Joe DeVito

Today I am interviewing Joe DeVito, a comedian born in New York, NY who has been doing comedy for eight years. To find out more about Joe, please visit his website.

Why did you start doing stand-up comedy?

In the summer of 2001, I was working as a creative director in my corporate job, writing direct mail campaigns and doing a little bit of journalism on the side. Under a fake name I'd been writing a humor column for a porno magazine just to have a creative outlet and toyed with the idea of getting onstage but I was too scared. One night I was cracking my coworkers up telling stories about my family and they
insisted that I give performing a try.

I'd been to a comedy show maybe three times in my life before that, but I'd never thought about doing it myself. I didn't know it was something you could "just decide" to do if you were a normal person. And the very idea of standing on stage made me sick to my stomach.

I took a class through Learning Annex with a friend of mine. I think it was $30 for two classes and then the graduation show, taught by a real-live stand-up comic. I remember sitting in the small room at New York Comedy Club with the instructor and five other people and just dreading it. My stage fright was so bad that I was sweating just sitting there and I had to go to the men's room 3 or 4 times before I went up. So I wrote some stupid jokes based on my job and life, including groaners like "Our company just got bought by Germans; now the sign in the rest room says "employees must wash Hans.' "

When I was a kid, I was a big nerd who didn't like sports and had trouble paying attention in class. A sense of humor was important in my family; I had a crazy uncle who used to kill us at the dinner table and I really looked up to that. I loved Monty Python, the movie Airplane, Marx Brothers, SCTV, all that stuff. By the time I got to high school I wasn't as social incompetent any more and I hung around with a bunch of guys who liked to create scenes in public, record movies and song parodies, clowny stuff like that.

In college, I made a minor name for myself writing for the school newspaper but after school I grew my hair out and focused on playing guitar in some bands. I was still very self-conscious and I'd HATE it when the singer would put the mic in front of my face.

By the night of the grad show I was completely dehydrated and shaking but I got some laughs (some clips of this first set are on my Facebook page) and I liked it enough to give it another try. Then I bombed horribly my second time, made some adjustments and did better then third time, and repeated that pattern for a while. It took me a while to realize you have to get up as often as you can (and not every three weeks) so I started doing open mics, bringer shows, producing shows, swapping spots and all that so I could get onstage whenever I could.

How do you find performing stand-up in New York City compared to other cities and do you have a favorite city to perform in?

I was definitely lucky to start in NYC where you have so many chances to get onstage, meet a million other comics, and see great pros work. I'm biased of course, but I bet 2 years starting here is like your first five years anywhere else.

Plus there are so many different crowds and environments in New York. If you live somewhere where the only option is a big club that has maybe one open mic night a month and road comics on the weekends, you're going to have a very different idea of what stand-up can be.

My two favorite cities outside of NY are Austin, TX and Ann Arbor, MI. They both get crowds that are mixes of hipsters and blue-collar types, and Austin is also a great town for food and music. The Comedy Showcase in Ann Arbor is a great room where I'm really close to the audience; I don't know what exploring the city is like because it's always been too damn cold.

What do you do when you are not doing comedy?

Since I went full-time a few years ago, I don't have a day job competing for my time which is awesome. I like to read, take naps, go to the gym in the middle of the day... pretty much what most retired people do. I try to write often (although I still don't do it every day) and I'm in the process of outlining a new showcase set. Also going through all my piles of old notes, reviewing videos, writing in my notebooks and all that. I haven't been on TV doing stand-up yet this year, so getting something new on the air is a priority. Other than that, just writing, hustling, telling my jokes wherever and whenever I can.