Imperfections, Nuance, and Humanity with comedian Alex Edelman

0:01I like comedians, the good ones. not just because they're funny, but because they are the court jesters of the modern day. They are the ones that seem to have the ability to point out some of the madness, ridiculousness, and most important, some of the nuance that exists in the world. It is because of comedians that we are forced to grapple with some very difficult subjects. So I was excited to sit down with Alex Edelman, who I think is a great comedian, and more important, a great observer of life and nuance in our world. This is a bit of optimism. When did you first debut your show in Edinburgh?

0:422014 was my first solo show. That show was called Millennial, which was before the word became annoying. Before the word was a buzzword, I noticed that I was anecdotally having lots of experiences or seeing lots of my peers go through things that I didn't think was very well represented. And I just thought that people were desperate to sort of categorize millennials as a generational cohort in a way that didn't really make sense. And so I did a show about it. And the British publicist actually was like, people don't know what millennial means. And I was like, well, then I'll call the show that and spend the entire show explaining this generational cohort.

1:21And it was just at the right time. You know John Baldessari? He's a conceptual artist. He says every young artist needs to know three things, which is town is cheap. You have to be possessed, which you can't will. And you have to be in the right place at the right time. And so for all my things that I've done that have worked and I've done some that haven't, I've always been in the right place at the right time. And millennial was like just in the right place at the right time. Do you know the concept of wabi-sabi? Yeah. Okay. So wabi-sabi is beauty in that which is temporary or imperfect. And to me, wabi-sabi is best encapsulated in Japanese ceramics, which are imperfect in every way.

1:58The glaze is imperfect. Very often the pot itself, the cup or the bowl is also imperfect. And I think it is the perfect metaphor for human beings because we are beautiful when we are imperfect. Yes, striving for perfection, sure. But it's the embracing of imperfection, which is Japanese ceramics doesn't attempt to be perfect. It attempts to be itself. But what does that mean, the embracing of imperfection? Like sort of the Bob Ross happy accidents type of thing? That's a good question. I think the embracing of imperfection is the acceptance of insecurity, the acceptance of working on oneself, the acceptance of I'm in a state of constant growth for my whole life.

2:40You know, I'm attracted to people who want to grow. But everybody wants to grow, right? I'm not so sure that's true. I think some people like the idea of it. I think everybody likes the idea of wanting to grow. I'm not sure everybody is doing the work to want to grow. As evidenced by the fact that I can understand a 17 or 18-year-old who's a bad listener. But when you talk to somebody who's in their 40s or 50s or 60s and they're incapable of holding space and learning how to listen after multiple failed relationships and multiple, then I would argue that they're not doing the work. They're not doing the work.

3:13I'm sorry, what? No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm mostly mad at myself for laughing at such an obvious one. But look, someone who's a bad listener in their 40s and 50s, I think it comes down to this question of like, how much will people, can people, should people change? Right? Like, we've all been in relationships with people where we're misaligned in some way, right? And the question is how much can you or should you or will you be able to bring yourself into alignment with another person? Like if you're the partner who says, I'd like you to take up less space or I'd like you to be more conscious of how you take up space.

3:55Those can be the same request but phrased slightly differently, right? And so the question of like whether or not someone in their 30s, 40s, or 50s is a bad listener, you may talk to them and be like, well, this is who I am. this is who I've always been I was raised this way I've always been this way so that's not embracing growth what? that's not embracing growth no but it may be embracing an imperfection and I think at the root of that there's an upbringing for me a sort of modern orthodox Jewish upbringing which is the idea that in Judaism you are in constant pursuit of perfection with the complete and full understanding that you will never get there and so this idea that you have to constantly wrestle with those two things I met a guy recently well actually it was a while ago I met a guy Think of one person when you say someone in their 40s and 50s who's unable to process.

4:43No, no, no. I mean, I'm not going to make an exception of one and make that my whole case. But it's just by way of example. I met a guy who sort of said we were doing sort of personality assessments, and he was one of the actual instructors of this process. And he goes, so, for example, I'm an asshole. And he is, by the way. In my interaction with him, I found him to be an asshole. but because the personality assessment declared that he was an asshole and he'd embraced that he was an asshole simply letting it be at that that we should accept him as an asshole because he accepts himself as an asshole i think is insufficient i think okay the personality assessment says you're an asshole why don't you work on that and your point was if someone just accepts their imperfection is that not sufficient and my answer is no and this guy wasn't saying to us hey look i'm an asshole i'm a recovering asshole i'm trying to get through it sometimes i regress please just point it out and i'll apologize like he wasn't doing any of that he allowed himself to be an asshole and we should just accept him as an i'll give you an analogy i go i meet somebody for the first time and i put out my hand to shake their hand and they lunge towards me they go i'm a hugger as if it's a game of rock paper scissors that hug trump's handshake like i absolutely all handshakers have to have to just accept being hugged because you know hug hug wins and that's that's the same thing here is like i have to just accept him for being being an asshole because he publicly declares it no i would love to see one person like handshake the person like i'm a hugger and you're like well i'm a handshaker well you can't because that makes you an asshole you can't say that's now that's rude that's rude to say well i don't want to hug you i don't even know who you are but i will shake your hand because i think that's polite sorry hugs are reserved for my families and dogs exactly i'm a cat person no No one's perfect.

6:24No. Can I tell you my theory of the difference between cat people and dog people? Dog people wish their dogs were people, and cat people wish they were cats. That's very good. Yeah. But both of them have something in common, which is that they wish their houses were slightly cleaner. My furniture has been absolutely annihilated. It's like having a child, I guess. When I first got the cat, I would rush and cover all the furniture with plastic, And then at some point you just accept the fact that your house is getting – you're just – Wabi-sabi. Yes, wabi-sabi. The catenary of wabi-sabi. The beauty in the claw marks.

7:04I just mean people's imperfections, the idea that you will be wide of the mark is built into Judaism. It is like built into – I don't know why it's coming to Judaism here, but like – You can't help yourself. No, I can. I can. I can. But like – Just out of curiosity, how did you, I mean, most Jewish parents want their kids to be doctors and lawyers. I don't subscribe to that theory. Sometimes whenever anyone asks, what do your parents think of the show? I go, oh, they don't know I'm a comedian. They think I'm a clerk to a justice on the Supreme Court. I was exposed early on to like Mel Brooks, some of the other like comedy greats.

7:42I've always loved the aesthetic of Jewish comedy. I've always had problems with the content. Tell me the difference. I like set up punchline. I like hard funny. I like jokes. I like Seinfeld. Seinfeld's the aesthetic of Jewish comedy. There's some Jewish content in there too. I don't understand what Jewish comedy is. So British comedy comes out of theater. It comes out of a more theatrical background. It's a synthesis of that and sort of the working men's clubs of the north and other things like that. So you're Monty Pythons, you're Black Adders. Exactly. Exactly. And English, you don't laugh out loud.

8:18You don't guffaw. Oh, you say, oh, that's funny. That's very, very clever. That's very clever. That's good. That's very good. That's how I feel about Black Cataract. Very good indeed. That's very good indeed. So American comedy actually used to be a certain thing, which was a sort of frontiersy comedy. Will Rogers was Mark Twain type stuff. Early American humor was very frontiersy. And then it became, the Jews did indeed replace them. They replaced good, hardworking white Americans with sort of Borscht Belt, vaudevillian humor. And so like what we have now, sitcoms, things like that, very Jewish in origin and nature.

8:57But for the most part, America's comedy language is very vaudevillian and very borscht-y and very set up punchline. And so like American comedy, the aesthetic of American comedy, I love jokes. Like jokes really work for me because they produce laughter. And right now I'm interested in producing laughter. With that said, sort of like archetypes of like, do you hear the one about the guy with five penises? His pants fit him like a glove. Like, you know, like I find that stuff to be very hacky and sticky. And so I don't love shtick, but I love the way that jokes are built. I just like a sort of more interesting, more British actually sort of aesthetic talking about what it means to be XYZ as opposed to the XYZ ethnic group.

9:50So I don't do a ton of comedy about Jews. I do a lot of comedy about what it means to be Jewish now. And so I found that that's been much more relatable to black audiences, young audiences. So I don't do a ton of jokes about the differences between Ashkenazi Jews and Sephardi Jews, even though there are many and they are hilarious. That's not my bag. My bag is sort of just like, what does it mean to be alive in America or the world right now? And what are the costs of hiding certain things about ourselves and embracing our imperfection? So I love this sort of woo-woo stuff. I mean, as a consumer of comedy, I've never thought about the origins.

10:31I've never gone into the origins. It's interesting. E.B. White said that comedy is like a frog, which is that you can dissect it, but you kill it in the process. So it's never funny to discuss comedy. Yeah. I like the irony. my show the show I'm doing now has something to do I think is very very very very linked with political correctness but no interview I've ever done has ever identified it as such well I mean but what feeling are you getting that you would say that now like what about your show now a pathological love of nuance I guess yeah yeah and a pathological commitment to understanding that there is a difference between what might be right and what might be effective.

11:13Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the show is about me going to this meeting of white nationalists in Queens. Right. And it's not a thought piece in a sense that, like, I don't like when people take an anecdote and ascribe it to, especially one that's fictionalized, right? It's based on this meeting, but I change things to make the story more compelling and easier to tell. And I'm very skeptical of people being like, well, this is one person's experience, And so this is how white nationalism is or, you know, anti-Semitism is or hate in America is. But like, I do think that a very real takeaway from it is like, how do we talk to each other?

11:50How do we talk about each other? What potential is there to create change in those that we're encountering all the time? So, I mean, you're touching on a subject which is near and dear to my heart, which is the loss of nuance. I mean, we're literally calling it that, you know, and I don't think the loss of nuance is a new thing. I think that the human mind likes things to be neatly organized and preferably binary because it just makes the world easier to understand. You know, we have good and evil. We don't have a third thing. We just have good and evil, right? We have like – and we have these very binary constructions.

12:23Well, there's IHOP. Sorry, no, no, sorry. IHOP is right in the middle where it's like they do the best stuff and they're open so late, but the quality is variable. Sorry, go ahead. There's good and evil in IHOP. But that's a container for both. It's not a third option. You're right. You're right. That's very, wow. Nuance. Yeah, but to take a joke and spin it in a really thoughtful direction, I want to see more lives. It's very good. But it just makes the world easier to understand. And if you look at all the myths and all the archetypes, it's this versus that. And even in sort of drama, there's only three conflicts, right?

13:03There's man versus himself, there's man versus nature, and there's good versus evil, man versus man. That's what we learned. But it's still binary. And so my point being is making the world simple to understand and binary. You know how hard it was for me to not just go ahead. Make a joke. You're like, there's man versus evil. Yeah, man versus himself, man versus man, and man versus nature. So what's Weekend at Bernie's? Oh, yeah. Weekend at Bernie's man versus man, man versus evil. I would say Weekend at Bernie's is probably Manfred's himself. Yeah, of course. But the point being is, so that's not a new construction, right?

13:44It does help us organize the world. But the reality is the world is much more complicated and doesn't fit neatly into two boxes. So the question is, what is it about now that is making our need to make the world binary, to make it easy to understand, so destructive or so aggressive? I mean, we can make the easy argument, and maybe it's true, that social media and the soundbite world we live in. I think victimhood is what's made it. Ah, go on. I mean, it's a thorny subject because victimhood. But that's also not a new thing. People have been victims forever, but we're in the first age of conscious redressing.

14:30Where people for the first time are actually trying to redress people's very well-founded grievances and try to adjust for it. Right? Like we're trying to... All right. Let's just... victimhood is a currency now. Victimhood is a currency. And so people are in constant pursuit of justice for their victimhood. I can't remember who it was, but some, I watched it. On both sides of the political aisle. Not just both sides, every single, every, every. How about this college admissions? College admissions is fascinating to me because it's the only thing that I can think of where literally every group thinks they're victimized.

15:19literally every group people of color white people jews asians men women rich poor everybody thinks they're victimized everybody thinks the deck is stacked against them when the truth is i don't know and the truth is maybe it's different and the truth is it's probably really hard to get into princeton and like i'm just picking a college at random but like it's it's gone to the courts and it's going there again and again, but everyone feels victimized and everyone thinks the system should either be preserved or changed to redress that victimhood. And so how do you live in a world? And if you redress it in one direction, the argument is now you've created new problems that need to be redressed.

16:07A thousand percent. And thus the pendulum swings. The pendulum swings back and forth. And I'm not saying whether or not it's right. I'm just saying it creates a feeling of victimhood that everyone now carries around with them. But that's a very interesting observation, which is, you know, in the past, if you didn't get into something, it was like, oh, well, better luck next time. Where now it's because of something, to your point, which is this idea of everyone's a victim. So how do you create? You realize we're infuriating people who are listening to this because they would argue that two white men talking about victimhood, you know, there are some people who are more victims than others.

16:43I mean, my point is it's so ingrained, this idea that even listening to this conversation is triggering. And by the way, that would be a very valid point. The two white guys who have pretty much every advantage and who have very lovely lives arguing about victimhood. So I'm just trying to figure out then what's the solution? Where does this go? And you're someone who— I'm just saying that the reason we separate people into binaries now or the reason that we like things neatly categorized— The new binary is victimhood. I think everything comes back to victimhood. And is that... So where does this go from here?

17:20The conversation about... This, this, what we're talking about. Yeah. Here's my problem, right? Which is the struggle I have is I find nuance magical. Me too. And I... I mean, to the point where I avoid binary constructions, even I'm against even what are your strengths and weaknesses? Sure. Because it's all contextual, right? Sometimes my strengths are weaknesses and sometimes my weaknesses or strengths depends on the context. And so I love nuance. I mean, my work lives in nuance. And for me, the joy is finding a way to explain nuance in a way that makes sense, that is not gray or ethereal, but sort of like I understand the sinew that holds these two poles together.

18:04I find that magical. But it's a hard case to make. So I think that my show, is a conversation about what it means to be who I am

18:23without victimhood factored into the conversation because I don't feel like a victim. That's the broad appeal of the show. It's not about a Jew who goes to a meeting of white supremacists. It's about there are people who hate me who've never met me. And you asked what the progression is? Yeah. The progression is the ability to acknowledge other people's humanity and pain. And Jonathan Sachs, who was the chief rabbi of the UK, but had huge mass appeal, used to say that the cure for anti-Semitism was to communicate to people the experience of being Jewish. And for me, that has very little to do with victimhood.

18:58It may have to do with a tapestry of grief that goes back eternity. One of the reasons I dislike binaries is because I don't know that looking at a person and seeing a victim based in nothing other than something that is an identity marker or a socioeconomic marker is useful or productive for that person. By the way, that's a strongly felt opinion loosely held. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is just it. What we are doing is having a discussion about a subject that neither of us is sure about. No, I'm not sure. And it's also the thorniest subject of the 20%. And not only are we not sure, there is no answer.

19:38That makes it even more interesting, which is there's no right or wrong in the discussion we're having. We're trying to understand the situation in which we live that we are a part of. And we are watching this thing play out in almost every facet of life. I think that the comedian is still the court jester who can speak the truth to the king where nobody else can. I get skeptical about that because I see a lot of comedians making jokes about their buttholes. So I'm just like, I don't know if you're speaking truth to power here. I didn't say all court jesters. But there is still a role for the comedian in society, the observational comedian.

20:14In the arena of comedy, I think the sides of the sandbox are wider. That's a very good way to put it. That is such a great way to put it because whenever anyone is like, you're the comedians, you're the – Norm MacDonald had a great joke where he used to say, you know, they say comedians are the modern day philosophers. You know who us hate that? Modern day philosophers. because it's perfectly norm because the front half and the back half are the same joke. Right. But I'm skeptical where anyone says comedians are the modern day philosophers but the sandbox of comedy to encapsulate the nuance or hypocrisy of a point.

20:49Yeah. Like I don't think comedians are the modern day philosophers. I don't think that at all. But when there are subversive ideas that exist in our society that remain implicit. This is where conspiracy theories live. This is where sabotage exists. This is where characterizations of the other exist. And I think the only way to subvert implicit racism, implicit bias, implicit anti-Semitism, all these things, is to make them explicit, is to point at it, right? Whether we know the resolution or not comes second. But to be able to at least, like it's the first step of the 12-step program, meaning you have a problem, right?

21:24Which is to point to the thing and say, that exists. Whether you agree with it or disagree that this exists, I need to point it out. And I think very often that's what the broader edges of the sandbox for comedians is you get to point things out and make the implicit explicit. To point out nuance that is hard to understand and say, look at this, this exists. And put it to society, to put it to the audience to say, how you choose to deal with it is up to you, but I'm going to point it out. My job is not to remedy the situation. My job is to point at the situation. And so I think, you know, and I saw your show and I loved your show.

21:58I think the moral of the show is not about anti-Semitism. That's not making the implicit explicit. It's our ability to cartoonize absolutely everybody, including the white supremacist, and to fail to recognize that everybody's a human being struggling. And it's that ability to have empathy for the person that we hate, to see the other as human. That doesn't mean endorse. That doesn't mean approve. But to recognize someone's humanity as the first stage to making peace. Yeah. Well, when I was a young person, I was really lit up by Barack Obama. Yeah. Because to me, there was a moment, there was a small, brief, hopeful window where it seemed like millennial politics, culture, business was headed for a blend of pragmatism and idealism.

22:51he was I think for me representative of a moment in time even though he even though I still have you know like a lot of like he still seems to me like a really pragmatic idealist in a way that makes me I think isn't that oxymoronic no how can you be a pragmatic idealist isn't the whole point of idealism is that it's not necessarily pragmatic I think it's the whole ballgame I think that like I think where the magic lies is in the tension. When you talk about the pragmatic idealist, I don't know if that person exists. It would be nice if they were the president. I think you have the idealist who works alongside the pragmatist who believes in the ideals, and it's the tensions.

23:33And the idealist pulls the pragmatist to think bigger than they've ever thought. And the pragmatist holds back the idealist to make sure that their feet stays on the ground and that it's not just hot air and the stuff is realistic. and the magic happens and the tension. So tell me something you've been involved with professionally. A project, a show, it doesn't matter. Something that you were part of that you absolutely loved being a part of and if everything in your career went like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. Something specific. Okay. Beginning of the pandemic, March 6th rolls around and it becomes clear the world's shutting down.

24:09Go back to my apartment in New York, sit, canceled tour, devastated. no Passover Passover this holiday of liberation and togetherness everyone's confined isolated my friend Benj Pasek calls me Benj is my closest friend in the world and Benj is a songwriter Oscar Grammy Tony winning songwriter he wrote all the music for La La Land Greatest Showman Dear Evan Hansen Benj and I are chatting on the phone and I was like no Seder this year and Benj is like, no Seder. And Benj is like, we should do an online Passover Seder. And I was like, I will a thousand percent do that with you. We got a bunch of people together and there was no ego.

24:55No one was paying anything. And these are really top-notch writers, top-notch talents, top-notch musicians. Everyone was the best in their field. But because of the time that it was in and because no one had anything to do, everyone was being part of this for creative reasons. It was just a YouTube video. We're making a YouTube video. And we got all these people together. And we got all these different celebrities that Benj knew and a few comedy people that I knew. We got like Jason Alexander hosted it. Bette Midler, Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, Tan France from Queer Eye, Dan Levy from Schitt's Creek.

25:28We got so many people, so many talented, talented folks. And we got them all together. We put together this 70-minute YouTube video called Saturday Night Seder. One million people watched it when we live streamed it, and it raised$3.6 million for COVID relief. And also, it was like a really good piece of work. Like we really put a lot of work into the songs. And we got this all done in like two and a half weeks, less. And not a single day has gone by since April 9th, 2020, that I have not spoken to one of the people that I worked with on that show. and Benj has become my closest friend. We've gone to many different countries together in those intervening years and it was just a YouTube video but it reached a lot of people and it was both specifically for Jews and many, many, many, many, many non-Jews, Broadway fans, comedy fans, food fans because there was a big food element to it, like watched it and it was something that made Jewish people feel seen and non-Jews feel entertained and spoken to.

26:38And that was really, it was a beautiful, beautiful creative thing. So you've done some remarkable things in your career. What is it about this one thing that stands out so much that you want to talk about it right now? The creative process. The creative process with all these people. You've had great creative process before. Yeah, but everybody put their egos to one side and there was no promise at the beginning of this that it was going to be good. It was a YouTube video. and all these people donated their time and I got to see really talented people be very I got to see Josh Groban sing on a zoom we had a zoom I was like Josh here are the lyrics can you do you know do it this way and he's like all right I gotta shut off the zoom and I'll record it and send it to the engineer so he sends it to the engineer the engineer calls me with like fear in his voice he's like Alex I need to send you the file right now it's like you need to have a listen before you get back on the zoom and I was like oh Josh messed it up and I called the engineer back I'm like, this is perfect.

27:33And he's like, yeah, it's, I'm a little freaked out. It's perfect. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, no, Alex, I can see the sound waves. Like it's perfect. It looks like it's been like engineered and produced and auto tuned almost. Like he just did it perfectly. And so I was like, well, what should we ask him? Joe, like, well, I'm about to get back on the zoom with him. And he's like, see if he can do it like a little more human. So like Josh, like, I was like, Josh, fuck it up. like fuck it up a little more wabi-sabi a little more wabi-sabi or a little less but Josh like he literally is like to see that level of talent on display just like coming at you and then I was like I want to stay on the Zoom this time just can you open up and so like we watched Josh do it and it's like to watch naked talent happen to watch funny people be funny all these writers were funny and there was nothing there was nothing against the background of it no one's worried about there was no one had contribution anxiety it was pure It was very pure.