You are funny enough to be a comedian.
Anyone is, with help from Jeff Justice. Try out your dullest material on him, and watch him alchemize it into a set of jokes guaranteed to get laughs. The comic, with his iconic, bushy mustache, has been a beloved fixture of Atlanta’s entertainment scene since he started Jeff Justice’s Comedy Workshoppe —”six weeks to a funnier you!” — in 1990.
He since has instructed more than 3,000 students, who take the stage at The Punchline for their graduation.
Although the Facebook page for his “alumni” has been buzzing for months about his imminent retirement, Justice, 71, is still having too much fun and has decided, with old-school vaudevillian spirit, to keep the show going. (“71 is the new 69,” he quips.)
The menschy, zenned-out elder statesman considers his work a public service of sorts. “If we laugh more, we’ll stress less and avoid getting burned out,” he says. “Plus, I like the George Bernard Shaw quote: ‘If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.’”
His classes cover joke-writing, timing, delivering a punchline, handling hecklers, dealing with stage fright, developing stage presence and discovering your own internal funny bone while learning what makes others crack up.
“One thing to keep in mind,” he says, “comedy is 10% writing and 90% delivery, so to realize how funny a comedian’s joke is you have to hear it. Could you ever imagine laughing after reading this classic line from Steve Martin? ‘Excuse me. I’m a wild and crazy guy.’”
Alumni include Charles Brewer, founder of Mindspring, and fashion entrepreneur Sara Blakely, who came up with the name “Spanx” in his class because he told her words that end in a hard “k” sound are inherently funnier. Others have become professional, touring comedians or gone into different fields in show business.
“I think the biggest thing I got from Jeff’s class was the realization that the entertainment industry was just work, a regular job that you could realistically shoot for by just putting in effort based on a fairly simple set of rules,” says Mike Billips, an Atlanta actor. “I grew up thinking it was just something for especially talented, beautiful people who won some sort of casting lottery in New York or Los Angeles.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Still, as they say, dying’s easy and comedy is hard. “If it were that simple, everybody would be a comedian,” Justice says. “In every class, I have one or two who want to pursue comedy as a career. I don’t candy-coat it for them. There are things you have to give up if you choose that path.”
The slang of standup is legendarily violent. Comedians “kill” or “bomb.” “Getting laughs from a roomful of people is an incredibly euphoric high,” Justice says, “and, on the flip side, bombing feels just awful, but it makes the successes that much sweeter.”
He has been around long enough, and paid enough dues, to have done both.
It started with magic
Justice grew up in Yonkers, New York, the middle child in a happy family. “My folks were wonderful and supportive,” he says. “I joke that if they’d just been more dysfunctional I would’ve gotten really big.”
In school he was not exactly the class clown, but he was a “wiseguy,” he says. He earned an associate’s degree at Miami-Dade Junior College, where he discovered magic.
“A friend showed me a great sleight-of-hand trick with cards,” he recalls. “I used it all the time, and no one could figure it out. I was hooked!” So it seemed like fate when, during his last semester at Florida State, he moved into a new room in a frat house and found wedged behind the dresser a book titled “Your Hobby, Magic.”
“I learned a few more tricks to add to my repertoire and found that I loved entertaining and amazing people. And my act was funny. My love for magic led into my love for comedy.”
After graduating with a degree in communications, he followed a woman to Atlanta in 1975 and bounced around, bar-tending. One night in 1980, he wound up at The Excelsior Mill. “There was a guy doing comedy magic that night and after a few beers, I thought, ‘I’m funnier than this guy.’” He landed a spot on the next show.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
“The booker told me that I could do 20 minutes, and I said sure! I had no act. I had never been on an actual stage. I cobbled together 20 minutes of tricks, added a little more comedy and practiced my butt off for the next week,” he recalls. “I killed! I did so much better than everyone else. Two weeks later, he booked me again, and I bombed, just like everyone else. I learned that the audience was basically the same 35 people every week, so my material wasn’t fresh the second time. I learned a lesson — read the room.”
His compensation? He got $10, a slice of pizza and a beer. But that was enough. At age 31, he moved back in with his parents to be near the clubs in New York City. He became a regular at The Comic Strip, The Comedy Cellar and Dangerfield’s where he says he got $7 a night — and no pizza.
It was a golden era for standup, when most mid-sized cities had comedy clubs. Justice became a “road animal” for 14 years, headlining around the country. He moved back to Atlanta in 1987 to marry Diane Pfeifer, a backup singer for Tammy Wynette and author of whimsical, novelty cookbooks (one of her titles: “Stand By Your Pan”). He realized he was missing out on his daughter’s childhood, though, and found a new way to channel his creativity, by staying home and teaching corporate clients how to be funny or at least relax a bit. Then he started his classes for the masses.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Finding the funny bone
The Comedy Workshoppe attracts an array of hammy misfits. One class had both a sex worker, whose material skewed awfully graphic, and a priest who was determined to cuss on stage. “I said, ‘The hell you will!’” Justice demands squeaky-clean comedy in his classes.
“It’s a cheap, easy way to get a laugh, cursing and telling dirty jokes, and once you start, it’s hard to stop,” says Justice’s protégé and assistant Mark Evans, who aspires to take over the “workshoppe” someday. “You’re more attractive internationally when you keep it clean and don’t go blue.” A travel agent whose job was dissolving into the internet, Evans took the class and decided to become a full-time comedian. Since then, Evans has played 46 states, several countries and “a bunch of cruise ships. Jeff Justice changed my life.”
So many graduates echo that refrain. Alera Jill Elliott was a drawling attorney when she took the class and ended up opening for Brett Butler and Steve Harvey. “Jeff reminded me that I didn’t tell funny stories. I told stories funny, and that’s how it gets to be about you and your life.” (Her joke that killed? “I’m writing a country song. It’s called: ‘I got over Percodan, and I’ll get over you.’”)
Justice defies the stereotype of the demon-driven, drug-addled comedian. A longtime practitioner of tai chi, he seems virtually angst-proof. “I’m lucky to have a good, stable family and strong spiritual belief system,” he says. “And I have the greatest job in the world — making people laugh, making people happy, one way or another. What could be better than that?”
COMEDY EVENTS
Jeff Justice’s Comedy Workshoppe Graduation. 8 p.m. Dec. 12. $25. The Punchline at Landmark Diner, 3652 Roswell Road, Atlanta. 404-252-5233, www.punchline.com
Jeff Justice’s Comedy Workshoppe. 7 p.m. every Monday, Jan. 9-Feb. 13. $300. The Punchline at Landmark Diner, 3652 Roswell Road, Atlanta. 404-312-3404, www.comedyworkshoppe.com
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