It Was OK
Stand Up! Records · Album · 2015 · 55 min
A bleak, philosophical comedy hour from a former Canadian public prosecutor.
David Heti approaches stand-up like a cross-examination completely untethered from human empathy. Rather than asking for the audience’s affection, he uses the stage to administer a series of bleak, philosophical stress tests. His delivery is flat and emotionally distant, forcing the crowd to figure out if they are meant to laugh or if they have simply been trapped in a basement with a man articulating his deepest dread.
Recorded on New Year’s Day 2014 at Grumpy’s Bar in Montreal and released the following year, the debut album arrived just after Heti made a forced career pivot. While working as a lawyer for the Department of Justice Canada, he was handed an ultimatum because his act violated the public service’s ethics code. He chose the jokes. The material he traded his legal career for includes a childhood recollection of asking his mother what happens when people die, only to be told, “Daddy goes to jail”. It is an hour of cold, precise logic applied to the worst aspects of the human condition, determining the exact point where a crowd decides a punchline is too mean to support.
The set list
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Asking the audience to hold their laughter until the end
Argues using philosophical logic that jokes form a greater whole and cannot be appreciated without full context, concluding that although they came expecting to laugh, life isn't fair.
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Subverting the opening convention of saying 'it's good to be here'
Takes an existential approach stating that simply being here is a neutral fact of existence, so there is no point asking how anyone feels about it.
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Telling his sister he was contemplating suicide
Delivers the deadpan punchline that she told him you can't live your life doing what you think will make other people happy.
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His mother remodeling his childhood bedroom
Observes on a visit home that his mother renovated his room into a place where a child would have actually been happy growing up.
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Asking his mother what happens when people die
Reflecting on his violent father, his mother's response to the existential question was 'Daddy goes to jail.'
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Strained relationship with his mother
Frames their relationship as a stalemate because all she wanted was for him to be happy, while all he wanted was to be loved and respected.
How it plays
- Tone
- Nihilistic, twistedly droll, existential, deadpan, and philosophical.
- On stage
- Subdued, intellectual, transgressive, and unapologetically dark; likened to a darker Woody Allen or a mythological trickster who embraces discomfort and anti-comedy.
- Pace
- Quiet, understated, and softly delivered with deliberate pauses, nefariously slow pacing, and folding/unfolding physical gestures.
- About
- family dynamics, suicide and mortality, philosophy and existentialism, religion, sexuality and relationships, societal morality
What the critics said
Praised by critics as an outlandishly harsh, thought-provoking, and brilliantly dark debut that balances philosophical intellect with uncomfortable and subversive humor.
In the room: Recorded on a somber New Year's Day in front of a hungover bar audience that was challenged with transgressive, uncomfortable, and disquieting humor.
Backstory
Heti was a former federal prosecutor with the Department of Justice Canada who was let go after his stand-up was determined to be a conflict of interest and in violation of ethics codes. On the day of recording, he was without a permanent home after traveling to Montreal for New Year's.
Details
- Released
- Taped
- 2014, Grumpy's Bar, Montreal
- Runtime
- 55 min
- Where
- Stand Up! Records (album)
- Director
- David Gelston
- Topics
- After
- And You Will Regret It (2018)
More from David Heti
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And You Will Regret It
Stand Up! Records · Album
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