Maz Jobrani on Comedy

Tell me about your first choice, I’m Dying Up Here by William Knoedelseder.

This is a book about the Comedy Store, which is a famous comedy club in Los Angeles, and the main story revolves around the comedians’ strike that happened in 1979. Some of the comedians weren’t getting paid to perform, because the owner of the club, Mitzi Shore, who is still the owner of the club, saw the Original Room as a place for younger comedians to work out their material and grow, so she didn’t think they should be paid for that. Her theory was that this isn’t considered a professional room, these were young comedians still working on becoming professionals. Also, she wanted people to be free to try stuff out, because with some clubs there was a lot of pressure about who was going to be at the club, which made more inexperienced people nervous.

The problem was that all the comedians were asking for was ten dollars to cover their gas. And she kept saying no, no, no, so the comics went on strike. And some of the comics that were striking were people like Jay Leno and David Letterman. Leno and Letterman were actually part of the group of comics that did get paid because they performed in the Main Room, which was considered a professional room. Still, they went on strike to support the other comics who were not getting paid. So Mitzi ended up giving in. And to this day if you are performing in that room you work for 15 minutes and get 15 dollars. The idea being that it’s a place to work out, not a place to get rich.

You’re a regular there – what’s the atmosphere like these days?

It’s great. The Original Room really maintains that experimental vibe that Mitzi wanted for it. Definitely Tuesday, Wednesday, sometimes Thursday, you feel like, ‘OK, this is where I am going to experiment with my material and try new stuff,’ and on the weekends you tend to go a little more with your regular material. I have been a regular there for 11 years and ever since I became a regular my comedy grew exponentially.

How about your next book, The Comedy Bible by Judy Carter?

I took Judy Carter’s stand-up comedy class when I finally decided to get into stand-up comedy. And this book is more for people who want to do stand-up comedy or maybe someone who is going to be speaking in front of an audience and wants to have some jokes for a business presentation. The main thing I learned was that the secret of stand-up is simple: you need to get on stage as much as possible and write as much as possible. Another thing I learned from this book and her class was that every comedian has a point of view. She says every comedian is either saying, ‘It is hard to…’ or they are saying, ‘I love being…’ and you need to fill in the blanks. And breaking it down like that really helps you to write because you have some kind of structure to follow. So if you want some guidance for this kind of thing it’s not a bad place to start.

When you did your big tour, The Axis of Evil, what kind of reaction did you get to that kind of stand-up, which at the time was new to the States?

Well, the Comedy Store’s owner, Mitzi Shore, actually had put me and a couple of other of the Middle Eastern comedians together, and she called us ‘The Arabian Knights’, and then in 2005 me and a couple of the guys [Ahmed Ahmed and Aron Kader] changed our name to ‘The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour’ and started touring.

At the time it was during the Iraq war and we figured that the people that got it were going to love it and those that didn’t would stay away. It was received very well and it really was a big step for all of us in our careers. It premiered on Comedy Central and then people started putting clips on You Tube and that is when I started getting recognised as Maz Jobrani the comedian.

What about the reaction outside the States?

We took that tour to the Middle East in 2007 and it was amazing. We did five countries with it, 27 shows in 30 days and the rooms were packed. In Jordan the king came to the show. All the audiences understood and got the jokes because, first of all, those attending spoke English very well and secondly, with the internet, they got the references. The world is much smaller nowadays, so if something happened in Los Angeles you could talk about it in Cairo and they would have heard about it. What was interesting to me was if someone had asked when our Comedy Central Special came out, ‘Where do you think you will be performing in a year from now,’ I would say somewhere like Australia, Canada or England – English-speaking countries. I never would have dreamed that we would have been touring the Middle East. I had no idea we would be in places like Kuwait and Dubai, and on top of that we were received so well. It really ignited a whole new movement of comics from that region, which is something I was really pleased about but not something I intended. It just fell into place, which was cool.

Your next book is David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day.

He is a very funny writer.