We were lucky to catch up with EDDIE GORTON recently and have shared our conversation below.
EDDIE, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
They say, “Amateurs do it until they get it right. Professionals do it until they can’t get it wrong.
My love for stand-up comedy started at a very young age. I would listen to my dad’s old Eddie Murphy cassette tapes and watch VHS tapes of his two hallmark classics, RAW and DELERIOUS, until I had them memorized. I would recite them to anyone who would listen which was a bit riské for a 9-year-old to pull off considering the topics he was covering. I tried to consume any and everything he put out: SNL, Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, all of it. I loved trying to make people laugh with his material and this joy led me to explore other comics and comedy shows. If you had asked me in middle school what I wanted to be when I grew up I would have tried to describe a career in teaching that embodied a trifecta of characters somewhere in the middle of a ven diagram of Murphy, Homie the Clown, and Robin Williams. In my group of friends anywhere between 4th and 7th grade, you could find me before school, during recess, during class, at the lunch table; trying to make other kids laugh with my rendition of the latest episode of whatever was funny on TV from the night before. I think I always worked to squeeze the fun out of any and every social setting and always thought: why can’t school be fun all the time?
But then I grew up and never even considered pursuing any of this passion for performing as a career choice. I dabled in a little theatre in college and made a short run as a spoken word artist, but essentially I was like Robin Williams’s character in Hook – I went to college got a safe job and never made time for exploring comedy as a profession. Instead, I worked to become the funniest teacher and tried at school infusing comedy into every lesson. This lasted almost 20 years. Along the way, I was promoted out of the classroom and my career as an educator mainly consisted of delivering professional development and support for teachers in two areas: English Language Development and school-wide Culture and Climate. When I had to present to the staff at a professional development I always tried to make them laugh.
From afar I watched good friends in the LA area pursue acting and comedy and I was happy for them and envious that they had the balls to do it. I think if I took the time to unpack all this in therapy I would land on the conclusion that since I grew up in such a state of scarcity, the idea that I would have to “sing and dance” for my meals scared the hell out of me, even though what I enjoyed about my safe path in life was all the singing and dancing I was getting paid to do on a presenter stage instead of a performer stage.
In 2014, Robin Williams died. He was one of my dad’s favorite comedians. I grew up absolutely in awe of his ability to freestyle and perform on any given topic with the energy and stamina of a professional athlete ( as a kid I did not understand that some of that was skill and some of that was performance-enhancing drugs). The 2018 documentary about his life was released and this piece on Robin touched me in ways I never thought it would. The parallels that I found in his story to my own story were a mixture of scary, and reassuring. I connected with his introverted nature yet extroverted expressions. He always felt like he had to be “on” when other people were around yet he felt so alone and isolated when the lights were off. He said it was exhausting and I shared that feeling of exhaustion with him.
Then it hit me, if I am going to go through all the pain that makes for a great comedian and never get on stage, I am wasting all this good trauma. I’m kidding. What really hit me about this documentary was I never really ever gave “the comedy thing” an honest try. I wondered (at 40 – total mid-life crisis) if I could get on stage, I wondered if I would make people laugh. I wondered if someone would pay me to make people laugh! Not just friends or teacher audiences but people at an actual comedy club like all my heroes in comedy had done all these years. I had sat back for almost all my life watching Comedy Central, Def Comedy Jam, Star Search, and any comedy special I could get my hands on, and been in love with it this whole time. This outlet, this genre was a living thing inside me and I never tapped into it like I should have. What if…
In the summer of 2018, I found myself at a birthday dinner for my best friend Will McFadden, that’s right I am 45 years old and I still say “best friend” and I think it’s healthy. This was not a typical birthday dinner, this party came with rules and I was kinda into it. Rule number one: no cell phones. Rule number two: party of 8 – 1 conversation – 1 topic. This idea was adapted from some weird book my boy had read something about France and salons or something. So we all went with it and the topic of discussion that we had been privy to ahead of time was: be ready to discuss one piece of art that has moved you in the last year. I knew immediately I wanted to discuss the doc on Robin Williams and share how I connected to it and how it had moved me in a way that probably would be surprising even to my close friends.
So, when it was my turn to share I did just that – I told the truth, I connected with a traumatized recently deceased comedian who unalived himself battling isolation and depression and I ended my summary of this documentary with “… and I think I want to try stand-up comedy. I think Robin Williams’s death has reminded me life is too short and inspired me to stop pretending that I don’t want to give this thing a try to see how far I get.”
Well, what happened next completely changed my life forever. One of the dinner guests, an actor – Graham Sibley, a performer, a great guy who stands about 6’3″ stood up and got on the chair with one foot on the table and pointed dead at my face from across the way and shouted a command from the heavens. He shouted with a mountainous thunder “Eddie! If you don’t get on stage and do this by the next time I see you – well then F*** YOU! F*** YOU EDDIE – get your ass on stage!”
Now to say that I have an ego is an understatement, but to say that this was embarrassing would be wrong. I wasn’t embarrassed I was stuck. There were no other options now, shit – I am going to have to get on stage. Like Biff calling Marty McFly “yellow”, there was no option other than turning around and facing the challenge. I looked at Will and I knew and he knew that I knew one thing would be absolutely true – I was getting on stage and pursuing this artistic path professionally.
Six months later I walked into a dive bar near my house and told jokes for 8 minutes on a tiny dimly lit stage for the very first time – March 4th, 2019.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
“My name is Eddie Gorton, I am the Principal of Comedy – I’m a principal at your local elementary school!”
I try to start every stand-up set on stage with this duel premise: I am a Principal. I am a comedian. How did we get here?
While these two jobs can fuel each other, rarely if ever do the two meet. Probably because the two crafts when done right, take an extreme amount of time to master. It’s is hard work being a Principal A mentor told me once it is the hardest job you will ever love, the same is also true for stand-up comedy.
Being able to present to crowds is a gift and if you ask me to think about this idea seriously I probably would say I got into stand-up comedy to help my administrator career. If you can make a comedy club full of people laugh at 7:30 pm on a Tuesday, well then an auditorium full of parents at 8 am is easy.
If my 5th-grade teacher could see me now, I know she would be equal parts proud of me and not surprised at all that I found a way to carve out a professional career helping others while having the most fun possible. School should be fun, every day and I am not sure how it happened (ok, I’m kinda sure) but the class clown from 1989 was given the keys to a whole school and it is a dream come true.
Colleagues will ask me all the time how I find time to run a school and perform at night. Truth is I have an amazing wife who is so supportive and we work together to help create time and space for me to explore this venture. She is actually the funniest person in our house and she loves to tell me when a joke isn’t funny (she’s right, almost all the time). Dream chasing takes a support network, surround yourself with people who are rooting for you to make it – that type of support makes it easier to jump in with both feet.
I have worked for the school district since 2002. I have been a classroom teacher, instructional coach, restorative justice advisor, and administrator. I love my career as an educator and I feel like I have impacted student achievement, helped build community, and inspired folks around me – but I put my passion for comedy on the shelf a long time ago and I am so grateful for the opportunities I have carved out to be able to now, do both.
What I would like to do with all this, is throw it all in a blender and find a way to inspire teachers, make crowds laugh, write
the next funny T.V. show, and champion public education. So if you are an agent or manager looking for talent to make an auditorium laugh at the next educational conference, I’m your guy. I also do weddings, quinceaneras (in English only), boat christenings, and comedy clubs. I’m here to speak to the people.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
Learning the culture of performing on stage as a stand-up comedian meant I had to unlearn a few old habits I had picked up along the way from my time spent as an up-and-coming slam poet. That’s right I was all into Spoken Word in the early 2000’s and I was dope. You remember slam poetry? We thought we were so cool, screaming and waving our arms around, virtue signaling, racing each other in the oppression Olympics to see who could rhyme their trauma story with the latest slang and double entendre. It was so cool. Was it though…?
I’m not that mad at Spoken Word it is a great medium and a very healthy expression – I just think it is really easy to be bad at it and fool the audience. You can’t do that with comedy, either you are funny or you are not. Poets, for the most part, are there to share their art for themselves, they have to get whatever that is off their chest, the audience can observe how they process and express their pain, trauma, and good fortune, but they almost come secondary to the artist. Comedy is the reverse. It is a different relationship with the audience. The audience is there for the poet. The comic is there for the audience. So the approach and prep have to be different as well.
In the poetry scene, there was a lot of perceived pressure to create, create, create, and present a new piece almost every single time you hit the stage. If you were a regular at the local coffee shop or regional poetry slam, or you were doing big things at Da Poetry Lounge off of Fairfax, you almost never spit the same piece twice. I brought a lot of those habits to my first year of comedy performing at open mics. I would show up at the Liquid Zoo with legendary host and curator of all things “The Valley”, Mr. Ryan Talmo aka Valley Jesus, and try and have a new 8-minute open mic set every Sunday. This, I learned, was not how you got better at comedy. I watched comics, over the weeks and months, when I first started getting up on stage, knocking out the same set over and over again. At first, I thought, “Oh I hope no one in the crowd notices that Bob told that joke three weeks in a row”. Then it hit me, Bob WAS trying to tell this same joke three weeks in a row and every week after that until he got it right. Open Mics, bringer shows, small backyard shows, and even performing on Sunset Blvd. – you are going to tell the same jokes. It’s all practice, and refining your set. Sure a new joke is cool and you want to try new things but there is nothing cooler than working on a joke for a year and finding a little nugget of humor tucked away in a bit that you have not yet realized was there, comedian David Murphy taught me that. Those realizations don’t come without beating a bit to death at an open mic for what felt, to me, was an eternity. I had to let that go and be on stage practicing for me and my craft and pay little attention to whether or not the crowd, the MC, or the booker had heard that set before. This was all part of the process of becoming a better stand-up. Reps, reps, reps, minutes on stage, anytime, anywhere, working your bits until they can tell themselves on stage.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
This is an interesting question because people ask it all the time and I don’t think they realize how demeaning it can sound when they ask it. It’s a fair question, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t think folks who travel a more traditional career path are asked this question as much as artists. Do you ask your dentist – “So, what’s the end game here, what’s your goal with dentistry?” Probably not. I think it sounds or lands hollow, it masks the underlying sentiment that the intrigued thinks that this artistic expression most likely will not end in fame and fortune and why else would anyone do this? It gives a vibe of “isn’t this cute, you’re being creative, and when will this be over.?”
I’ve been asked what my end game is with comedy and the look on the person’s face was always a sympathetic one – and I think it’s weird that people do this.
To borrow from Kobe here, the journey is the dream. The practice is the dream. Just doing it, is the dream. That could never be more true than it is with comedy. Experts will tell you the number one fear that most humans have is public speaking and number two on that list is death. People are more afraid to speak in front of crowds than dying, that is wild to me. So, really then, just the simple task of walking up on stage is the goal and once you are there – you have kinda made it. Everything else is extra. Did they laugh? Did you get paid? Did your fan base grow? Did other comics give you props and recognize you for the work? All these forms of feedback can drive a creative journey, but also – I stop myself every now and then and just look in the mirror at some random comedy club’s bathroom before I go on stage and chuckle to myself, “Oh my god, I’m actually doing this, I’m a stand-up comic”. What a dream come true.
If you were to ask for my honest take on goals and a creative journey I would tell you something about being a role model for my sons, showing them it is never too late to pivot and dream chase and hope they see what hard work looks like. Share with them that it is possible to be a creative while you are locked in on a traditional 9-5 job. You can have your cake and eat it too. Dreams don’t have to die just because you have bills to pay.
I would also like to share that I love to write, I love comedy and all this is fun for me regardless of where it goes, but if it were to manifest into a performance at the Hollywood Bowl that would be really cool too. The other issue here is I have a job, a great job with health care and a pension. I am an elementary school principal at a really amazing Blue Ribbon school and I get to work with outstanding teachers and in a community that is all-in for the success of the students, so while I’m dreaming of stages and crowds laughing- it’s not lost on me that I have already made it in an entirely different career. A career that I don’t necessarily want to just toss away. A career that I am very proud of and which allows me to be creative in its own right all the time. I get to wear the funny costume and promote good testing tips, I get to dress up as a turkey for Thanksgiving, and I get to host a hilarious student-run podcast (Coolfax Podcast on Spotify). I get to impact youth and give out hundreds of high fives a day! Bottom line being a Principal and a Comedian is really dope and I am still trying to do both as long as I can.
My goal on this creative journey is too keep finding ways to make people laugh and hopefully inspire some folks along the way, oh and I don’t know, win the Mark Twain award! BOOM!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://eddiegorton.com
- Instagram: @principalofcomedy
- Facebook: PrincipalofComedy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddie-gorton-b79799177
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gp7HiqZ6nU
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/show/2aPnqjDlrRqnFDs9MsOZwM?si=e070d754f3c54896
