Sebastian Maniscalco Unpacks His Love of Amazon Deliveries & Jeff Bezos’ Glow-Up | Anatomy of a Joke - video Dailymotion

Variety

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco shares the process behind creating his special "It Ain’t Right" in his hometown of Chicago, and dives into his fascination with Amazon deliveries and Jeff Bezos’ glow-up.

Transcript

00:00That's generally how some of these jokes start.

00:03I don't go into a room, take out a pencil, and go, Amazon.

00:09Oh, they deliver.

00:10That's not how it happens.

00:11It's kind of happening through life experience.

00:14Who's packing these boxes?

00:17You ever get...

00:18Because no one even knows what they're ordering anymore.

00:21Stuff just comes.

00:22This was my second special filmed in Chicago.

00:31I always like, how do I make an entrance?

00:33Because I just don't want to come out and, hey, how you doing?

00:38You know, it's just like this kind of generic way sometimes comedians come on stage.

00:43I'm on a Vespa.

00:44I think that was kind of just a unique way, kind of a goofy way to start.

00:47It's not a Harley.

00:48That's what we would have seen Motley Crue do.

00:50No, this is me and an Italian scooter.

00:54And believe me, rock stars aren't driving Vespas.

00:56That's not rock star at all.

00:58That's like a clown.

01:02I think Amazon is just sending us shit just to see if we send it back.

01:10My bits generally happen over the course of a long period of time,

01:17especially the ones that are long in length.

01:20So this seed might have been planted, I was trying to think back, possibly eight years ago

01:26when Amazon was coming to my house quite frequently

01:31and me kind of thinking about how Amazon works as a company.

01:36Everybody sees the van pull up, guy gets out, and then generally speaking, you open up the box

01:45and maybe sometimes you're surprised that an item has come this quickly

01:50or how many items come in different boxes.

01:56So let's say you order eight items at once and then they come periodically throughout the week

02:03where generally speaking, you would think, okay, there's a warehouse, somebody's picking out these products.

02:11So I think that's where the seed of kind of like, how does Amazon work as a company?

02:16Because I don't think a lot of people are aware of where these items are coming from

02:20and how the whole process seems to end up on your doorstep.

02:25And this is all happening kind of in the subconscious, just thinking.

02:29I'm not thinking of a bit right now.

02:30I'm just thinking about how things work.

02:33I heard a big bang in the house.

02:36My wife never hears anything in the house.

02:38It was a big bang.

02:39It was like, boom, boom, right?

02:41I go, you hear that?

02:42She goes, no, you think it was the TV?

02:45I said, no, it's on pause.

02:50I actually remember now that we're talking about this.

02:52It happened at the comedy store and the joke was I was watching a movie at 11 o'clock at night

02:59and I got a ring at the doorbell and it was Amazon.

03:03And do they have hours?

03:05Like, I just think it's a little aggressive to be showing up at somebody's house at 11 o'clock.

03:10So I just did that just to open up the show.

03:13And I forgot about it.

03:14And then maybe a month later, I record all my sets and maybe I then listen back to that

03:20and I'm like, okay, that's a cool idea.

03:22Let me see if I could maybe develop that more.

03:25And as time goes on and as life happens, different things start to come into your ecosystem in

03:32regards to Amazon.

03:33Sometimes a beautiful Amazon truck pulls up, says Amazon on this side.

03:38Guy gets out, he's fully decorated in Amazon paraphernalia.

03:43It's generally a guy who's, of course, in the joke, I make him look like he's disheveled or has maybe some mental issues or what have you.

04:01Guy gets out with a yellow traffic vest.

04:04I asked him, I go, you work for Amazon?

04:17He's like, no, I'm a, I'm a, yeah.

04:19As time goes on, you just start to develop the joke in more of a specific way.

04:30So in this particular joke, my wife and I are watching a movie and I hear a loud noise outside.

04:36Now that didn't happen.

04:37I just thought of how do we get into Amazon and do they have hours and it's aggressive?

04:45Oh, okay.

04:45Maybe it's me and my wife watching a movie and then Amazon comes to the door during that.

04:50That's generally how some of these jokes start.

04:54I don't go into a room, take out a pencil and go, Amazon.

04:59Oh, they deliver.

05:01And then that's not how it happens.

05:02It's kind of happening through life experience.

05:04So it's not like you have to remember that in a way you lived it.

05:09So you're just recalling the, the experience.

05:12It would be difficult to remember.

05:13And I do have difficulty remembering, for example, uh, lines in a movie or a TV show where I have

05:20to like memorize the line that I have a problem with, but living in experience and then regurgitating

05:26it on stage in a humorous way with a point of view is, I don't want to say easy, but it's

05:33very natural for me to, to do.

05:35And I record all my sets.

05:37I mean, I got sets from eight years ago that I'll replay before a show to see if there was

05:43something in there that would ignite a memory.

05:46I think a lot of, uh, standup comedy has to do with what you are saying and how confident

05:53you are when you're saying it.

05:55Sometimes a big box shows up.

05:58You open it up.

06:00One dental floss with airbags.

06:04Who packed it?

06:05Audience reaction definitely is a gauge of how well your jokes are doing.

06:13I never do a joke that, that, oh, that's just for me.

06:19You're not laughing, but I think that's funny.

06:22I'm there to make people laugh.

06:23And if they ain't laughing, I ain't doing my job.

06:25That's kind of the way I think about it.

06:26If you do the joke, the way the joke is supposed to be said, and you do it three different times

06:33in three different locations on tour in a different city, you'll just know intuitively

06:38if this joke is something that should be captured or let go.

06:46I got an aquarium the other day.

06:49I'm like, all right.

06:50Somebody must have ordered an aquarium.

06:52I brought it in.

06:54I set it up.

06:55I set it up in the basement.

06:59We had bought a fish tank.

07:00We actually bought it because we have kids.

07:02We actually bought it.

07:03We went and populated it with fish.

07:05I just thought a fish tank would be something so random that you would get.

07:09Yet, did my wife order this?

07:12Sometimes there's a miscommunication in what's coming to the house because I generally don't

07:19tell my wife I ordered eucalyptus spray for the steam shower so I could spray.

07:27If that comes, she would just assume, oh, my husband probably ordered this.

07:33I think it goes vice versa.

07:34When the fish tank supposedly came, I just thought my wife ordered it for our kids, so

07:39I set it up.

07:41The rest of that joke is not true.

07:45I just kind of exaggerated the truth.

07:48My wife comes home.

07:49She's like, why is there an aquarium in the basement?

07:53I go, you didn't order that?

07:56She's like, no.

07:56I said, fuck it.

07:57We'll leave it.

07:58Looks good.

07:58I like it.

08:00Get on Amazon.

08:01Get some fish.

08:02They got fish, right?

08:04We do have a fish tank, but we bought it at Petco, not Amazon.

08:08You ever look at Bezos 30 years ago when this guy came on the scene for the first time?

08:15The guy was a complete nerd.

08:18A nerd.

08:19I think I started calling him Bezos, which was funnier.

08:24I don't know what did I refer to him in the special, Bezos or Bezos.

08:28Actually, I remember saying, this Bezos is amazing, and some of the people didn't even

08:33know who I was talking about.

08:35I saw a video of him.

08:36He was taking people around the office.

08:38He was laughing at this weird laugh he had.

08:47Now, he's like a beautiful man.

08:51He's bald and ripped, and he's in shape.

08:54He's hip now.

08:54So, I just thought the difference in when someone first starts out, and then $400 billion later,

09:03he's basically a new guy, aesthetically.

09:05I thought it was a funny, you know, I'm basically kind of ripping the guy to shreds, and then

09:11I'm giving him a compliment.

09:12So, I've not met Jeff Bezos, but I did a bit on Andrea Bucelli, and he got wind of it

09:21and ended up inviting me to his concert at Madison Square Garden.

09:25So, I don't know.

09:25Who knows?

09:26Once this airs, you know, Jeff might give me a call and yell at me or invite me to his

09:33next birthday party.

09:34I don't know.

09:35Ripped to shreds.

09:37Tanned designer clothes on his super yacht in the Mediterranean, and the boxes keep coming.

09:46What is this guy doing?

09:51The boxes keep coming is said with such arm thrust that I think the first time I did it

10:00was the boxes keep coming.

10:02It was more of a rhythm of the voice.

10:05But then as I started to add my hand in there, I also visualize where this is happening in

10:17my head.

10:18In this particular case, I'm actually visiting, I used to work at UPS.

10:21My job was to roll these boxes out of the semi truck.

10:26When I'm doing that bit, I'm actually visualizing in the truck and seeing the boxes.

10:34You have to be careful about body movement on stage, at least in my opinion, because if

10:38you do it too much, it becomes not as special as if you do it every once in a while.

10:43So I try to pepper it in and I try to be mindful of the way I'm moving my body, how much I'm

10:49moving my body.

10:50It's like if you went out for, if you love oysters and you went out for oysters every

10:53night of the week, you would eventually become sick of it because it's not a treat, you know?

10:57Same thing with the comedy.

10:58I believe if you give them like a head movement or whatnot every once in a while.

11:02If I was doing that throughout the whole interview, you wouldn't laugh.

11:05So every once in a while, if I did that, then you would laugh at it.

11:10So the movement is intended, but it's never really planned.

11:15You know, there's joke writers out there that write clever jokes and they'll, they'll just

11:20say the jokes and in the content in itself, it's just funny.

11:25I don't generally work that way.

11:27I work with, there's a story.

11:29There's a way to tell the story, uh, with body movement and silence.

11:34Also, that's another key, key component to my act is, uh, silence.

11:45Just letting the audience think a little bit, letting them rest.

11:52Sometimes there's a lot of, uh, humor and just silence timing.

11:57These are all things I learned kind of growing up, watching comedians as a young kid, particularly

12:02Johnny Carson, the way he would just make a facial expression and you would kind of know

12:06what he was thinking without even saying anything.

12:08He's eating pasta off the Amalfi coast and I'm getting aquariums.

12:15It's like, no one's talking about the, the, the, the world surrounding delivery.

12:23I haven't even gotten to like the, the food delivery thing yet, but it's like food delivery

12:28comes to your house and the food smells like three different things that were in the car.

12:34So it's like, should all these smells be incorporated with your pizza?

12:38I mean, like, shouldn't there be a, a, a, a standard for delivery drivers?

12:47Like, I don't want to have a slice of pepperoni pizza and smell socks that were in the backseat.

12:57No, I mean, no one's talking about this.

13:01No, everybody's just, okay, yeah, we're eating, but like, where is this coming from?

13:05I go to like, um, Air One, right?

13:08And there is like a cabal of, of Uber Eats drivers, nine guys smoking around tables, waiting

13:19for someone to order wonton soup.

Sebastian Maniscalco Unpacks His Love of Amazon Deliveries & Jeff Bezos’ Glow-Up | Anatomy of a Joke

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