And You Will Regret It

Watching David Heti is like sitting in on a university lecture delivered by a deeply cynical academic who is actively trying to get fired. He does not tell jokes so much as he constructs elaborate, dry arguments designed to test how long an audience can sit in silence before someone breaks. The set leans heavily on philosophical frameworking, making it less of a traditional stand-up hour and more of an exercise in intellectual discomfort.

Recorded at Grumpy’s Bar in Montreal on January 1, 2017, the special was released in 2018 amidst an ongoing, lawyer-mediated dispute between Heti and his label, Stand Up! Records, over the release date and the cover art. Heti, a former public prosecutor who holds degrees in both law and philosophy, has spent his career operating on the absolute fringes of the comedy scene, teaching comedy writing at McGill University and working in a children’s hospital bioethics department between touring.

The show begins with Heti invoking Plato to determine the most polite way to tell a room full of people to go fuck themselves, setting a tone that never quite lets up. From there, he rolls through premises with titles like “Roth v. Cocksuckers” and “Determinate Negation,” culminating in a segment about familial intimacy that contrasts coming out of one’s mother with coming into one’s mother. It is highly specific, academic, and entirely unconcerned with making the audience feel safe.