Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 64

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
DREW CAREY
good that can go right to that point,
get the tension built up really big, as
long as you’re not hurting anybody,
and then you can let it go.
I did a benefit once that was for
some kind of thing. There was a
bunch of handicapped people in
the crowd. There must’ve been
20 dudes in wheelchairs, a bunch
of blind people. Half the crowd
must’ve been handicapped. Nobody was saying a thing, like they
weren’t handicapped. I got up on
stage and said, “You know what’s a
bitch? Like the one day you really
need a handicap spot.”
RM: Did they get it?
DC: I don’t know, they laughed really hard. But you know, somebody
has got to say something.
RM: Right, there’s an elephant
in the room.
DC: Yeah, you’ve got to talk about
the elephant in the room.
RM: When you’re building a joke,
where do you put the most creative effort—into the setup, into
creating a situation? You just
did a great joke in a room full of
handicapped people and everybody is ignoring it. So you’ve already got our energy right now.
DC: Yeah, I’m just…
RM: Having set that up…

DC: The tension is, “Isn’t it a bitch,
the one time you need a handicapped space?” First of all, you
can’t believe people are saying
that. It’s all in one thing, so if you
need to break it down, the tension is that I’m talking about it. If
you see somebody handicapped,
the thing is you just don’t mention
it. The polite thing is to not say a
thing.
I have a friend named Kip Addotta.
He doesn’t do stand-up anymore,
but he was funny. He said, “I think
that when you see a handicap person, you should walk right up to
them and say, ‘What the fuck happened to you?’ You know, totally
don’t ignore it.”
RM: Well, I’ve always thought
that those handicap parking
places should be at the farthest
end of the parking lot possible, because what these people
need is exercise.
DC: Yeah, right?
RM: You’re right up at the door.
I mean, that’s ridiculous. They
need to walk, you know.
DC: The fact that you’re talking
about it is the tension part.
RM: When you’ve got a great
setup, like an audience full of
handicapped people and nobody is talking, don’t you think
you could punch that 15 differ-

Story Magazine // Issue 005

ent ways?
DC: Yeah, I could’ve ruined that
tons of ways.
RM: No, no, not ruined it. Don’t
you think that’s such a hot setup
that once you’ve got that, you
could do a whole routine?
DC: Yeah, you could act it out.
There’s ways to do the joke. For
stand-up, you can tell the joke, act
out the joke. I could’ve told it and
then done a thing, “Excuse me, I
can’t get a parking spot.” Whatever, I can’t think of a thing right
now, but you could definitely act.
There’s a lot of comics that have
that rhythm—they tell the joke and
then they act it out. Or they just
act it out, and some guys just tell
it and you have the vision in your
head.
When I told that joke, I had a vision in my head of 10 handicapped
guys with cars looking for that one
space but having to walk because
the other handicapped guy got
it before they did. Argue about if
you are more handicapped than
I am. Argue over who is the most
handicapped and who deserves
the space more. There’s ways you
can go to get it going.
RM: I’m suggesting that the real
creative act is the setup.
DC: Yeah. The toughest part about
writing the joke, is coming