Chud's Best Comedians of ALL TIME List

People around here obviously take their comedy very seriously, as evidenced by the Maxim Worst Comedians thread. Someone there (forgive me, I forget who) suggested we do a best of list. Here it is.

I'm not proposing some arbitrary finite number (Top 10 Comedians of All Time!) just because everyone has their favorites, and hopefully we can use the discussion to sort of sculpt a consensus of the very best anyway. The only rule I'd ask to keep is to post a revised list at the bottom of your post if you're adding a comedian. That way we can review the list as a whole once more comedians are added, to see who should continue on and who should go. Please do not post more than one addition per day.

Any comedians (stand-up only please) from any era are open, along with (and hopefully including) passionate debate along the way.

My first addition:

Steven Wright

Despite his unique style, for me Wright epitomizes and distills the essence of stand-up. Get up there and tell jokes. That's it. And of course, it's not just the delivery. The writing is brilliant.

"Did you sleep good?"
"No, I made a couple of mistakes."

"A lot of people are afraid of heights. Not me. I'm afraid of widths."

"Do married people live longer than single people or does it just seem longer?"

"How come Superman could stop bullets with his chest, but always ducked when someone threw a gun at him?"

LIST SO FAR:

Steven Wright

Certainly can't argue with Pryor. One thing I truly love about Pryor is the lack of observational detachment that's the backbone of so many comics' material. ("What's the deal with airline food?" "The thing about men and women...") Even comics who frame stories in terms of personal experience are still bullshitting. Which is fine. They're storytellers. But Pryor bared his insides. That in itself was revolutionary.

I have to admit, though I know who he is and why he had such an impact, I'm not nearly as familiar with Hicks as I should be. I just haven't heard a lot of his material. Does he have a seminal album or concert video I should start with?

I remember when Comedy Central first started schlepping their "Comedy Central Presents" line-up and just about every reader comment amounted to "Where the hell is Brian Regan?" I finally saw it and I have to admit, I don't really get what's so special about it. Is it worth a few chuckles? Absolutely.

So, with that in mind I'm really hesitant to put him on an all-time list like this. I'm more than willing to concede that my opinion is just ridiculously wrong, but does anyone else want to chime in for or against Regan?

I'm also not sure about Louis CK. Again, his sets are worth a few laughs, but an all-timer? Am I missing something?

Dice is a different thing altogether because he was so brilliantly funny (his campfire story/impressions killed), but for such a short period of time.


The interesting thing about Murphy's place among the greats is that he's also compared to Richard Pryor because of his brashness and his language, but he's really much more like a profane Bill Cosby. He's a brilliant storyteller, and he takes on the other characters in the story as he's telling it. The biggest difference was that Cosby was more "This is what it's like being a father" and Murphy was more "This is what it's like being a kid."

This was just released to the outlets for sale a few weeks ago. Highly, highly recommended, though the draw for me isn't Oswalt but Zach Galifianakis.

Not sure why I care enough to elaborate on this, but the whole point of this thread is that it's not an arbitrary list. It's a response to ridiculous lists like the Maxim worst comedians thread. It's difficult to look at the posts thus far and say that people aren't passionate about the subject. Dissent's not based on "Oh, this guy should be in or out" because there's some magical cut off point, but on a more substantive and intelligent discussion of the performances and the writing. More than that, it's just a way to discuss a lot of great comedians and why we like or don't like them.

Anyway, be pissy if you want but that's the idea. I don't see it as arbitrary.

I didn't mean to be pissy in response, I just took it as taking the list to be arbitrary meant taking the thread to be arbitrary.