Ethan Miller, Getty
Bill Maher
Every Friday night, Bill Maher hosts the HBO political talk show "Real Time with Bill Maher," which is watched by some 4.2 million people. Come Saturday, the comedian, who is reportedly worth more than $20 million, performs standup comedy in towns like Lincoln, Neb., and Greensboro, N.C.
Why would Maher, 58, spend his energy on such small-time gigs? He says it keeps him comedically fit.
"I don't know if I could do what I do as a talk show host if I wasn't in shape as a comedian," he says. "You see what people love when you're on stage; you see what just lights them up in a way that you can't on 'Real Time.'"
When talking about doing standup, Maher calls it a "craft" or a "hobby." He compares perfecting his routine to building a ship in a bottle or making violins - professions that take decades to master.
The craft is in "moving one word around, from the middle of the sentence to the end of the sentence," he says. "It's moving one joke that works pretty good over here, moving it behind this other joke, and now it's a giant laugh."
Maher calls this "tinkering," the process of getting the act just right. Like a musician, Maher brings a setlist of his performance on stage, sketching out sections and individual jokes to be delivered. The tinkering, then, is a matter of constantly shifting the setlist to find the ideal rhythm and delivery, all while introducing fresh material.
That's why when he's on a plane, in the back of a car, or sitting in a hotel room, you'll often find Maher with a yellow notepad in hand, taking notes on potential jokes.
Maher is in constant review, too. He tapes every standup performance. Once he gets off stage, he immediately looks at the film, like a quarterback studying the game tape. He searches for ad libs that fit into the routine, lines that did particularly well, and jokes with just the right delivery. Those highlights get transcribed and saved.
Then, when he gets home from a show, he takes his notes and edits them into his setlist. He keeps his current version of the set on his at-home computer, along with scripts he has of jokes that went off perfectly.
Getting good at comedy is a long process, Maher says. The early years are painful. You're just generic comedy to your audiences, and nobody knows who you are. He remembers feeling insulted when he stood on stage and got no laughs.
For the first 20 years, he didn't get a single standing ovation. But over the last 15, he's gotten one almost every performance.
"With live television, there's always an element of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks," Maher says. "With standup, I get to perfectly shape something that's hopefully a mind-blowing experience for the audience that just came at them, wave after wave of intelligent, funny thoughts. And I think that's why they do stand at the end."