Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 37

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
MARK WHITNEY
name in a hat. If you’re lucky, you
can get three minutes, and that’s
the world of stand-up comedy. You get up there, and by the
time you said, “Hello, my name
is Mark,” it’s time to get off the
stage. It’s where comedy goes to
die, and God help you if you kill
during that three minutes because the other comedians will
not talk to you. That’s the kind
of awful, poisonous culture that
exists in the stand-up comedy
clubs in southern California, because they ’re sitting there thinking, “That guy is funny. He’s going
to get the sitcom I’m not going
to get.” It’s like, well you’re not
getting a sitcom and I’m not getting a sitcom, so we’re meant to
be doing this to discover a bigger truth and communicate that
and to have a conversation with
the audience.
I go from that, and one of the
people that had a big influence
on me, who is the opposite of
that, is Curtis Matthews at the
San Francisco Comedy College.
San Francisco has a very different environment than the comedy scene down in San Diego.
San Francisco is all “Kumbayah”
with everybody supporting everybody. It’s very Robin Williams.
It’s intelligent and it’s smart. The
smarter you are, the better, the
more everybody likes it and the
better you do. The people are
patting you on the back. They
understand tha Ё