This Is Stand-Up: Jim Gaffigan on tending to his crops of jokes

Jim Gaffigan is enjoying a stellar year: Performed for an audience awaiting Pope Francis, will perform at Madison Square Garden, too, and in between he and his wife successfully launched a TV Land series, The Jim Gaffigan Show, that’s coming back for season two in 2016.

But as Gaffigan tells Jessica Pilot for her latest installment of “This Is Stand-Up” for The Village Voice, he just wants to keep improving and telling jokes that will make everyone laugh.

“It’s very much like crops. You grow the material, and the material becomes ripe. So when is a joke done? You don’t want it to spoil on the vine. So you harvest it. And then you do a special. And then you start over. Some people start clean slate. There’s a romantic notion of it. You know, there’s something about comedy where there is an aftertaste, where people can like a comedian and they can like the idea of a comedian. That’s why you’ll see these huge comedians, and then they’ll stop selling tickets. Like, people love the idea of the comedian. But if they go there and they’re not substance, and if they’re not – if they’re preaching hatred? Hatred is very short-lived. We all have that friend that is very funny but really nasty, and it comes a point where you just, ‘I can’t.’”

Roll the clip!

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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