Q&A: Sean Patton
Sean Patton started doing stand-up at age 22 after dropping
out of college. He honed his skills in the Crescent
City New
York in 2007 “for material” and to Los
Angeles in 2010 “to show it off.” His crude humor has
landed him on Comedy Central, “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” and “Conan.”
Patton’s first comedy album, “Standard Operating Procedure” was released in
2012.
Vita.mn spoke to Patton in anticipation of his two-night
stand at Acme, which he calls “the best club in the country.”
Q: What is the New Orleans
comedy scene like?
A: When I started there
wasn’t much of a comedy scene. You had to be really good to get any sort of
attention. It was a struggle to get people in. Now it’s crazy. The scene flourished.
It’s almost unrecognizable.
Q: Were you able to
support yourself financially doing stand-up?
A: Oh, God, no. If you
find anyone who’s able to support themselves doing stand-up in the first five
years, one of two things are happening: They’re a prodigy and they deserve to
be making money—that’s about 8 to 9 percent of those people. The rest are doing
something wrong. They’re doing some stupid character or performing racist jokes
for the KKK conventions or stealing material. I don’t think there is a harder
craft out there in the performance realm than stand-up. I wasn’t able to
support myself financially until I’d been doing this for almost 9 years.
Q: What kinds of side jobs
did you have?
A: I worked as a
caterer, an over-the-phone car warranties salesman, a barista, a personal
driver, a dog walker, and as a subtitle tech, which meant I manned the machine
that burnt the subtitles on the foreign films.
Q: Your act is very
self-deprecating. Is that exaggerated for entertainment purposes or do you really
think that lowly of yourself?
A: I feel like I’m on an
honest level of self-deprecating where I’m not ashamed of it. The one uniting
fact about human beings is that we are all fundamentally flawed. I find the
beauty in that. We shouldn’t be ashamed of it. We should be reveling in. It’s
who we are.
Q: You also frequently
compare your brain to a bully in your act. How did that concept develop?
A: If you’re creative
in any way, your mind will work against you. In the U.S. ,
we’re taught that success is the most important thing in life; insecurity is a
natural part of that. When you’re younger, you let your brain get the best of
you. You’ll figure out ways to tell yourself no, or tell yourself you’re not
good enough to do that or you should leave the room because everyone hates you.
Is my brain a bully anymore? No, it isn’t. I’ve gotten a handle on it.
Q: If you were to
develop a sitcom for yourself, what would the plot be?
A: I think a lot of
people want to follow that Seinfeld or Louis CK method now of your real life,
fantasized slightly. If I had a show about my life, I would want it to be an
ensemble piece and every character would represent a part of my personality,
and we’re all roommates living in a house we can barely afford. The days we all
get along and are completely compatible and function like a family are
undeniably overshadowed by the days we are dysfunctional, but that’s life.
Q: You don’t often
address dating or relationships in your comedy. Why is that?
A: I feel like that’s a
very touched-upon subject by a lot of comedians and I am striving to find what
is unique about my life. I did date, I have a steady girlfriend now and she’s
wonderful and part of me doesn’t want to bring her into my act yet because
while I’m a very personable person onstage, there are still aspects of my life
that I like to keep private. It’s not that I don’t think that stuff is funny,
but I try to talk about things that the audience maybe hasn’t heard before.
Q: Have you ever been
offended by another’s comedian’s joke?
A: No, but I have heard
jokes that I think are tasteless, or completely fucking rude, or utterly just
for shock value. I feel like the emotion of being offended should be reserved
for real situations [like] if you see a guy yell something awful at a woman or
say something racist on the street. Comedy is an art form and that person is
trying to express themselves. Being offended at a joke doesn’t resolve
anything; it just makes you angry or makes you write a blog about it or tell
the comedian something after the show. But comedians aren’t going to change
because someone’s offended.
Q: What advice would
you give to a young comic given how saturated the market is?
A: Ask yourself three questions. One: Why are you
doing stand-up? If the answer is to be famous, get a TV show, or make a lot of
money, do something else. The answer should be, “I have something to say and I
want people to laugh at my message.”
The second question is: How long are you willing to do it
for before you become a success? If the answer is any amount of years? Wrong
answer. You should say “The rest of my life.” It’s a different game now. It’s
not like the ‘80s and ‘90s where you do one TV show and you’re big. You have to
gain success like badges of merit and wear them on a jacket and eventually look
back and realize you’re doing it. It’s a life choice.
The third question is: Are you actually funny? Anyone can
make a joke or make people laugh. Anyone can do something athletic, but that
doesn’t make them an athlete. A lot of comedians—and I’m making air quotes when
I say comedians—try to be hyper-political or talk about how awful racism is.
People think they can get onstage and regurgitate popular opinion and get
applause and they’re a comedian. That’s not what a comic does. A comedian gets
onstage, takes popular opinion, turns out a flaw, and then the positive angle
of it, and in doing that, makes you laugh.
The biggest piece of advice is hunker down and just do it. The
only thing that matters is how good you are at comedy and the only way to be
good at it is just keep doing it.
Originally published on Vita.mn in June 2014.
Originally published on Vita.mn in June 2014.
