Watch The Debuts Of 8 Legendary Stand Up Comedians On The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson
It’s easy to forget that every successful comedian’s act and career is always a work in progress and rarely is what you see from them now the same thing you saw them from them when they first launched their career.
But thanks to the magic of YouTube, it’s now easy to look back and study what many legendary comedians were doing in the early days of their career. So, I thought I’d compile some video examples of that in this post to inspire and educate you.
Check out these debut appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson of 8 stand up comedians who would go on to become some of the most successful comics of all time.
Conan O'Brien's Guide To Creativity
“My formula has always been I’m big on preparing. Prepare like crazy. But then just as you’re heading out, half an hour beforehand, forget all of it. It’s there. It’s in your reptile brain. Go out but feel loose enough to grab opportunities as they come up. Don’t just stick to the plan if you see an opportunity. Now sometimes you go out there and the energy is such that you just stick to the plan and you do fine. But when you get out there and the energy is particularly good, I’m the first one to throw out things left and right and just go for it. The show is always best when it’s just play. When you’re playing, there’s a tension, yin-yang tension between think beforehand and then just get out there, between preparation and improvisation. And that’s been a lot of my career, finding the balance between those two.”
