the rage issues). Edelman is a natural on stage. Peyton too.

Nothing memorable for me. I definitely felt like I wasted 3 hours just for a few cheap laughs. Meh.
 
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twibnotes

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Watched the full roast this afternoon. I chuckled a few times, but thought the whole thing was mediocre, at best. I’m not a Patriots fan, so maybe I just don’t care enough about Brady and his bros.

I felt like Hart was fine as emcee. Glaser was good as was Jay. Bert was awful and Tom was barely any better. Schulz was surprisingly decent as was Hinchcliffe. Gronk is awkward and his personality reminds me of Ron from Jersey Shore back in the day (without the rage issues). Edelman is a natural on stage. Peyton too.

Nothing memorable for me. I definitely felt like I wasted 3 hours just for a few cheap laughs. Meh.
Dumb is the wrong word imo. Maybe boring. Maybe lacking sense of humor…but I don’t think he’s “dumb”
 

Old Fart Tree

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I thought it was fine, overall. Moss was terrible, BB was a little stilted, Glaser was by far the best. The most offputting and surprising thing to me was the sheer volume of jokes where the punchline was effectively “get it? Because you’re GAY.” I know the NFL locker room environment doesn’t necessarily encourage the most progressive thinking and these guys don’t run in the same namby pamby effete liberal circles in which I do, but like… in 2024? We’re still doing straight up gay jokes? It was just a reminder that most of the world is not like San Francisco or Boulder or whatever, and that’s a bit of a bummer tbh. It shouldn’t surprise me but it still did.
 

Garshaparra

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I thought it was fine, overall. Moss was terrible, BB was a little stilted, Glaser was by far the best. The most offputting and surprising thing to me was the sheer volume of jokes where the punchline was effectively “get it? Because you’re GAY.” I know the NFL locker room environment doesn’t necessarily encourage the most progressive thinking and these guys don’t run in the same namby pamby effete liberal circles in which I do, but like… in 2024? We’re still doing straight up gay jokes? It was just a reminder that most of the world is not like San Francisco or Boulder or whatever, and that’s a bit of a bummer tbh. It shouldn’t surprise me but it still did.
Nikki is on a big time promo tour post-roast, soaking up adulation she so righteously deserves. Her biggest point is that she put a ton of work into the roast, probably only doing a quarter of what she wrote, and working out the set in clubs, knowing full well jokes about people you may not know and can't see can't be reasonably tested. Indeed, she found that the general public doesn't like to hear that. They seem to think that most creative activities can just sort of happen spontaneously due to one's hilarious nature. That's enforced by the zillion of standup crowdwork or "heckler gets owned" clips, but for the vast majority of comics, you gotta have an act, and that takes time to write, rehearse and edit.

Edelman was also credited for trying his jokes out via spots at LA comedy clubs as well, which I think really helped him. Comedy isn't just funny. It's work too.
 

AB in DC

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Nikki is on a big time promo tour post-roast, soaking up adulation she so righteously deserves. Her biggest point is that she put a ton of work into the roast, probably only doing a quarter of what she wrote, and working out the set in clubs, knowing full well jokes about people you may not know and can't see can't be reasonably tested. Indeed, she found that the general public doesn't like to hear that. They seem to think that most creative activities can just sort of happen spontaneously due to one's hilarious nature. That's enforced by the zillion of standup crowdwork or "heckler gets owned" clips, but for the vast majority of comics, you gotta have an act, and that takes time to write, rehearse and edit.
Or improv.
 

BigSoxFan

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Nikki is on a big time promo tour post-roast, soaking up adulation she so righteously deserves. Her biggest point is that she put a ton of work into the roast, probably only doing a quarter of what she wrote, and working out the set in clubs, knowing full well jokes about people you may not know and can't see can't be reasonably tested. Indeed, she found that the general public doesn't like to hear that. They seem to think that most creative activities can just sort of happen spontaneously due to one's hilarious nature. That's enforced by the zillion of standup crowdwork or "heckler gets owned" clips, but for the vast majority of comics, you gotta have an act, and that takes time to write, rehearse and edit.

Edelman was also credited for trying his jokes out via spots at LA comedy clubs as well, which I think really helped him. Comedy isn't just funny. It's work too.
How do you test material for a specific person at clubs? I’m curious about this.
 

Garshaparra

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How do you test material for a specific person at clubs? I’m curious about this.
It's wild - she noted she'd have to say "Ok, do you guys know who Drew Bledsoe is?", and when they inevitably didn't, she had a capsule bio important to the joke ("He was the Pats' QB before Brady, got hurt in a game, and never played for them again!"), threw it out, and then told a few roast jokes. This kind of setup is anathema to good comedy, but she's very skilled, and knew how to tease out the capsules and try to make them easy to understand. Edelman apparently did so at the urging of fellow co-podcaster Sam Morril. Full discussion here: View: https://youtu.be/TOhY3Ew7mwE?si=J2OHPAP4fjuBF2fc&t=1930
 

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Jul 15, 2005
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It's wild - she noted she'd have to say "Ok, do you guys know who Drew Bledsoe is?", and when they inevitably didn't, she had a capsule bio important to the joke ("He was the Pats' QB before Brady, got hurt in a game, and never played for them again!"), threw it out, and then told a few roast jokes. This kind of setup is anathema to good comedy, but she's very skilled, and knew how to tease out the capsules and try to make them easy to understand. Edelman apparently did so at the urging of fellow co-podcaster Sam Morril. Full discussion here: View: https://youtu.be/TOhY3Ew7mwE?si=J2OHPAP4fjuBF2fc&t=1930
Thanks for posting this. Interesting insight into the process.