best heckler lines you've heard?

[Orange]

reading robert's truth or dare post has got me to thinking. what are the best lines you've ever heard:

a - from a heckler
b - from a performer dealing with a heckler

[Butterfly Man]

A couple of vivid moments come to mind ... interestingly enough, in both instances it was the timing and delivery (not the line itself) that proved so devastating ... one of my most enjoyable memories was when Mrs. Jones (Pinie) heckled Andrew Dice Clay (before he got famous) ... she said “why don’t you say something funny” to which he retorted “Fuck you, you @#$%” ... she came back with ( & her timing was always so impeccable), “See what I mean” ... Andrew Dice Clay didn’t even try to respond, it was just that powerfully delivered.
On the other side of the coin, years ago I was watching Frankie Olivier at Pier 39. Three or four of the meanest and toughest looking black guys were walking through his crowd yelling obscenities at him with brazen bravado. Frankie froze and stared at them ... it quickly got very quiet and very tense. Frankie kept staring at them as they continued to walk down the Pier, not uttering a sound. For close to three minutes it had been devastatingly quiet. Just when they were almost out of sight, Frankie leaned off the side of the stage and in a voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in his crowd but not quite loud enough to be heard by the black guys he retorted “Oh, Yeah?!” The roar of the crowd’s laughter was explosive. Even the black guys turned around to look, but thankfully they were so far away and didn’t know why people were laughing that they kept on going.

[Todd]

Well, (most of you know this)

But there was the time, while performing in Canada (Edmonton Fringe I think) that Gazzo entered into the Street Performing HAll of Fame. A kid on the pitch was really giving him a hard time. Yelling, screaching over punch lines, etc. So, Gazz gets the kid up on stage and asks him to help in a trick. He gets the kid to rase his hands over his head, then pulls the kids pants down, but
the kid wasnt wearing underwear.
Dan Looker said it was the biggest,longest laugh a street performer has ever recived.

Well for those of you who want to know the outcome, the kids parents who were in the crowd were lawers and the Mounties were also in the crowd. I beleive Gazzo was asked to leave the country of Canada and not return.
Peter Gross said he and Butterfly Man had to sneak Gazz back in the USA.

Is this true Robert?

[The Pretty Good]

Ok I was doing a show in the rain in Cambridge. I was on top of the phone booth there which is less than a foot across and higher than 6' tall. So there I was no top of this phone booth on a rola-bola and I was about to "attempt" to juggle knives. Needless to say I was scared(real scared). After about a twenty minute build up I finally stated "now dont blink this dosent last long" and out of nowhere this guy yells "It's lasted too long already!" I almost fell over.

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www.angelfire.com/ma3/brendantheprettygood

[Greg Moreland]

I'm new to this forum concept, so I'm putting up this trial post...

While I'm at it, I'll pass along the best "comics only" heckler line I've ever heard. (Meaning it's an inside joke aimed at garnering 2 isolated laughs from the 2 other performers at the back of the room.)
My friend Ed Newcommer had little tolerance for stock heckler lines like "Hey pal, knock it off, I could pee on you from here", so one night when I saw him confronted by a heckler I heard him say, "Hey pal, knock it off, I could pee on myself from here..."

[Blake]

Well This was a silent show but I think it counts.

I was performing My statue show In Edinburgh last year and The cider majician with the eye patch had taken to coming into my show regularly to say hi and make the crowd giggle.

I had a rather large edge and was cheeky enough when he turned his back to mime the "hes had too much to drink" signal behind his back. With the timing of a master the old jock turns and poduces a bottle of cider from his jacket kindly offering me a tipple.
The laugh was so loud I believe it disturbed Mr Rich's show on the west parliament square.

This guy could produce about six bottles of full cider from his jacket at any one time. And at the speed he drank them its lucky he had a few spare.
BB

[Butterfly Man]

The following two instances from my own performing experiences are hard to forget:
The best line delivered by a heckler to me was during my first year as a performer on the original stage at Pier 39. As I remember, I had a fairly decent crowd and from the upper balcony a guy yells out “ Hey, I just saw you on TV!” ... now, a small local station had just run a human interest story on me and “Real People” had filmed a small spot of me fire eating as well, so I kinda beamed with pride for a second thinking he had seen one of those segments ... but then much to my chagrin and the audience’s delight, the guy continued “ ... and I turned it off!” ... ouch!

On the other hand, a few years later, I was a well seasoned veteran performing at a stand up comedy club in Kelowna B.C. I was hired mainly because the touring comics were being eaten alive by an out-of-work logging community (rumor had it that Carrie “5,000 sailors can’t be wrong” Snow had left the stage in tears the week before). I had yet to be announced and was pushing my prop case onto the stage when out of the boisterous crowd someone yelled “Fuck You!”. I stopped what I was doing and walked slowly to the front of the stage and leaned into the mic and retorted “ Fuck me, and you’ll never go back to women!” It was my finest hour...

[scot]

I just started doing street shows in may so New Years eve was the best street day I had. The hecklers were leading us into all kinds of funny stuff. One kid came into my show, said, "Hold on, check this out" ; did a standing back tuck. I didn't know what to say. The crowd was quiet and chuckled a little because of me reacting in silence. He walked back to his spot in the crowd. I stared at him blankly and he stepped back into the circle, "You've gotta admit, I made your show (gesturing a centimeter with thumb and forefinger) this much better." Salvation!. "Now go home and make your girlfriend's night this much better." As with any of these, the timing is everything. A solid 45 seconds of laughter followed

[nick nickolas]

In Edinburgh quite a few years ago in the late night ampitheatre show where you've got minutes to 'cut it'....
A fat bloke walks slowly on to the stage when suddenly out of the silence a Northern English voice bellowed out"Fuck Off You Fat Cunt!!" to laughter and applause from the audiance.....
The comic didn't bat, carried on slowly walking ....picked up the mike,calmly replying "Sir,the reason I am so fat is 'cos everytime I fucked your mother she gave me a biscuit"
I don't know who it was but it was very very funny............

[Zoltan]

Not totally a heckling line, but nonetheless...

I was at an outdoor festival a few years back. At the end of the day the performers would typically gather by the bar near the exit, have a few drinks, discuss shining moments from the day, wave goodbye to the patrons, bullshit, etc.

We had the standard cast of performers - a balancer, juggling team, magician (me), musicians, etc. Anyway, this one family with two small kids (maybe 10 or 12, one boy, one girl) stopped to tell a number of us that they had enjoyed our shows during the day. The young boy pipes up, "And I can juggle too - wanna see?" One of the jugglers indulgently says, "Sure."

You can probably see where this is going, but wait. The kid digs into his backpack and produces three balls, and does some pretty good three-ball stuff. He says, "Wanna see more?" and without waiting, digs out another balls and does some pretty good four-ball stuff. Bear in mind, this kid is maybe 12 at the most.

The father's smiling indulgently, and taps the young girl on the shoulder. She goes into the pack and digs out another two balls, and now these two kids are doing a team six-ball routine, with behind the back passes, high throws, you name it. We, the performers, are completely silent.

Then Andy Offut Irwin (musician) quietly says, "Boy, I'm sure glad I'm not a juggler..."

[scot]

A story of a heckler line gone ar, wrong:

I saw this guy at a place and he was kind of funny and stuff. He did a thing with a joke and it was nice. So I wanted to try it.

I did 76% of the necessary preparation and went out pretty confident. Then some loser said something not very nice to me. I beamed. Told him, "I have a friend or something, but not really, I know, I met, I saw this (not the most eloquent way to say it but I had him hooked in that Barret sort of way) guy who said something for me to let hecklers like you, sir, know." (I'm paraphrasing and shortening for the internet) I pulled a slip of paper out of my pocket and read it to myself (luckily) before belting it out. It had my dentist's phone number on it!!!! I casually crumpled it up and looked in my other pockets for it. I ended up calling off the show in a farneth style and they both left.

Funny side note: The actual note was written on the back of the dentist phone number paper.
Funny side note to the side note: I had previously switched dentists so it wasn't even my current dentist.
say levy
scoto the funny person!!! (actual way I sign things all the time (people tell me I'm weird))

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The Lonnie Anderson of juggling,
Scot Nery

[Todd]

Doing the Ren Fest circut in the South gets you a higher than normal ratio of drunks in your crowd. Most red-necks going to the Ren Fest want to see a guy fall off a horse, eat a turkey leg and drink over-priced beers.Add that lovely Southern Humidity and wow its drunk city by 4pm.
Ok so, doing a show at a Festival in Florida. Nice, big crowd, smiling, laughing, only one drunk. Cool. Only he is really, really drunk. And very vocal. No problem. Doing the show and tossing out comments designed to squash the drunk. He's not clever, just vocal, and the audience seems to be enjoying my retorts. It becomes this game between him and I, but it begins to go on too long, and begins to eat into the show. I've got no problem with playing with obnoxious audience members, but this was getting a bit too much, and ignoring him was'nt going to work, because he had a great voice and was able to project. So what do you do? I was in the middle of a rolla bolla balance trick that I adapted for the rolling globe when it hit me. Why squash him? Just honestly get the audience on my side.
I jumped off my globe, got the drunks attention and said,
" Bill, this is my job. Ok? And my job is like being the host of a great big party and all the people in the audience are my guests. OK? And its up to me to see that my guests are having a good time.
See all those people behind you? They are my guests too, but I cant get to those people, I cant reach or connect to them, because Im too busy having to deal with a drunk at my party taking my attention away from them.
So listen, ok, take the lamp shade off your head, get off my living room table, and chill for a bit, so I can make sure that those other people are having a good time? Ok? Then you and I can play and call each other names, but let me do my job for them too."
Ok, so I may have been too nice, because he was still chatty, but not as chatty, but what I noticed, and saw reflected in the hat-pass, was an understanding in the other audiecnce members as to what my duty to them as a performer was. One guy dropped cash in my hat and said he was sorry the drunk was so loud, but he thought it was cool to hear why I was a performer, and how I felt about the audience.

[Little Joe]

The best heckler dealings I ever saw was the Butterfly man in front of the big church in Halifax when the festival was really cool and it was a huge crowd on the hill, there, and this homeless dude shuffled in all drunk and everything and just sort of swaggered around, scaring the tourists and swearing at the kids and Robert was just hangin back, waiting. Then this guy took his damn pants off and starts grabbing little girls (a potentially nasty little outcome). And he stood in the middle of the circle and started singing some old Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash tune. But the guy forgot the words. So Robert goes up behind him takes his own pants off puts an arm around him and finished the song.
It was the coolest shit I ever saw.

Love,
Little Joe, sold-out and trumped-up
p.s. Hey all y'all I hope you're still laughing. I miss the street.

[GianDeau]

Ok, so I'll make this a combo "hype yourself blatantly"/"heckler lines" offering.

During set up for one of our Pickled Punks shows at a Renn Fest, I was backstage and Steve, the other Punk, was minding his own business sweeping some streamers from the previous act off the stage. Steve was wearing a cavalier hat and, as it was end-of-August hot, he took it off while he was sweeping. Now, Steve is balding, and as he removed the hat some guy whose wits were fueled by one too many beers, shouts out, "Hey, now we know why you wear a hat!" I heard this and got pissed off by the unprovoked attack on my friend's appearance. I walked out and asked who had said it,the guy raised his hand proudly. I looked him square in the crotch and replied, "Hey, now we know why you wear pants!"

~Stephon

[Brett Copes]

Sean from "Sean and Dave-Rude Fools Juggling" goes over to the Juggling School at The Renaissance Faire....
Kids are juggling, one such kid, under 10 catches his eye. Child is juggling his ass off. Sean, juggler for 14 years, begins to talk to the kid and exchanging juggles, tricks, and what not. Kid is still kicking ass.
Sean begins to let the kid know that he is way ahead of the curve, that there is money to be made, he could have a shoe.
The kid says "nah".
Sean defends the buisness by saying its respectable, that he is really good and that Sean has been doing it most of his life and really loves it....its a REAL job.
Kid looks Sean in the eye and says....
"Own or Rent?"

(as told to me)
--B