Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.
As a former stand-up comic from my University of Michigan days, the opportunity to participate in a Friars Club roast was bucket-list stuff.
The thing that's changed the way I do my stand-up act is having kids and getting older and wiser and smarter. There might be a joke or two in the past that I wish I hadn't done, but in the past, you can't have it back.
Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.
Wikipedia is a strange thing. Whoever gets there first, you know, they decide. Like the picture: You can't choose it! You can't be like, 'You know, I hate that picture of me doing stand-up from 2005 - that doesn't exemplify who I am.' You take it down, and someone puts it back up.
When I began doing stand-up, it took me a long time to get an hour's worth of material together.
I would love the opportunity to create my own program. I feel like a TV show with a format of monologue with lots of sketches thrown in could be really fun. But you know, that may never happen. Minimally, I just want to keep making stand-up.
When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.
When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.
Lesbians are likely to be drawn to stand-up, if only because it's cheaper to produce and therefore more accessible for women. But the very form of stand-up is masculine.
You know, it wasn't even that I'm a funny guy, I just loved stand-up comedy and I wanted to do it. It was one of the few things in my life that I knew I was going to be able to do, and I also felt as though I'd be able to do it the way I wanted to do it.
I never saw myself not being a stand-up. That was my plan.
I didn't really like the aloneness of doing stand-up.
I don't have any ego about it, but I find there's not a great work ethic in show business. A lot of people are in it to make money, and coming from stand-up, you have to work so hard because almost nothing works, and if you lose the audience for three minutes, you're dead.
If I did a talk show, this would allow me to speak on what's happening at that moment. I can be current, and I get to flex my stand-up muscle but stay at home without doing the traveling.
I didn't want to be nobody, and that was the only way I could be somebody was to do stand-up.
There is never hesitation about doing stand-up. It's just me doing my thing. Unlike being in a band or a play or something, I don't have to rely on anyone else but me.
Because I was surrounded by so much negativity at some point that it took me going back and doing stand-up to realize, you know, people really like me.
I'm a stand-up comic. Anything else I do besides that is a plus, but stand-up comedy is what I do, it's what I've been doing and it's what I'm going to keep doing.
Stand-up is what I am; stand-up is what made me.
I'm not a comedian, I'm not a stand-up and I don't come from a comedy background. I am an actor, but I've had a very fortunate foray into comedy, and it seems to have become a bit of a strength, and you can't complain when you become known for something.
When you snatch little pieces of other people's lives and try to palm them off as your own, that's more disgusting than anything. Robin Williams is a huge thief. Denis Leary is a huge thief. His whole stand-up career is based on Bill Hicks, a brilliant guy who died years ago.
As a result of being on 'SVU' and 'Homicide' all these years, there's a lot of people who don't know I used to do stand-up. When they see me onstage, it's a surprise, and it's revelatory. I'm happy because I can do my old material, so everybody wins.
London seems to be a town with a lot of comedy fans and people that really enjoy stand-up.
I think comics in New York are interested in being comics. And there're comics in L.A. who are touring comics, who are certainly more interested in stand-up, but a lot of L.A. stand-ups are really looking to do something else.
I was 18 when I started. I was hanging out with some friends and they asked if I had tried stand-up before. I hadn't, but I thought: 'What the hell?' So I went to an open mic night, and I liked it.
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
The first time I did stand-up I was 17, and I was really a stand-up once I was 19 in New York, and now I'm 41, and I still feel like I haven't found myself onstage. Earlier in my career, I was really tight, really together, and knew who I was and I was confident.
90% of every art form is garbage - dance and stand-up, painting and music. Focus on the 10% that's good, suck it up, and drive on.
I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.
I think right now is the best time for stand-up, ever. I sincerely do.
See, I'm totally fearless. I got my chops in the most, like, dangerous comedy atmosphere. If you can make it in New York, you can really do stand-up anywhere.
I went to stand-up when my rock n' roll dreams weren't coming true. I knew it wasn't going to happen when I was in a New Wave band in 1992 - at the height of grunge. Then I heard No Doubt's 'Spiderwebs' and I said, 'Well, we're done.' They did - and succeeded at - what we were trying to do.
Stand-up comedy is a sickness. Who wouldn't want a room full of people laughing and screaming at you just because of who you are? Nothing is as good, except maybe having a baby.
You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from 'Star Search' or 'Survivor' or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.
With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.
