Vulture features an interview with Chris Rock, on which he waxes forth on many topics.I don’t especially care what Chris Rock has to say about Ferguson, but I care a lot about his views on stand-up comedy, where he qualifies as an expert, and the disastrous effect unauthorized videos are having on his art.
Rock has walked off the stage in appearances when he couldn’t stop audience members from filming him, and for very good reasons. He doesn’t want untested, half-baked material to get out to the public via YouTube:
“There are a few guys good enough to write a perfect act and get onstage, but everybody else workshops it and workshops it, and it can get real messy. It can get downright offensive. Before everyone had a recording device and was wired like Sammy the Bull, you’d say something that went too far, and you’d go, ‘Oh, I went too far,’ and you would just brush it off. But if you think you don’t have room to make mistakes, it’s going to lead to safer, gooier stand-up. You can’t think the thoughts you want to think if you think you’re being watched.”
On Elahe Izadi’s Syle Blog in the Washington Post site, other comics voiced similar concerns.
Patton Oswalt: “It’s the equivalent, to me, of sitting at a table in a coffee shop or library, writing the first draft of a short story, or screenplay or, were I a musician, song lyrics, and having someone walk by, snap the sheet away from my fingers, snap a pic with their camera, and then say, ‘Hey, I’m a fan of your stuff. I want the new thing you’re working on permanently on my phone now. I’m deciding when it’s ‘done.”
Hannibal Buress, whose joke about rape allegations against Bill Cosby lit the fuse that exploded the icon’s reputation after a video of it went viral: “I was saying that for the 600 people there, not for the Internet….That’s not how you help your career.”
There’s are other aspects of the videos that are unfair. An audience member who is a videographer isn’t an audience member any more. His attention is divided, he’s got multiple objectives, and he’s only half-paying attention. Furthermore, the resulting product is a poor and misleading representation of the act and the comic. Live presentations are usually diminished in videos, because the performer is playing to the audience in front of him, not the camera. The same is true of videotaped versions of live theatrical performances generally. As a director, I hate them. They are never as good as the shows I saw live; they are seldom half as good.
It’s not just rude to video a stand-up routine; its disrespectful, and unfair. The solution is simple: either make people check them at the door, or enforce a policy that pulling one out in the theater will result in an ejection.
“There’s a valid argument that anything said in public is open game for criticism, that you should have to stand by remarks you made before a small audience just as much as remarks you made for, literally, anyone to hear,” writes Izadi. Really? In respect to stand-up routines? I can’t think of one. Any speaker or entertainer should be able to tailor content to a specific audience,without having to edit it so as to ensure approval from everyone else in the world. That “valid argument” quickly slides into an argument for censoring private conversations too.
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Sources: Vulture, Washington Post
Ethics Alarms 
A couple of notes:
Oswalt has an interesting story about a new routine he was trying out on a really good audience one night when he was interrupted by someone who decided to start filming while he was halfway through the thing.
I attended a Star Trek Convention once where Patrick Stewart asked that people not raise their hands while he’s answering someone else’s question because, “It looks like you’re not paying attention”. That was about 20 years ago. I’d never thought of it that way, but he was right.
This should be a slam dunk. For copyright reasons, you also can’t go into a movie or concert and record it. What’s the difference with stand-up comedy?
Not copyrighted. Should be, but isn’t.
PRECISELY. When Patton Oswalt got in hot water for berating a woman who was recording his setup, I believe it was Andy Richter on Twitter who very accurately contextualized what the woman was doing: piracy. He said something to the order of “try that at a Broadway show and see how they react.”
In the same article, Patton Oswalt recalled a heckler who was just trying to get a video where Patton freaked out. That guy got ejected, but had this look on his face like it was exactly what he wanted to happen. Needless to say, people like that should just stay home.
This is why, even though I don’t like Twilight (or the Host, which I did actually read), I sympathized greatly when a draft of Stephenie Meyer’s “Midnight Sun” was leaked. (It’s apparently a version of Twilight from Edward’s perspective, which sounds like a terrible idea, though Edward is psychic, which could make it interesting.)
I don’t like sharing any idea until it’s ready to be seen, and with stand-up comedy, it’s very hard to get a gauge on if something works unless you share it with a crowd. That’s why Rodney Dangerfield would test his material in the midwest or other less prestigious venues. If something didn’t work, I think he’d say, “What, I’m supposed to test the material on The Tonight Show and THEN bring it here to Walla Walla?”
If I ran a comedy club, there would be a wall plainly visible in the lobby with a couple of cell phones nailed to it with a high-powered nail gun. And if anyone started recording, their phone would join the wall.
Hey! There’s a lot of sophisticated people living within driving distance of Walla Walla. 🙂
I once lived within driving distance of Walla Walla. Make of it what you will.
So’d I!! Lived over in Pullman. I’m told the Lewiston Grade has been replaced by an Interstate. Sad, that.
Hey, what a coincidence! I also live within driving distance of Walla Walla. (Though I probably dilute the region’s pool of sophisticated residents.)
When did the Walla Walla Chamber of Commerce hijack this thread???
Even though not legally, how does this just not automatically fail ethics tests because of its parallels to copyrighting?
Abstracted, all this is is un authorized copying of a piece of art, very nearly paralleling piracy.
That’s the basis from which this becomes unethical. It isn’t, however, unethical from the standpoint that it forces the producer (in this case the comedian) from stepping up their game in the market. Which appears the angle used to declare the recordings unethical.
Right conclusion, wrong premises and logic.
“From stepping up their game” should say “into stepping up their game”
This is what I’m thinking. It’s really only unethical to the extent that it is stealing someone else’s work, or at least copying it without permission. The rudeness of staring at your iPhone through an entire performance is a different issue.
As for its effect on the art, that’s ridiculous. Everyone knows a crappy recording is just that: a crappy recording. They’re everywhere, and their existence doesn’t diminish the point of attending a live performance; if anything, it re-emphasizes the necessity of the in-person experience. If it also happens to be a crappy performance, that’s the performer’s fault, not the recorder’s. A comedian that can’t deal with the inherent pitfalls of workshopping material in front of live, paying audiences (even rude or borderline unethical ones) should probably just quit doing stand-up. Or maybe improve his process.
That sounds like we are in agreement then. No?
Ejection is the better choice. You don’t want to be responsible for 600 people’s phones.
Yep. That’s where it gets tough. Some would say that technology changes the ethics and that artists just need to accept that videoing their work is ok. We call those people idiots.
As technology makes it easier to get away with the essential piracy and not get caught, the difficulty lies in stopping it not in accepting it.
As I like to tell people from time to time, there is a major difference between legal and ethical. There’s no copyright on stand-up comedy, but, as you mentioned, taping a performance is as unethical as you get. When a song is written, it is written down, on paper, and copyrighted. Unfortunately, there is no pressing need to try a song out in, with apologies to Alex, Walla Walla (there’s also a major prison in Walla Walla). So, it IS illegal to tape a performance of the song by the writer, or whoever he/she has granted a license to. I see nothing wrong with the phones nailed to the wall, provided it is clear that recording a performance will result in that.