Listen to Andy Kindler Rip Louis C.K., Bill Maher, Leno, Trump
Every year for the past two decades, comedian Andy Kindler has delivered his annual State of the Industry address to the attendees of the Just for Laughs festival in Montreal. Kindler — who will probably snicker and sneer if I refer to him as a comic’s comic, but, hey, it’s either that or “cult comic” — has turned this lengthy monologue into an example of something increasingly rare: naming names of people within the comedy industry who have let the side down, have become less funny, or indeed, were never funny — according to Andy Kindler, that is. His audience in Montreal last week consisted of a lot of professional comedians as well as civilians, and they lapped up Kindler’s bile.
This is inside-baseball stuff at its most intriguing and flippant. (Sample line: “I saw Ryan Seacrest and Jimmy Fallon compete in a superficial-off.”) This year, Kindler took some of his best swipes at Louis C.K., mocking the comedian’s critically acclaimed Horace and Pete; at James Corden for his “Carpool Karaoke”; at Bill Maher for his joke construction; at Ricky Gervais for his smugness; at Jay Leno for being Jay Leno; at Donald Trump for being… well, listen to who he compares Trump to. (Kindler has an interesting showbiz take on the presidential election: He blames Saturday Night Live’s chieftain Lorne Michaels for launching Trump’s current momentum by having Trump host SNL last November.) If you’d like to listen to Kindler’s modulated rant, I’d suggest skipping to the last 15 minutes for some of the most choice insults.
Mind you, I don’t agree with some of Kindler’s opinions. But he’s funny and quite ruthless, and it’s always novel to hear someone within his industry not holding back about what he thinks about his colleagues.
