Lewis Black Talks Writers Strike, ពិសេសថ្មី។

Nearly three decades after first making a name for himself in comedy, comedian Lewis Black is not only continuing to make audiences howl with his patented informative rants, he’s also adjusted to the self-promotion age of comedy.

Black, who has over 358,000 followers on Twitter and 156,000 YouTube subscribers, chose to release his latest comedy special, Lewis Black: Tragically, I Need You, on YouTube last month.

The 74-year-old stand up joins many other well-known comics who have chosen to release their specials on YouTube the past couple of years.

Around the time Black rose to fame in the late 90s with his “Back in Black” segments on The Daily Show, with original host Craig Kilborn, he also had a Comedy Central special, followed by an HBO special in the early 2000s. Now, things are different with streaming and how the funny business operates today and Lewis gets that.

“Well, I mean, it’s just a different world. It was really literally, you go through the pandemic and you wake up and it changed the thing,” Lewis told me via Zoom.

Black wanted to maintain ownership of his special, so that didn’t pair well with how streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix acquire comedy specials, according to the longtime comedian who says he owns 99% of what he’s done.

Lewis revealed he wouldn’t have minded receiving a little more interest back from Netflix.

“I’m sitting there going— they’re giving (Dave) Chappelle, rightfully so, Rock… Chris, they got a $40 million contract … I’m all like, ‘What about $300,000? I would cut a deal for $300,000. Could we do that?’” Black said. “And for some reason, Netflix never picked up on me. And at that point, I still had [some recognition] going for me. And I was kind of stunned at that point.

“YouTube, I kind of balked at because I’m going, ‘Are people really going to watch it on YouTube because I don’t.’ I wasn’t a part of the people watching on YouTube. And people do. I mean, I’ve already had a ton of views. But then again, my brain, of course, is they’re lying … And then they go to an advertiser and they pick up a check. I don’t know how it works.”

Lewis’ special is nearing a million views to date, which is nothing to balk at after only a month.

Black didn’t have his unique stand up style coming right out of the gate, like the vast majority of comics, he struggled to find out who he was onstage for a bit.

“I was awful. I was, in part, nervous a bit,” he recalled. “And I would just throw stuff. I didn’t really think I was going to be a comic, so it was throwing stuff at the wall kind of comments, well, let’s try this. I was trying to figure out what to wear… And then does this work? Does that work?

“I had a ton of jokes about my sex life, and that’s really when I started kind of starting to go on stage to try it out because my sex life was really funny and I had these really great stories. And since my generation was essentially— sex was a mystery because they kind of kept it a secret. So it made it funny in the sense of trying to figure stuff out. And that was really where it started was doing that kind of stuff.”

Black began his stand up career opening for folk singers at the Brickskeller in Dupont Circle (Washington, D.C.) and the structure of those shows and his involvement would help him craft his onstage style and persona.

“I’d have two, three sets a night. In the first set, I had some stuff and pretty much had a chunk of material. The second set, I had about two thirds of material. Last set, I had nothing. I had to come up with [something],” Lewis shared. “So I was just going up there and blathering and looking to try to find it. And I’ve always kind of worked— now at least when I start to blather, the blather has a point to it, like I know what I’m going after.”

After Kilborn’s departure from The Daily Show, Black would work and mesh well with the next host, who’d go on to become synonymous with the show, Jon Stewart.

Stewart continues to mop the floor with his opponents in debates, as he did on The Daily Show, as an active voice for first responders and military veterans. Whether it’s governors, members of congress, or defense department personnel, everyone has a rough time with words opposite Stewart, and perhaps they should know better than to square off with the comic and host by now.

So why is it that Jon always gets the best of those in his crosshairs? His intelligence? His sense of humor? In-depth preparation? Lewis used the infamous instance from when Stewart went on CNN’s “Crossfire” and let Tucker Carlson have it in 2004.

“Oh, he’s smarter than most of them. That’s part of it,” Black stated. “He’s smarter than Tucker. Part of it is that he’s not doing it— Tucker is doing it to make money. It’s always been Tucker’s modus operandi. Tucker had some sort of a worldview, and then it just became, ‘If I say this and push the envelope, I’ll make more money.’

“Jon doesn’t come to the table with that. He’s trying to actually make sense of the world and how do we process it, and then knowing certain things, how do we move forward? And the people he’s up against don’t seem to be that interested in it, and he’s a smart prick. He’s a smart little prick.”

After Stewart came Trevor Noah as the third host of The Daily Show. Noah announced he’d be leaving the program in late 2022 and it was revealed that a series of guest hosts would fill in. Black was still a constant on the show with his regular segment now spanning multiple decades.

Lewis was slotted to be a guest host, but the writers strike happened and put the opportunity on hold. As a guild member, he certainly sees the bigger picture.

“I mean, from what I can tell from talking to my friends who continue to work in that field, it looks like it’s going to be longer because [at the time of] that last strike, we were still coming to grips with streaming,” Black said. “Nobody knew what any of this meant.

“And they did what everybody does. You can’t shrink the writers’ room and then make them work harder. … It’s like when they started coming [for] theater, when they started— well, we used to have a 30-piece orchestra, which is what made it spectacular to see a musical. And then it was down to 12, and then it was down to 8, and then you had to pay musicians to sit there. They don’t do anything.

Lewis noted that with things like streaming and AI being the focus of the current strike, residuals and overall payment structure will likely need to change.

“I mean, I have friends who worked on ឈាមខៀវ។. ខ្ញុំ​បាន​ធ្វើ ក្រុម Big Bang ទ្រឹស្តី as an actor. I still get big checks. I mean, not huge, but kind of stunning. I mean, people who really work hard for a living would be shocked,” Black said. “And I did one episode. And so all of that kind of went away with Netflix and Amazon. And then Netflix and Amazon don’t tell you how many people are watching. They’re going to have to come up with some sort of a way to deal with 300,000 people watching it, 500,000 people watch, a million, whatever.

“And it’s worldwide. My friend was on ជនចម្លែកល្អឥតខ្ចោះ, Mark Linn-Baker’s on it. 100 countries. With Netflix, everything’s on in 100 countries. So I think it’s going to be rugged to come up with it. And certainly, it’s going to be tough for them to come up with a time for me to be on The Daily Show and sit and I would be the host.”