Comedian Elon Gold has a holiday gift for the world.
“Guess who my number one favorite people are,” Gold says in the opening lines of his new comedy special. He is teasing the answer bit by bit, each night of Hanukkah. The 32 minute comedy special, “Sets in the City: Elon Gold’s Favorite People” is his Holiday gift to the world: the gift of laughter.
Gold calls it his “comedy version of ‘White Lotus.’” In the HBO show, they set up a dead body and then at the end, you find out who died. Similarly, for “Sets in the City,” you have to wait until the end to find out who his favorite people are. But the week-long release is not merely eight teasers.
Each night, the 52-year-old comedian dives into what he loves about particular ethnic groups of people. And in true Gold fashion, it includes his talent for crowd work and a knack for accents.
“What I love about this special is not just that I did it on my own, but that it has this relevant and beautiful message of tolerance for all, but it’s through jokes,” Gold told the Journal. The premise is that Gold has a favorite group of people, and one by one, he discusses why he loves each but (for the purpose of the joke) is not his number one.
Gold’s last comedy special “Chosen & Taken” premiered on Netflix in 2014 and is currently streaming on Amazon. But unlike then, this new mini-special was completely self-produced and released. Rather than getting caught in the development hell (a real Hollywood industry term) that stalls the production of many television shows and films, Gold opted to do what many comedians are doing these days: self-release.
“Comedians get to go direct-to-consumer now and can cut out the middle man,” Gold said. “And that’s why comedians like me and Sam Morrill, Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir have gone straight to YouTube.” Morrill’s 45-minute special, “Up on the Roof” racked up over 2 million views just on YouTube.
Gold lamented that the streaming executives these days aren’t taking risks on up and coming comedians. That’s the exact opposite of what HBO did in the 1980s—making up-and-coming comedians household names, among them Chris Rock, Howie Mandel, Sam Kinison, Andrew Dice Clay and Ellen DeGeneres.
“[Executives] are just taking the lazy route and taking the biggest stars of comedy and giving them specials instead of discovering talent, which is what HBO did in the eighties and nineties and was so exciting to watch,” Gold said.
“Sets in the City” features bits that Gold has been working on for the last few years mixed with bits he wrote in the days leading up to the performance. He also said that some of the bits were improvised on the stage while filming at New York’s Comedy Cellar in Greenwich Village, about a 40 minute ride on the Subway from his native Bronx.
“From the white supremacists to Kanye to everything that’s out there, this is my answer to them: love and a message of tolerance and acceptance of all. And it couldn’t be more timely right now.”
And on the eighth day of Hanukkah, which happens to fall on Christmas Day, Gold will release the whole special on YouTube. In the meantime, Gold will keep audiences laughing at the edge of their seat, wondering who his favorite people of the night will be.
“I just wanted to put out a new special with this really unique and sort of important theme, which is just mocking hatred,” Gold said. “I love mocking, I’ve always said this, but I love finding the funny in hate because you get to expose the ignorance of bigotry.”
Gold will be releasing snippets of his mini-special via his Instagram page, and has agreed to let the Journal release simultaneously on Instagram as well.
“The first people I make fun of are Jews and then I make fun of everyone else,” Gold said. “But I do it from the perspective that I love all people. And that’s one of my favorite lines in the special. ‘I love all people—just not equally.’ I don’t love my immediate family members equally. I love them all sort of differently. And it’s okay to love people not equally. It’s okay, as long as you have no hatred in your heart.”
You can watch Elon Gold’s “Sets in the City” throughout Hanukkah at his Instagram page: www.instagram.com/elongold
The special will be released in full on his YouTube page on December 25th: https://www.youtube.com/@ElonGoldComedy
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