--- title: Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent | TIME description: Caroline Hirsch, owner of Carolines on Broadway, talks to TIME about what makes good stand-up comedy. canonical: https://time.com/video/IdfFP9pJ/ og:title: Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent og:description: Caroline Hirsch, owner of Carolines on Broadway, talks to TIME about what makes good stand-up comedy. og:url: https://time.com/video/IdfFP9pJ/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IdfFP9pJ/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent twitter:description: Caroline Hirsch, owner of Carolines on Broadway, talks to TIME about what makes good stand-up comedy. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/IdfFP9pJ/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent [Watch (HLS stream): Comedy at Carolines: How Caroline Chooses Her Talent](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/IdfFP9pJ.m3u8) (2:51)  _Published 2013-11-05. Caroline Hirsch, owner of Carolines on Broadway, talks to TIME about what makes good stand-up comedy._ --- Jul 27, 2023 3:54 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Watch: Robin Williams, Remembered By Iconic Comedy Club Owner Caroline Hirsch](/video/5MJYurTd/) ### Watch: Robin Williams, Remembered By Iconic Comedy Club Owner Caroline Hirsch [Carolines: When Robin Williams Heckled the Heckler](/video/ffkeXjWF/) ### Carolines: When Robin Williams Heckled the Heckler [Hong Kong Comedy](/video/De6L8PG3/) ### Hong Kong Comedy --- ## Transcript >> I got a role play the other day and it was like 2: 00 in the morning on this block. I was walking up the block so I crossed the street, but then he crossed the street and he started walking towards me and calling my name and I was like, " Oh my god, it's my boyfriend ." >> When you are a standup comedian or trying to be a standup comedian, there's a lot of risk involved. I mean you put yourself on the stage. You're very open. You're vulnerable to everybody. Everybody wants to boo you. They don't-- They're sitting there in their seats and they say, " Make me laugh ." I mean that's the attitude that people have. Look, the two terms for comedy when you're on the stage is I killed or I died. I mean, those are pretty aggressive terms to use for an artist. Don't you think? I've been on Broadway for the last 21 years. I was one of the first people up here because I thought Time Square was going to be this wonderful entertainment area. My goodness I think when I started doing at Carolines may be I had about 30 to 40 headliners. Now, we used about 150 different headliners during the year. The original club was Cabaret Acts, music, some jazz, and first comedian that we hired was Jay Leno. >> It's the same man who talks in the television home. Let go-- Let go Kojak! Thanks viewer. >> So that kind of like opened up a whole new world to us and we just kind of skewed away into comedy. But it's-- you know, to get on a stage, you really need to have a good six minutes of time. >> You can't believe how nervous people are in the back and then if they hear I'm in the room, oh my goodness, they're really scared to death. But it's intimidating to get on the stage. It's really like almost an honor to be invited to be on the stage. It's proven that, you know, you have that little thing going on right now so that needs to be developed here. People always trying tell me jokes, which is weird. Yeah. They do. You just need to be funny. You have to have that little core inside of you that makes you see things in a particular way and talk about it that's never been talked about before. That's my appeal to someone on stage. You have to build a little bit to know how to reconstruct the joke, how to re- deliver it, and it's part of practice being on stage. Did you see how people when [ unk ] get into it. They move a certain way. They walk across the stage. They know when to stop. So, get to learn how to do it after a while. We have a number of people that we all talked about and we go, what's that person doing? Is he developing? Is he changing his routine? Is he growing? Not I wanna see them six months later doing the same material. 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