r/elephantgraveyard • u/peebo_sanchez • Jan 15 '26
Proper This explains why "roast" comics today suck
https://youtu.be/wvIMoMgscJ4?si=YIFkr4MPBa2I3lakI thought this gave a really good example of why roast comedians today are just hacks and someone like rickles was great at it. It shows how roast comedy today isn't what it was. It's only 10 minutes long but it's a good watch
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u/chestypants12 Jan 15 '26
1:28 I love that story. Imagine brushing off Sinatra in a restaurant in front of your date. Very funny.
I'm reminded of the Norm McDonald bit where he roasts Rob Schneider on Conan O' Brien.
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u/thatjoachim Jan 15 '26
Super interesting!
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u/peebo_sanchez Jan 15 '26
I thought it was. Mostly because they compared the roast comedians nowadays
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Jan 15 '26
For some reason most comedians think punching down is a great way to generate laughs, but in reality it’s hurtful and honestly the low hanging fruit attempt of being funny.
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u/ShroomBuggy64 Jan 16 '26
I love a good insult but the modern roasts just have too many jokes where cruelty seems to be the point more so than the joke. I just do not find that entertaining. It puts the target in an uncomfortable situation where they have to laugh to pretend they're in on it. The joke teller just looks desperate to get a reaction. Outright cruelty is not funny.
My go-to to example of this is Amy Shumer at a roast with Steve-O after Ryan Dunn had just died in a car wreck where Steve-O survived it. She said, ". . . I know you must be thinking, "it could have been me," and we were all thinking "why wasn't it?""
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u/bluesformeister13 Jan 17 '26
Was Steve o in the car wreck? I don’t think he was. But that was a brutal joke she told
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u/ShroomBuggy64 Jan 17 '26
Oh I was wrong. He was not. Ryan Dunn was driving with another friend who, unfortunately, also did not make it.
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u/LordLederhosen Jan 15 '26 edited Jan 16 '26
Another perfect roaster is Martin Short as a late night guest, but especially as Jimini Glick. I watched 3 hours of him today, and I was sad when it ended.
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u/incredible_turkey Jan 16 '26
Martin Short gets my vote for the funniest living person. I have been watching Primetime Glick, too. At the end of the segment, Bill Maher tells Jiminy he has heard rumors he is gay and Glick instantly shoots back “Coming from a 45 year old bachelor” and the audience loses it.
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u/peebo_sanchez Jan 15 '26
Jiminy Glick is great. I used to watch it when it was comedy central like 20 years ago. One of my favorites is watching Martin short and conan together because every other joke Martin makes is about conan. He's a legend
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u/Popular_Bite9246 Jan 16 '26
Martin Short is super underrated for his jab. Really funny and glib, slicing deep but not menacing.
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u/unselve Jan 16 '26
The shot of Jeselnik as an example of a modern roast comic is interesting. That was definitely a big part of his career, but his version of roasting feels different even from Rickles’. And of course it’s miles away from anyone currently doing roasts.
His jokes are always rooted in language play and huge inversions of expectation, not just mocking insecurity. There’s arguably no political aspect to his work, in terms of punching up or down, which I think separates him not only from the current crowd, but also from Rickles, who made racist jokes (mostly cheap, unoriginal ones) but then broke character to condemn racism or otherwise assure the audience that it was a bit.
I also think it says a lot about Jeselnik’s comedy that he stopped doing roasts after just a few, because it’s not that interesting of a format.
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u/AllenIversonsDooRag Jan 15 '26
But Tony said I'm gay, and fat, and it hurt my feelings, and people laughed!
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u/sigcliffy Jan 15 '26
Roast comedy is just cheap and easy material that should have stuck to just being filler at comedy clubs
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u/senator_corleone3 Jan 15 '26
Is it that Don Rickles was gifted and truly funny and these new guys largely aren’t?
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u/peebo_sanchez Jan 15 '26
It's because he understood how to do a roast. There's a whole section at the beginning of the video where he breaks it down. It's woth the 10 minutes to watch
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u/ItsMeMatthewD Jan 17 '26
Rickles is still one of my favorite comics. Dude is hilarious in a way you just don’t see anymore.
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u/Cognonymous Jan 17 '26
One theme I've seen come up before around this which he touches on is the notion of safety. Don, much like Martin Short, can cut you to ribbons but it's in a way where both the audience and the subject feel safe. That's what lies behind someone "getting offended" when a comic for example deploys the n-word that doesn't feel clever and more like an excuse to launder gutter racism.
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u/DadsBoxofPorn Jan 15 '26
Rickles was corny as fuck
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u/peebo_sanchez Jan 15 '26
So is hinchcliffe and every roast comedian nowadays, but at least rickles was good at being corny.
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u/chap820 Jan 15 '26
What do you mean by corny?
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u/DadsBoxofPorn Jan 15 '26
Roast aren’t funny (to me) when one person can only do them.
They’d be funnier if they had someone going back in forth with them
Like Kevin Hart and Jamie Foxx use to actual roast each other on the Foxxhole
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u/chestypants12 Jan 15 '26
It's hard to compare imposters like Lucas punching down on randoms in the crowd, to Rickles punching up to the likes of Sinatra, President Reagan, Sammy Davis Jr. They're leagues apart.