Day 15 - Only Laugh - Chapter 15 (1171 words)

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ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 15

Things had progressed much faster than he had planned. The videos they were carefully crafting for new material were being copied, edited and remixed on the internet long before Tony had a chance to frame new material around them.

His plan had been to intercut the videos into his stage show, use them to surprise and shock the audience once they were laughing. He felt like he was on a roll material wise, had some clever jokes and was ready for anything the live audience would throw at him, but he wasn't ready. The internet made his material second hand before he even used it.

Editing software, his own videos that he had been making money on and ones that appeared as bootlegs from his earlier work were being cut into and around footage of Tony, picking fights in places he shouldn't. His work was still selling, and the fan fiction versions of his act, and his penchant for self abuse were being snapped up and he was sharing royalties with people who were essentially stealing his work. He still made money, and likely it was much more than he would have without them. Sure he was splitting profits, but the fresh approach and the raw nature of these truly amateur videos made them real. More real and therefore more honest than the work he would have produced. He was being eclipsed by his own work being bigger and better than he could make it.

The transition almost made him redundant, in some videos the jokes were about him, told by new and aspiring talent, some of it very funny. Funnier than he was. It was still his image and his fame, and he still made a large amount of money, on the legal versions where he got a cut, and on the ones where he did not then his people shut the people down who did not want to cut them in, but most of the time they would get the exposure, the profits from the hits they got when Tony tweeted about the latest version, which one of his people would do, would drive inordinate amounts of attention and traffic their way.

Whenever a new video was on the way, or news of a new amateur video of one of his adventures was out there, and they had a profit share hooked in, Tony would tweet #ouch to his followers, and he had hundreds of thousands and they grew every day. They gathered momentum and sent videos around, set up websites and sold merchandise. Tony's people were on top of as much of it as they could and they snagged into the ones that were moving serious product numbers, threatening legal action where they had to but mostly just doing deals that split profits rather than made no one any money.

He was getting richer and more famous and less and less of it was because of him. He had become a product he was no longer in control of. Worse than that, what he 'was' was the product, not who he is or was trying to become.

So far he had done no interviews and spoke to no one about the process, he had made it as unexplained as he could. He ignored the articles about him and gave nothing in response to the endless gossip and rumours about his life and his motivations. He had done all this to keep some artistic integrity, or so he thought at first but progressively what he desired was control. He had ceded control unintentionally, thinking that an agreement and a contract was worth anything. He had factored that in, as had his management, knowing full well that it was trying to hold water in your hands. You'll capture some, maybe even a lot, but never will you get it all.

Things leak. The people he used were not the only ones with cameras, they were not even there alone in the first instance. Friends, partners it could have been anyone near them or nowhere visible, but once it was known that Tony was 'performing' it was time to charge the cam corder, make room on the SD card and record it raw.

No one asked why he was doing it, and to certain extent no one wanted to. On the surface it was the most asked question “Why?” but the answer never came and after a while no answer would have ever satisfied. If he had articulated what he was doing, few people would have understood or got the joke. If had supplied even a most interesting and valid reason for his obsession with people laughing at his physical mistreatment then it would have been an arguable point.

He had sought out situations and provoked people into attacking him, pinpointing the break points in his 'volunteers' and then hammering on them until he paid the price. Any validation would have sounded insane. That was another reason for never explaining the point of what he was doing. He never said it to anyone. He never told his agent, manager, the club manager who still wanted him to do a big night again, who still had his picture on all his advertising, sometimes eclipsing once bigger names, and faces, on the posters for his now famous club.

It had become a running joke for visiting stand ups to slip on the spot on stage where he had bled, all those months ago, that seemed like years but was less than a half year.

What did he do now? He could not even continue his project of looking for the right kind of angry person, the person who needed or wanted their buttons pushed. Now he was known too well. Even people who were not his fans, didn't follow comedy, didn't find him funny or interesting, knew exactly who he was.

Now no one would touch him. People would come up to him and ask permission to hit him, or asked for the chance to be in his act. In the conscious act of knowing though, the videos lost their potency. They could not be staged, they only worked if it not only looked real, but felt real. And not one of them was anymore.

So now the juggernaut continued without him. He had become as irrelevant as it could possibly be to his own performance, he was unnecessary.

He may as well be dead. It would have made no more difference.

Despite this epiphany he did not go to a darker place, suicide was too predictable and too easy. Also too final, can't hear your audience if your dead, or in a coma can you? No, no you can't. So many people wanted to tell him how much they loved and needed him, and how they didn't want that to happen.

So many people who wanted him to live could only talk to him about his death, and how bad that would be.

Time to change, time to reclaim his own stage.