Spoiler alert: He did well on stage a few thousand times after that.
Sarah Silverman
Laughing Squid
Silverman never had a lot of stage fright, making her family laugh as a kid with a precocious use of profanity. At her “hippie high school,” she frequently got up at twice-a-week assemblies and told jokes without fear.
She wasn’t even a senior in high school when she visited big-city Boston and took her first stab at an open mike at Stitches Comedy Club. The set went great -- jokes about high school and being flat-chested (which she insists she was at the time) landed and she was eager for more.
But there wasn’t much of a comedy scene in her hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire. So she approached the owner of a local music venue and asked the owner if she could open for one of the bands. The owner said sure thing.
“That night there was a table packed with drunk people in the back, and whenever I would deliver a punch line, they would all shout supersarcastically, “Ha ha ha ha ha,” and then mega-straight-faced, ‘Hilarious,’” says Silverman.
“I bombed.”
David Spade
PEOPLE
The self-deprecating Spade is full of stories about horrific performing experiences.
In a high school variety show, Spade was part of a comedy dance number set to “Macho Man” that climaxed with Spade’s standing backflip.
“For no reason,” he says. “Mostly just to show off, actually.”
You can guess how this ends. An hour before the show, Spade practiced his flip and “landed on my FACE . . . yes, folks, all my weight, all on my face.” Blood went everywhere and Spade’s teeth were stained with stage paint. “I dropped to one knee, aaaaaaand . . . black out.”
But a smashed-in face didn’t stop Spade from pursuing his career in stand-up. A few years later, he was in Los Angeles where he managed to land an audition spot at The Improv. Notoriously selective owner Mitzi Shore would be watching to determine if Spade was regular material.