Mathematical laughter

I happened across a rather interesting take on how to compare comedians. You can find the article here. Basically, the article takes a quantifiable approach to comparing the recent standup specials from Louis CK and Dane Cook.

By calculating things like total instances of laughter, laughs per minute, time in between laughs, percentage of time audience spent laughing, etc. CK generally receives better marks by the end of the study.

 When comparing these two comics, audience reaction is not the thing people are usually talking about. In case you’re out of the comedy loop, Cook has been accused by the comedy community of stealing jokes from CK. It’s important to note that these accusations have never come from CK himself.

Naturally, the comedy intellectuals sided with CK and maintained street cred while Cook was co-starring with Jessica Alba in some cinematic abomination called “Good Luck Chuck.”

More to the point, can you analyze these two comics by how often the audience is laughing, or other factors similar to that? While it’s definitely an interesting way to look at things, I don’t think you can make a conclusive judgment off of just these raw numbers alone.

Call me a purist, call me artsy, call me a snob; there is more to laughter than how often and audience does it. The article concedes this, mostly just to reinforce the idea that even in the categories that Cook faired better in didn’t actually make him a better comic than CK.

Along with the graphs and text, the article contains a video of one of the more pathetic five minutes in standup comedy. The video is from Cook’s special “Rough Around The Edges.” This was when Cook could consistently sell out hockey arenas around the country.

I can’t tell what is more embarrassing: the crowd or the comic. Let’s start with the comic.

This clip is a fantastic example of why comedians lost respect for Cook. He goes on his typical four minute rants that don’t really have any punch lines, just details that make people think it’s funny because it’s true, but really it’s just funny because their drunk and they heard something familiar.

The crowd sounds like they don’t know when to laugh, so they just laugh the entire time, and then scream when he says something with a different inflection. This is what comics refer to as a “dumb” crowd.

Now, I try not to be a comedy snob. If you’re making people laugh, you must be doing something right. But, there is just something so wrong about watching Cook get a standing ovation for kneeling on stage, while I watch comics that have been working diligently on their craft for years and not get the kind of breaks someone like Cook has.

Here’s what I’m not going to do. I will not be using the phrase “sell-out” to describe Cook. People want to say that he’s just in it for the money, and that’s why he takes roles in terrible romantic comedies. The fact of the matter is that you don’t know how long success is going to last, it could be gone tomorrow and if the opportunity arises, you need to strike while the iron is hot.

Getting back on point, comedy is not a numbers game. If we were to use these calculations like and judge some of comedy’s legends, Bill Hicks would be an open mic’r. Frequency of laughter does not accurately depict how effective a comedian is being.