On his breakthrough album, Let’s Get Small, Steve Martin says, “... I wouldn’t believe in anything if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.” Later in the show, during a brief pause, an audience member shouts, “What’s yer mood watch say?” And Martin chuckles, sadly, and says, “I remember when I had my first beer.” That’s the last we hear of that heckler, the audience member who verbally leaps, uninvited, into a performance. The best stand-ups use the heckler to comedic advantage:
Elayne Boosler has been known to beat down particularly persistent hecklers by saying, “Do I have to [sleep with] you to get you out of my life?” In a rant easily obtainable on YouTube, George Carlin is interrupted by a heckler and unleashes a withering, minute-long diatribe that starts with, “Will someone please put a [male organ] in that guy’s mouth?” and ends with, “If you have a kid, I hope he dies in a car fire!” Similarly enraged was the late Bill Hicks, who shouted down a female heckler in a two-minute oratory in which he suggested, “Why don’t you go see Madonna, you [expletive] piece of [profanity]!?” Of course, Michael Richards has never recovered from his use of rage/shock at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles (the one-year anniversary of which is November 17). Mitch Hedberg dealt with hecklers pragmatically: “I can stand up here and talk for 45 minutes. You say one word, you’re [bleeping] outta here.”