Big Tip, Back Up, Shut Out

“I may have to get a back up career.” I mull over what I might do if I don’t make it as an artist. What if I lose my eyes? I figure a career as a stand-up comic is a safe bet and try out a few jokes on an imagined audience — of course with my eyes shut tight.

Big Tip is my first work that grapples with the economics of being an artist and the anxiety that that produces. After the initial “success” of Take Off and Dressing Up colleagues in the art world suggested I become a stand-up comic because, ”Susan you’re so funny.” Although pleased to be “entertaining”, I thought the suggestion absurd.

—Susan Mogul

“I know of no way to reduce the fantastic density of Mogul’s chatter into a few lines of a review and still retain her hilarity… Her extroversion is so extreme that her story leaps out from the vacuum around her, and off the screen entirely.”

– Artforum, 1976

“… a portrayal of the disastrous failure of her (Mogul’s) personal fantasy of shining as a stand-up comedian — a metaphor for the solitude of the artist.”

— Visions du Reel Film Festival Catalog, 2009