Laughter and Latino Comedians Felipe Esparza Monique Marvez and Osc
Laughter and Latino Comedians - Felipe Esparza, Monique Marvez and Osc...
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Cheaper than therapy Wild-haired Esparza, 42, now jokes for a living, but life wasn’t so funny when he was younger. “Nobody wanted to be with me,” he says. “I didn’t even want to be with me. I had no future.” Even after a stint in rehab and a warehouse job, his future looked bleak. “This job sucks,” he told himself, then asked, “What else can I do?” His answer: “Living in a neighborhood where there’s poverty and alcoholism and drug abuse … You put all that together and you don’t graduate from high school. You become a comedian, man.” A Hollywood café’s ad for a comedy open mic night caught his eye. He signed up and the laughs kept him going back until, comic’s tongue sharpened, he moved on to bigger venues. Poverty, love and culture are fertile ground for Esparza. “I write jokes like Bill Cosby, jokes that everybody can understand,” he says, “Everybody understands poverty or losing weight.” Being poor — and laughing — were a necessary part of life for the oldest of seven children. “I have a relationship with laughter that’s better than the relationship I have with my mom,” Esparza jokes. “It’s what keeps me going, because when I was a kid, that’s all we had. We were so poor that when burglars broke into our house they couldn’t find anything to steal, so they woke us up to make fun of us.” You wonder if he’s joking. Winning Last Comic was a special triumph for Esparza, who’d been told he was “too ethnic” for the show. “I proved that I didn’t need to crossover to get laughs, America crossed over to me,” he says. But he still considers ethnicity when he performs. “I’ve got a joke that says, ‘I live in a very bad neighborhood. A new restaurant just parked in front of my house.’ If I say, ‘There’s a taco truck in front of my house,’ everybody will say, ‘Of course, you live in the Latino neighborhood.’ But [my way], everybody can understand it because these taco trucks aren’t just in Mexican neighborhoods [anymore].” Whatever your background, just laugh, Esparza says. “People should laugh because it’s cheaper than a movie, cheaper than Disneyland and it’s cheaper than therapy,” he says. “I’m not the greatest lover in the world. I’m not the greatest painter. I’m a joke doctor. I’m the cure to your disease.” Next:
She gets serious — for about 30 seconds — when she talks about risa. “Laughter saved my life,” she says. “Comedy gave me a purpose and a vision and a drive and a goal and a focus.” So much focus that she can tell you the date she first stepped onstage: May 31, 1990, at the Coconuts Comedy Club in Coconut Grove, Florida, walking distance from her childhood home.“I started comedy because I was bored and broke and divorced and people told me I should be a comedian because I’ve always been funny,” she says. When she started in comedy, she recalls, “it was pretty much the good ol' boy system: overweight, middle-aged white men talking about the same crap.” Nowadays, she says, “Funny is funny; it doesn’t matter what sex you are. It doesn’t matter what you look like, what’s your sexual orientation. All that matters is, can you bring it? The audience is much more demanding.” And the jokes that comics hurl at audiences are changing too. “I used to see a much bigger cultural gap,” she says. “The comedy is different depending on what people can identify with. What’s changing now as a nation isn’t so much our culture or ethnicity but our socioeconomics.” But the benefits of laughter transcend culture, socioeconomics — and age, she says. As we age, we start feeling we’re running out of time, Marvez says. “We put horrible expectations on ourselves. It’s awfully hard to laugh when you put all that pressure on yourself that you have to do something by some imaginary deadline. “Laughter is living,” says Marvez. “People should laugh because it’s an option, it’s free and it’s available to you. Why shouldn’t you take it?” Next:
Laughter Changes Lives
Oscar Nuñez of < i> The Office< i> Felipe Esparza of < i> Last Comic Standing< i> and Monique Marvez tell how
John Ritter From left: Oscar Nuñez (The Office), Felipe Esparza (NBC’s Last Comic Standing 2010 winner) and Monique Marvez (standup comic). Belly laughs freed Felipe Esparza from the tight grip of drugs and violence in East Los Angeles 16 years ago. These days he can even lay claim to being NBC’s Last Comic Standing 2010 winner. Humor has transformed his life and brought him success. The same is true for Monique Marvez and Oscar Nuñez of The Office.See also:
Cheaper than therapy Wild-haired Esparza, 42, now jokes for a living, but life wasn’t so funny when he was younger. “Nobody wanted to be with me,” he says. “I didn’t even want to be with me. I had no future.” Even after a stint in rehab and a warehouse job, his future looked bleak. “This job sucks,” he told himself, then asked, “What else can I do?” His answer: “Living in a neighborhood where there’s poverty and alcoholism and drug abuse … You put all that together and you don’t graduate from high school. You become a comedian, man.” A Hollywood café’s ad for a comedy open mic night caught his eye. He signed up and the laughs kept him going back until, comic’s tongue sharpened, he moved on to bigger venues. Poverty, love and culture are fertile ground for Esparza. “I write jokes like Bill Cosby, jokes that everybody can understand,” he says, “Everybody understands poverty or losing weight.” Being poor — and laughing — were a necessary part of life for the oldest of seven children. “I have a relationship with laughter that’s better than the relationship I have with my mom,” Esparza jokes. “It’s what keeps me going, because when I was a kid, that’s all we had. We were so poor that when burglars broke into our house they couldn’t find anything to steal, so they woke us up to make fun of us.” You wonder if he’s joking. Winning Last Comic was a special triumph for Esparza, who’d been told he was “too ethnic” for the show. “I proved that I didn’t need to crossover to get laughs, America crossed over to me,” he says. But he still considers ethnicity when he performs. “I’ve got a joke that says, ‘I live in a very bad neighborhood. A new restaurant just parked in front of my house.’ If I say, ‘There’s a taco truck in front of my house,’ everybody will say, ‘Of course, you live in the Latino neighborhood.’ But [my way], everybody can understand it because these taco trucks aren’t just in Mexican neighborhoods [anymore].” Whatever your background, just laugh, Esparza says. “People should laugh because it’s cheaper than a movie, cheaper than Disneyland and it’s cheaper than therapy,” he says. “I’m not the greatest lover in the world. I’m not the greatest painter. I’m a joke doctor. I’m the cure to your disease.” Next:
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Get Serious Standup comic Monique Marvez used to sell malpractice insurance. Good joke fodder? Perhaps. But she prefers to probe relationships — mainly her own. “I’ve had the good fortune of being married and divorced three times. I say ‘good fortune’ because I’d rather be divorced than be unhappy,” says Marvez.Related
She gets serious — for about 30 seconds — when she talks about risa. “Laughter saved my life,” she says. “Comedy gave me a purpose and a vision and a drive and a goal and a focus.” So much focus that she can tell you the date she first stepped onstage: May 31, 1990, at the Coconuts Comedy Club in Coconut Grove, Florida, walking distance from her childhood home.“I started comedy because I was bored and broke and divorced and people told me I should be a comedian because I’ve always been funny,” she says. When she started in comedy, she recalls, “it was pretty much the good ol' boy system: overweight, middle-aged white men talking about the same crap.” Nowadays, she says, “Funny is funny; it doesn’t matter what sex you are. It doesn’t matter what you look like, what’s your sexual orientation. All that matters is, can you bring it? The audience is much more demanding.” And the jokes that comics hurl at audiences are changing too. “I used to see a much bigger cultural gap,” she says. “The comedy is different depending on what people can identify with. What’s changing now as a nation isn’t so much our culture or ethnicity but our socioeconomics.” But the benefits of laughter transcend culture, socioeconomics — and age, she says. As we age, we start feeling we’re running out of time, Marvez says. “We put horrible expectations on ourselves. It’s awfully hard to laugh when you put all that pressure on yourself that you have to do something by some imaginary deadline. “Laughter is living,” says Marvez. “People should laugh because it’s an option, it’s free and it’s available to you. Why shouldn’t you take it?” Next: