Woodward on his new book rage, which looks at president Trumps National and Foreign Policy positions. Watch booktv on cspan2. Hello and welcome to our newsday live in long island looks day event with comedian judy gold, we are excited to have judy with us tonight to talk about her book yes, i can say this. We will give you a picture of it right here. Before we get started, a big thank you to book review and huntington, the official bookseller for our event tonight and as usual, 10 of proceeds from book sales will be donated to the Newsday Charities covid19 covid19 long on the relief fund. To learn more about the fund go to Newsday Charities. Or, the first 50 books purchase will get an autographed copy. She won two daytime emmy awards for her work as a writer and producer on the Rosie Odonnell show. She has had standup specials on hbo, comedy central, and logo and has ton of performance experience and currently host the podcasts kill me now he stop i want to say put your hands together for judy gold but we cant do that, how does that work . What do people say on zoom . They say put your hands together while you are washing them and singing happy birthday. I like that, twice, and stay away from everybody. Exactly i guess they can clamp at home. Thats fine. You can clamp, just dont clap someone elses hands. No two drink minimum here. You want to give a little, whats your elevator pitch for the book . What how do you describe the book when people ask . I dont know how to describe it because people take Different Things from the book, it really is about freedom of speech from the perspective of a comedian. And humor and satire. It really is about, there are so many different chapters about so many Different Things. If you love comedy theres a lot of history and theres a lot of amazing material. People have been telling me, im reading it and im hysterically laughing. I feel like its such a necessary book because we have no sense of humor anymore. Its great to laugh about something. Right and just to not have to feel guilty every time you are laughing. You know what i mean . Every joke is not about you. [laughter] i just think, i dont know, it is an educational book but its a really funny funny book. We talked about this a little bit earlier but its sort of a collection of all these Great Results from history too. You sort of dug through the history books to get shots of different kinds. Was that in your process . Were you thinking you want to showcase all the different kinds of jokes . I think the only way to really prove my point for each chapter, its sort of like a polemic, its an argument and is broken down to chapters and little elements of each argument on why humor is so important. And satire is so important to free speech. Really the only way i could prove my point was saying, here is the evidence, here is the example and one of the main things i wanted to say in the book is, comedians get on stage for one reason, to make you laugh. Thats it. That is our goal the minute we get on stage. When you take an tense context and nuance out of the joke and just decide he or she said that word or i dont like the way she posted that i dont like what he was doing when he was saying that joe. When you dont take the entire bit into consideration. And what the intent, what is it trying to say . You lose out. When someone murders someone and its on trial for homicide, their sentence is based on their intent, thats it yet we dont consider that when we listen to a joke, its ridiculous. Another thing i would love for people to realize is being offended is a choice. You can be offended and its what you do with that. A comedian said something you dont like so many people are like, all right, they should never be able to stand up again. Yet you have a songwriter you love like all right. That was one of my favorite points you make here that if you go to see a concert maybe you dont love this song and you just sit there through the song may be other songs during the concert you enjoy, whereas, when you go to a comedy club you hear one thats really bad or really offends you and then you kind of tune out for the rest of it. a what do you do in that situation . How do you recover from that . Ive been doing it abi feel like the one youve been doing comedy, the more you just know. After a certain point, been in the business a long time, people come to see you so its really your fans to come to see you but when that sort of thing happens for me, i believe its a comedians job to point out the elephant in the room and talk about it. I will say, all right, i cant believe you hated that joke, youre gonna turn on me. Whatevers going on in my head is what i will express to them. It really is such a give and take. Comedian and the audience is like, we get so much from you, you get so much from us and its sort of like a conductor, conducting an orchestra. You have this nice passage in the book about doing a standup set, and florida i think it was. You have a trump it and it doesnt really land and then you have to kind of recover. How do you kind of, whats in your mind and its moments as you are doing that recovery . Are you annoyed at the audience . Is it something in your craft you decide . Thats a good question. I think every comedian gets on stage, we take a risk. There are bits that go either way. You have to decide, when you get on stage and you open, usually you know and you start doing a few jokes, like okay they like this. They are probably not going to like that. You are editing all the time. Its sort of like jazz, jazz improv. I write a lot about this in the book that during this Administration Never before have audiences just hated you because of your political lead. Its never been like that. Used to make fun of every president. No matter what their affiliation, reagan, bush, clinton was like a gold mine for all of us. George w. Bush, everyone, obama, and for some reason we have got to this point where, i needed to write this book, and we are so divided that if you dont think like me politically, eye and a laugh at the rest of your material. Its like we have more in common than we have not in common. Comedy is a unifier. When everyone is in a room laughing together its like, hey, we are in this together. It so powerful. Its weird, thats been the hardest part for a lot of us comedians the vitriol we get if we do a bit about trump. It comes from him. He has no sense of humor, he cant have a comedian at the white house correspondents dinner. He wanted to investigate snl. I write about Lyndon Johnson in the book, the smothers brothers were crucifying him on the smothers brothers show and, you are too young for that. I will just nod along. This was a great show and it was a variety show but it was comedians are social commentators, the show was commenting on social issues. And you write about how it was sort of something that a lot of other comedians took from later, right . Absolutely. Comedians tell the truth. Which is why we are so threatening a lot of the time. The smothers brothers crucified and Lyndon Johnson yet Lyndon Johnsons daughters love the show. When they were canceled one of the smothers brothers were canceled Lyndon Johnson, who had been dealing with, he didnt love what they were talking about, they were doing a lot about the vietnam war and when they were canceled he wrote them a letter and basically said, its not easy being fought for satire but thats part of my job and part of being in this country that where we have free speech and it was my honor, it was my honor to. [multiple speakers] yes. Do you think abgo ahead. Thats where we should be. Its interesting when somebody mocks me but all my comic friends mock me, i think its hilarious, like a badge of honor. It really is. If someone did a bit about me on snl i would be like oh my god i arrived. It would be amazing. What into it . People really take themselves so aband way too, seriously. Right. To go on a less serious note for a second, one of my favorite jokes from the book is the so long joke. Oh my god. Can you give a little bit of that . Give people a sense of some of these jerks. I wish i had it with me. My mother, this isaba sense of jokes. I remember, i dont know if i put this in the book but years ago there was a guy called the dark ahe was literally throwing darts at womens asses in the subway. I remember it was on the alike beware of the dart man. I remember a my mother leaving and message on my answering machine saying judith, where thick clothes [laughter] one time i left my apartment and i went to my Agents Office, i was waiting in the waiting area and i was like, i will call my mother because its free. We had to pay long distance, before you were born mark. [laughter] we are talking on the phone, my elbow hit the phone and we got disconnected and i didnt call her back right away. I forgot to tell her that i was actually at my Agents Office when i was calling her so in her mind she thinks something happened to me in my apartment and then im dead. She calls me up screaming like the whole message is like, where are you im a wreck, im gonna call the neighbor literally at the end she says, so long. Im like, what is that . She think Jeffrey Dahmer is chopping my body up into a million pieces and says, so long, at the end of message. It was so real that i literally was playing this message on stage and became one of my signature bits. I literally would play it because there are some things that you just cant recreate. It proved, i would talk about my mother so much in my act at the end i would play this, it was just the perfect ending. You bring everyone into the family. About the central argument, it seems to be argument seems to be that there is a shamebased culture that many comedians are frustrated with and that viewers shouldnt get angry at comedians for a bad joke or Something Like something that is bad that people feel bad. What i do wonder, you also write that some jokes are bad, that mike about aids. Its not funny like you lay out some very unfunny jokes. Do you think is what we are doing arguing the boundaries of the discourse here . Are we just saying, maybe lets bring it in here, is that whats going on . Maybe i say i dont think they should be done but i dont say you have no right to say them. I really believe you have the right to say whatever but i think the basis of that argument in the book is that if you are going to talk about aids or the holocaust or whatever, kids in cages racism and antisemitism, whatever it is, it has to be funny. You can tackle that issue but you better craft a beautiful joke around it because gratuitously, viewing epitopes or just shock value, you are with no joke attached to it, thats not what we do. Thats not what great comedians do, a great comedian makes you think and laugh at the same time. I write about abim a lesbian, i came out in the mid90s but i came out on stage as a gay parent because i finally have our first son and i was like, every comment talks about their family, im going to talk about my family. I had so much material, before that i was always talking about my mother. I never talk about my partner because it was boring, frankly. Then we have this kid and i was like oh my god this is amazing. There so much material here. Mode no abno pun intended but the things people say to you. Im doing this material and after a few minutes most of the parents in the audience, who were straight, were laughing because its the same stuff. The same stuff they are going to. At one point i used to do a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s because, you know, its interesting how far Lgbtq Community has come, plus, whatever be cd, whatever. Weve come so far and yet you have children and, it was the early 2000s, my kids are like, why cant you get married . It really was ridiculous. I used to do a bit about all the people who are allowed to get married and i cant get married. Eric and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, they are in jail. abjerry sandusky, married more right than i did. Its infuriating. I wrote this book about it i was in houston and a military guy came up to me after the show and was like, we see where you guys want to get married now. It was just like, oh my god, the power of comedy is so amazing. It breaks so many stigmas. When you laugh with someone you like them. Its disarming. I also talk about comedians with disabilities. Its fascinating. You lay out like a long chapter about that history. These comedians would get on stage and talk about their disability in a funny way in a way in which the audience could see how their life is. They want the world through their eyes. And the one had cerebral palsy. Theres a couple, gary jewell who had cerebral palsy. Always wanted to be like carol burnett. She just went on stage and just talked about her cerebral palsy. It broke the stigma. Gary coleman, one of my favorite comics talks about his depression. Theres children of immigrants who talk about what its like to have immigrant parents. Its just amazing the way a joke can trick you into sort of changing your minds. You write about this really interesting too about stereotypes, how stereotypes are used and sometimes miscues and jokes which i think is maybe sort of the heart of the question about whats okay and whats not. Can you talk a little bit about what the role is of stereotypes and humor . First of all, i read about stereotypes and how they did not just come out of thin air. They are from generations and generations of history and our ancestry and thats where it came from. But they do serve a purpose when they are used correctly. I think i use an example in the book of if i describe like an italian guy or a typical italian guy joey soprano, like tony soprano, you would get that vision in your head and when you are on stage and you are a storyteller or joke teller, its just you, its just your words. You need to create an vision in peoples heads and often times if you use a stereotype correctly to tell the story or to inform the audience, it can be acceptable. But it really and that point it has to be funny. You cant just say, use it just to with no joke. Its not the punchline, its like the Building Block may be. Exactly. I used to get in so much abi used to get so much flack from the jewish press because i would talk about my mother all the time. I remember this woman from the jewish daily forward was like, you are promoting stereotypes. And what, im doing my mother, thats exactly what she said and thats exactly how she said it you are sitting in your little apartment on the Upper West Side surrounded by likeminded people and im like in arkansas or alabama talking about my jewish mother. Im introducing people to other kinds of people. On the other side it makes me think of that famous chapelle quote where he said there was that moment he told a joke that was about a racial stereotype and it taught him that a white person was laughing at him and not with him. How did that line get crossed . Are you negotiating that line . I think so. I think when you are doing material, and talk about this with Andrew Dice Clay and theres also the stories about Richard Pryor and George Carlin who really started out as thai, buttondown shirt, suit, i want to say the word proper, not that they were ever improper but, very palatable. Buttoned up. They were doing these jokes and both had epiphanies of like looking in the audience and saying, this is not who i am. Even dice clay who does the most outrageous material, because its outrageous, its funny, it makes you laugh. When he looks in the audience and sees that people are actually believing it or laughing for the wrong reason, he will call you out on it. I think that chapelle, i love Dave Chapelle but i think thats exactly right, when you realize, you are laughing for the wrong reason then you have to make a decision, do i want to do this joke for these people . There arent going to be people who get it for the right reasons but it is so disconcerting when you are on stage and you realize, they are laughing at that because of that. Its upsetting, it really is. Interesting. Thats where intense comes in. Yes. Thats not where the joke is guys. Im going to do a few questions we are getting in, a little crowd work here. This is from david who says, as a standup comedian on long island i faced disgruntled crowns and hecklers, could you share some encounters with hecklers. Have your rent heckled by long island are . Yes ive been heckled by everyone, ive been called every name in the book. Im so used to it. I would really love to know, like, you have to realize that there is hecklers abcomedy is the only just stand up where people come and try to screw you up while you are doing your job. Its like you dont go to your accountant and they are like let me look at your tax return and you are like 52 five dollars interestrate thats not right right. You really need to shut them down. I think the best way to deal with the heckler is to be brutally honest. Ive had every kind of ab everything. Im like, really . You came here abwho are you trying to impress here . A lot of times people are disgruntled because they had a bad day. Or they are on a crappy date. Dont take it out on the comedian, youre the one who decided to come to a comedy club. I say call them out on it. Whats your favorite long island venue to perform at . I love governors. I havent been there in a while. Hello governors i remember in the late 80s you think of long island comedy you think of governors, there was another eastside comedy club in long island years and years and years ago in the mid80s. I love those guys at governors, they are great. This is from claudia who says, whats your best advice for young female comic just starting out . I always say, first of all, its sad that you have to say that you are female so that is, claudia, you are going to hear a lot of crap and, here is the advice a woman comedian gave me when i first started because you deal with so much crap being a woman and stand up. You deal with crap being a woman anywhere but because comedy is you are in a position of power and we are quite power with masculinity in this country. Be true to yourself. Dont ever let anyone tell you what to say or do on stage want to get on stage thats your time, you earned it, its a marathon, not a sprint. Never compare yourself to anyone else. You are going to hear so much misogynistic crap, ignore it. Just right and the only way you can become a great comedienne, this is true for no matter who you are, is to get on stage. There something you get from being on stage that you cannot get from sitting at a computer and writing. You have to be really comfortable up there. The only thing that makes a great comedienne is stage time. I have performed i can even tell you, lunchrooms, college lunchrooms, street fairs, i just performed at the bel air and queens, they have a drivein Movie Theater. They would laugh by flushing their headlights. Im doing car jokes like hey howdy, oh boy, look at the mercedes, its like the jewish show, its ridiculous. Its like im 57 years old and on the back of a flatbed truck, i love seeing stand up. Just be true to yourself, and dont let other people go, thats not funny you shouldnt talk about that you should talk about whatever you want to talk about. Claudias got it. Do you find that comedy is a craft . Is it innate talent . How can someone without talent teach themselves how to be a comic . I dont think you can learn funny. I do think there is a craft part of it. If i think of sort of Jerry Seinfeld or jim gaffigan or carol leifer, who elseb there are people who they craft their material. Its methodical. Interesting. There are other people who get up there, i have notes up there and i will think of a bit or Say Something funny and i will put notes on a card and i work it out on stage. A lot of times abthis is the other thing. Standup comedy when you talk about the craft and you talk about can you learn funny you cant but its the only artform where the audience sees your work in progress. And we need you to inform us, people say, they went over the line, often times i say 99 percent of the time you dont know where the line is until you tell us. Its like a painter will be painting a huge oil painting masterpiece, its attempt of the way down they dont get an audience together and say, here it is, should i put a tree there . What you think of that song over there. The only artform, we need you, you cant vilify us for doing her job and im talking about when you come to comedy or new York Comedy Club when you see comedians working out their material we are putting ourselves out there and trying to write these bits and we need you and needing you doesnt mean you say thats it, you should be canceled. So what happens when someone crosses over the line louis ck did first sets post situation online and that was a whole thing we wrote about. What happens after that line is crossed . Louis crossed the line not on stage i have a chapter called, theres a reason its called an act and bill cosby is the perfect example of that. But i was there the night louis first went on stage at the comedy cellar and it was interesting he had been gone, not doing sets for 10 months and he got back on stage and didnt really talk about it and thats where i think he made a bad decision. Thats what everyone is thinking. You cant get on stage and just think you can go back to being the old louis because everyone has more information about you. And a different opinion about you. So thats going to inform them whether or not something is funny. But i also, he should be able to do standup. Here like you should never work again, why . If he was a writer he could sit and write. He could do standup comic. If you dont want to see him, dont go see him, if your comedy club booker, dont book him. If youre in the audience and he walks by, everyplace will give you your money back. You have to separate the comedian from their act. Talk about coco chanel in the book, coco chanel was embedded with the nazis. Embedded with them yet i go to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and everyone has chanel scarf, chanel purse, chanel shoes, forget it for the comedian. Is it about addressing the elephant in the room . Yes i think the key is, first of all, an elephant in the room is a gift for comedian. It really is. You have an audience thinking the same thing or focusing on the same thing. Interesting. There is no better set up. I talk about paul rubin after he got arrested for, i guess he was at a pornographic Movie Theater and doing what every other person in the pornographic Movie Theater was doing. He got arrested and the first time he got on stage after that, i think it was the mtv music awards. Yes. He walks up to the microphone and hes like, he said Something Like has everyone been . Very matteroffact, very wry. It was just, like comedy breaks the tension. It alleviates tension. Its a coping mechanism. If you are going to banish laughter you should banish it wisely. Interesting. This question from ruth who asks, a thats my mothers name love you ruth. At your mother. [laughter] do you think your abdo think sometimes people are afraid to laugh her fear of embarrassing someone . The more we are comfortable with ourselves and educated we can be comfortable with laughing and knowing what we are laughing at. This whole idea like the whole book came about because vice news on hbo did a piece about college hookers who were telling comedians what they could and could not say on stage at their colleges. I was the opposing viewpoint on that piece. I dont know where this idea that we can never feel uncomfortable came from. That its wrong to feel like we have to protect ourselves from feeling uncomfortable. That there is safe spaces, every say space absafe space has a door that reels, leads to the real world. That is not reality. Like you win a trophy because you broke the record and won the race and you get a trophy for smiling while we did it. Thats ridiculous. We are going to feel offended, we are going to feel heard donna kurt we are going to have all these feelings but we should be okay with that and recognize them and instead of trying to shield ourselves from having any feelings that we deem bad or uncomfortable. As i said, a joke is tension like you are like, you are waiting and then its a release. We have to stop taking ourselves so seriously. In this idea that everything is about you. He was talking about, she wasnt talking about you because we dont even know you. Thats ridiculous. This relates to another question that came in from abraham. I feel like im in the bible [laughter] have you ever felt the need to apologize . For a joke . I guess so, i guess thats the implication. Not just for like shoving someone. I had instances where ive been on stage and i love doing crowd work. For much of my career i did crowd work i would get a lot of material and i love doing crowd work. Its so funny because everyone is like, you do a lot of crowd work and thats not great for tv. Not everyone has crowd work tv, ive been doing crowd work forever. I have gotten myself into like i remember one night i was at the comedy store and there were these three people they were celebrating i said what are you celebrating . One woman said, i have cancer im getting my leg taken off tomorrow, amputated tomorrow and i was like, oh my god. I am so abwow. So i said i guess i should put my foot in my mouth. And they loved it. They loved it. I had one guy wearing sunglasses the whole show but he looked like such a jerk. I was like what is with you . And there was a cane next to him i was like great. Like whats going on you having a Family Reunion . No, our family abfather died last week we are trying to get a laugh. I dont apologize but i try to use it. It turns the situation around. It really does its like i have a couple jokes that are holocaust related that ive had to explain people have said, not no one he was a child of holocaust survivor has ever complained but its other people who dont know, thats terrible you cant laugh at that. When you have no knowledge of something you cant really make jokes about them. But i have had to say, i do that joke i bring up anne frank every night when im on stage. I bring up the holocaust it is what it is. If the idea of intent. Im gonna read this because its very well instructed. This is from tabitha who says, mark, please read this word for word, hello judy, , you are funny wonderful and effortless, thank you for being here, my question is how do you maintain your enthusiasm for life . I read it word for word. Tabitha, wow, i really have to say laughter. I not only love to laugh, my kids we laugh. I have to say my partner and i really a sense of humor. My mother had this would always say if we were laughing we be crying. And that is exactly it. Theres nothing like a good laugh and also learning stuff is so interesting. I would love to have millions of dollars and never have to work again but i cant do that but the fact that i love what i do, i hate to travel i hate all the other stuff but when i get on that stage thats in and to stink and jokes, p comedians think where is the joke all the time. I think my zest for life comes from laughing. We will do one more but thanks again for coming. You are so cute. One thing i love about the book, which by the way here we go, you talk about how great the idea of a home club is. Whats your home club now and what is a home club in the age of coronavirus . A good question because it brings back everything will about the elephant in the room. Like theres not a better time to stand up. We need to laugh so much and we are all in the same boat. There is so much there. My home club is the comedy cellar. When i say home club, i have to tell you, this is sort of what tabitha was asking, i can have a horrible day b b