Zach Zucker Dares to Say Comedy Is About Being Funny
This week, we’re highlighting 25 talented writers and performers for Vulture’s annual list “The Comedians You Should and Will Know.” Our goal is to introduce a wider audience to the talent that has the comedy community and industry buzzing. (You can read more about our methodology at the link above.) We asked the comedians on the list to answer a series of questions about their work, performing, goals for the future, and more. Last, but certainly not least, is Zach Zucker.
Tell us a story from your childhood you think explains why you ended up becoming a comedian.
When I was 7 years old, I went to Jewish boys summer camp in the upper Catskills. I was a pretty ugly kid and a generally disagreeable person, so I had a hard time making friends. No one wanted to spend any time with me, but on day three, the camp leaders brought us ’round to play a group game called “Stories From Rock World.” Every kid would find a local rock and introduce it to the group, then tell a story from that rock’s life on Rock World. It was meant to encourage imaginative thinking and hone our storytelling capabilities (necessary for any good Jewish boy eyeing the campfire).
I spent the afternoon searching for the coolest rock and thinking of awesome stories to tell everyone about my rock so they wouldn’t think of me as so ugly and as so disagreeable. And I got it — I got the coolest rock (it was big and gray), and I wrote an incredible story (it was about how the rock got so big (eating a lot of cheeseburgers)), but when I went up to present my story, I accidentally dropped the rock because of how heavy it was. I thought everyone would laugh at me because I looked like a big loser, but instead, they laughed at me because of how funny it was that I dropped a big rock on my foot.
For the next three weeks, I proceeded to become known as Zach, and also as the kid who kept dropping rocks on his feet. If I ever said something disagreeable or if someone looked at my face for too long, I would find the biggest rock and drop it on my foot, leg, or balls. It was a hit. Everyone loved to laugh of me. And I became addicted to that feeling. Everyone laughing … of me?? I would do anything to feel that again.
What unscripted or reality series do you think you’d excel at? What archetype do you think you’d be?
I think I’d be really good at Survivor. I haven’t done it in a while, but as a kid I was big into eating slugs and worms, so I would have a huge competitive advantage. Everyone else is going hungry trying to get a fire started after a torrential downpour, and I’m just rolling around in the mud putting dirt in my ears and slurping up my goopy little friends.
I would also be good at Married at First Sight. I’m super-sensitive and a very sensual lover (my bedroom contains over 30 lava lamps and a strip of LED ribbon lights set to “fade”), so I think whoever I get paired with would fall for me in no time. I could sing them a song in the park (“Radioactive,” by Imagine Dragons, is a personal favorite), or play games with them in the basement (Disney’s Scene It, Ratchet and Clank, etc.). I would also keep the slugs and worms thing a secret until after we tied the knot.
What’s your proudest achievement of your comedy career so far?
My favorite proud achievement of my comedy career is from the Swedish comedy gala back in 2018. I was closing the night with my comedy partner Viggo Venn, a talented comedy performer from Norway who has an ancestral rivalry with the people of Sweden. I wanted to do well on the gala, but I also wanted to support my friend’s bloodthirst, so we decided to pull out our now-retired “Ping-Pong Using Our Balls” routine. It’s graphic, rude, and there’s an opportunity at the end to smear pig’s blood on a flag of choice. We chose to use the Swedish flag. The king of Sweden was watching, and he was not pleased. The crowd booed — at least we think they did. It was hard to understand the accent.
I’m not proud of it because it was funny. Of course it was funny — I’ve done so many funny things in my life, it’s literally impossible to count. I was proud of that moment because I stood up for my friend, which is arguably more important than anything a comedian could ever do. Your jokes may be funny, and we may all be laughing, but you didn’t help your friend and I did.
What have you learned about your own joke-writing process that you didn’t know when you started?
I learned that I am a great joke writer, and I didn’t know that when I first started. I think my first jokes were pretty top-top, but I didn’t have the experience and vision to appreciate just how funny they were at the time. I was crushing open mics, and I would still go home and yell at myself in the mirror for being such a fucked-up guy, completely missing the part where they LAUGHED at my jokes. You can be fucked-up and also write great jokes and be a funny guy that people love to laugh at. That’s what makes doing comedy so special. Every night I go to bed, and I feel so fucking sick I want to either throw up or kms myself, but every night I do neither. I just go to sleep instead. Inside the dream world, I find exciting new jokes and devastating new psychological chasms that will come to define the failures of my personality in the years to come.
Tell us everything about your worst show ever. (This can involve venue, audience, other comedians on the lineup, anything!)
One of the first shows I ever did was called Zach Zucker: Real-Life Human Basketball Guy Man. It was a two-and-a-half-hour improvised theater piece about a mad scientist who turns himself into a Wilson Official NBA game ball. It ruins his life, but he goes on to be the game-winning dunk in game seven of the 1970 NBA Finals between the Knicks and the Lakers, and he gets his basketball dick sucked in the bathroom at Madison Square Garden.
It was a one-off I did at the old Joke Bean Tavern in La Jolla. There were over 100 people in the crowd including my family, friends, and my girlfriend at the time (now a WNBA player herself, funny enough!!). I like to think we all share a special bond because of that show. Like the bewildered camaraderie between the onlookers of a devastating train crash. Or the bewildered camaraderie between the onlookers of a devastating airplane crash.
I don’t think the world was ready for it back in 2015, but basketball has been making a comeback in a big way, so it could be time for Real-Life Human Basketball Guy Man II: Real-Life Human Hockey Puck Boy Child.
Let’s say we live in a “Kings of Catchphrase Comedy” alternate dimension where every single comedian is required to have a hit catchphrase. What’s yours and why?
My hit catchphrase would be something like, “… And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it.” You hear people say things like that all the time, but never because of a great joke they just told. Maybe it’s because you can’t really smoke a joke, but I guess what my catchphrase would do is suggest the possibility that you can.
What would smoking a joke feel like? I bet it would feel insane. Imagine getting a hit of George Carlin’s “Sea Cucumber” routine straight to the respiratory system — the alveoli sucking up all that satire and sending it directly to your heart to be pumped out to the rest of your body. If I smoked the sea-cucumber routine before a marathon, I would clear two hours no problem. I would be a god. You wouldn’t be able to look at me without going blind because my skin would be glowing so bright, like a man made out of lava. That’s so cool.
Nominate one comedian you don’t know personally you think is overdue for wider recognition and why you’re a fan of their work.
I don’t really like to watch comedy, and I especially don’t like to platform other comedians. Parasocial relationships are such a huge issue in the comedy industry, and everyone is too afraid to talk about it, but the reality is, if someone likes a comedian, they’ve now entered a one-way contract with that person: “I think you’re funny, I like you, you mean the world to me. We are such good friends and I love the way you make me laugh.”
But the thing is, it’s not real. It’s just a guy on your phone doing crowdwork. That’s not what friendship is. Friendship is about hanging out together and eating food at the same time sometimes. In fact, that little TikTok comedian is probably MY friend (because of how many comedians I know, the chances are good that I know them, whoever it is). I am active in many markets as well, so if you thought you would select a comedian from South America to try and trip me up, go fuck yourself because you obviously forgot about my 2017 workshop in Bogotá where I taught some of the greatest Colombian comics of our time.
When it comes to your comedy opinions — about material, performing, audience, trends you want to kill/revive, the industry, etc. — what hill will you die on?
So many comedians are obsessed with performing to bigger rooms, and I couldn’t disagree more. There is nothing inherently cool, interesting, or morally good about selling out a 300-seater. That’s 300 people who you don’t know and don’t care about. A real comic doesn’t need hundreds of people laughing at their jokes. Hundreds of people will laugh at jokes no matter what — it’s called Comedic Inertia, and the larger the crowd is, the more CI they have.
Think of it this way: If one out of every 100 people has a funny laugh, then when other people hear that laugh, they will laugh too. One out of every hundred of those other people who start laughing will also have a funny laugh, creating an even larger shock wave of laughter. With enough people in the crowd, you can get enough Funny Laughers in the mix to make not only each other laugh (factoring in cooldown periods) but the entire rest of the crowd. Heck, I’ve seen 2,000-plus seaters laugh of their own momentum for hours at a time. Nothing was happening onstage except for a stand-up screaming at the crowd to shut up so they could complete the setup to their joke.
If you had to come onstage to just one song for the rest of your life, what song would it be and why?
It would have to be “Radioactive,” by Imagine Dragons. There are so many times in my life where I’m waking up and feel it in my bones — enough to make my systems blow. It feels like I’m being welcomed to the new age, welcomed to the new age. Whoa oh oh!! Whoa oh oh!! Radioactive!! Radioactive!!! Whoa oh oh!! Whoa oh oh!!! Radioactive!!! Radioactive!!
What is the best comedy advice, and then the worst comedy advice, you’ve ever received, either when you were starting out or more recently?
The best comedy advice I could give to a blossoming comedian would be: Be funny about how you do things. Comedy is about being funny, and so the funnier you can do stuff, the more comedy there will be in the thing that you did. Some people think comedy is about smiling really big and being happy about clever writing, but it’s about laughing at funny things, so do funny things for people to laugh at, and they’ll think of you as some sort of comedian.
Some comedians are funny about how they do things in the way that they move their body. (For example: Wow, the way that guy moved their body is so funny.) Some comedians like to be funny about how they say the words that they say. (For example: Haha, I love the way that guy said that word in a funny way.) These are the main two ways of being funny with the way you do things. There are thousands of other ways, but most of them are bullshit and pushed on the youth by comedy grifters trying to make a quick buck. You can’t beat just being funny about how you do things.