Near the end of some of our interviews on The Comics Unseen, we ask one last question: who is on your Mount Rushmore of comedy? Four faces, carved in stone. It sounds like an easy question. It never is. Comedians who had just talked for an hour about their careers suddenly went quiet, bargained for a fifth slot, or, in one case, used a family interruption to buy ten extra minutes of thinking time.
Here are the four lists we got, and why each comedian picked who they picked.
Jump to: Joel, Hot Breath · Leah Knauer · Liz Miele · Simon King · Our own · Who came up most
Joel: Steve Martin, Sinbad, Richard Pryor, Mitch Hedberg
Joel hosts the Hot Breath podcast, and we asked him live on Instagram. His first reaction was to check the rules. “What is that? Is that five? Is that four?” Steve Martin and Sinbad came straight away. The other two took a while, partly because his mother-in-law and daughter walked in halfway through. “I’m just delaying having to answer it,” he admitted.
Steve Martin went first because of when he arrived. Comedy at the time, Joel said, had become serious and political, “and then Steve Martin came in with an arrow through his head and was just silly and people needed just that release.” He was the first comedian to play arenas, and he quit stand-up at the top, after he started to see empty seats.
Richard Pryor made it “because he was so autobiographical and honest on stage.” Mitch Hedberg made it for the one-liners, and because his jokes still work today. “I love one liners,” Joel said.
Since two of his four had passed away, we asked for two living comics as well. He picked Nate Bargatze (“no one’s doing it at his level”), whose tour now holds the world record for tickets sold, and Taylor Tomlinson, because every special is a new chapter rather than a repeat. “You can see her growth as a person. You can see her growth as a comedian in each special.”
“Mount Rushmore, it just holds so much weight, you know.”
Joel, Hot Breath
He even had the running order ready, from a question another host once asked him. Sinbad hosts (“No one does crowd work like Sinbad, no one sets a vibe like Sinbad”), Mitch Hedberg opens, Taylor Tomlinson features, and Steve Martin, at his peak, headlines.
Leah Knauer: Joan Rivers, Amy Schumer, Nikki Glaser, Sebastian Maniscalco
Leah Knauer is a stand-up and impressionist, and her first question was “Is that three people?” Since she also acts, we let her include comedy actors, which turned out to be a mistake. Joan Rivers and Chris Farley came instantly. Then the list exploded: Don Rickles, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, Mitch Hedberg, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams. “Do people always take this long on this question?”
So we narrowed it to stand-ups only. Joan Rivers stayed at the top. Leah does roast humour herself (“When you come to a show, I am roasting you”), and Rivers is the reason. Then Amy Schumer, “because she was a huge inspiration for me when I first started,” and Nikki Glaser, who is “a huge inspiration to me now.”
The last slot came down to Anthony Jeselnik or Sebastian Maniscalco. We pointed out Sebastian had been around longer, and she went with Sebastian Maniscalco, though Jeselnik is “one of my favorites.”
“That was really hard. I’m literally sweating. Don’t do that to me again.”
Leah Knauer
Liz Miele: specials she would carve in stone
With Liz Miele, we asked for a Mount Rushmore of specials rather than comedians. One name was never in doubt. “Oh God, I mean, obviously, Carlin’s on there.” It makes sense: George Carlin phoned her when she was 15.
The rest of her list is full of comics she knows personally. Her friend Adrienne Iapalucci, whose Netflix special is The Dark Queen, has a new one coming called We’re All Not Doing Well. Liz has given her notes on it, watched it five times and saw the taping. “It’s so good.” She added the Canadian, New York-based comic Nathan Macintosh (“he always makes me laugh”), early-2000s Nick Swardson, whom she still quotes, and Greg Giraldo.
“Greg’s the best. I miss Greg.”
Liz Miele
She thinks about all the jokes Giraldo would have written about the last ten years. Then there is Ted Alexandro, who influenced her a lot: “one of the kindest people you’ll ever meet, one of the funniest people you’ll ever meet and all his specials are brilliant.”
Like everyone else, she could not stop at four. Wanda Sykes and Kathleen Madigan got in at the end. “I could go on forever.”
Simon King: four specials, four different styles
Simon King also picked specials, and each one is a long way from his own style. He started with Brian Regan’s I Walked on the Moon, which he listens to with his son. Regan has plenty of great material, he said, but this one is “a masterpiece” from start to finish.
Second was Doug Stanhope’s Beer Hall Putsch, just ahead of No Refunds. The more he rewatches it, the more he sees “the incredible depth and humanity of that special.” It has Stanhope’s material about his mother, and a line of mortality running all the way through. “It’s a rewatch at least once a year, that one.”
Third, Maria Bamford’s Ask Me About My New God! “It goes dark. It goes light. It’s absurd.” If he had to explain Maria Bamford to someone, that is the special he would show them.
He wanted two more. We gave him one, and he picked George Carlin’s Jammin’ in New York as the best example of a comic doing social and political material “in a way that’s accessible.” Then he admitted it had been hard to stop there, with other specials still running through his head.
“I just love good comedy and I don’t care how, I don’t care what style it is.”
Simon King
Our own: George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle, Joan Rivers
It only seems fair to answer the question ourselves. Ours is George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle and Joan Rivers.
Carlin is the easy one. Jammin’ in New York is the special we would show anyone who asks what stand-up can do, and we have written before about why Carlin’s comedy has survived. Eddie Murphy is there for Delirious, which we can watch any day, any number of times. Dave Chappelle was the name we kept circling back to when Joel turned the question on us, and Joan Rivers is the one we could watch in any clip that exists online.
It was not easy to leave people off. Ricky Gervais, who was our introduction to stand-up, Bo Burnham, Daniel Sloss and Norm Macdonald, telling any long story that goes nowhere, all came close.
Who came up most
Across four guests and our own list, two names kept coming back. George Carlin was on Liz’s list, Simon’s list and ours. Joan Rivers topped Leah’s list and is on ours too. Eddie Murphy made Leah’s long shortlist as well as ours, and Mitch Hedberg made Joel’s list and Leah’s shortlist.
What stands out more is how different the lists are. Not one comedian, apart from Carlin, made it onto two guests’ final lists. Asked to choose only four, every comic picked the people who shaped their own voice, and that is why nobody’s answer looked like anyone else’s.
We will keep asking. For more from The Comics Unseen, read how comedians survive their worst nights on stage, the things comedians told only us, or browse all our comedian interviews.