I'm not a standup, but I play one on TV.
When I got a part in 'All American Girl,' in 1994, I remember thinking, 'Now I have a series, I'm not going to need to do standup,' but every night I'd go out afterward and get onstage somewhere.
I do standup every week in L.A. at the Laugh Factory and the Improv.
As a standup comedian, I've worked almost every New Year's Eve of my adult life. It's the best-paying night of the year.
Hopefully standup will become special again.
My standup is years and years of me working things out on the road. I'm really proud of it! A lot of it is about, well... I don't know why I feel this way, but I feel like every special or show I do is some variation on how I feel like I'm not a girl, not yet a woman.
'Deal or No Deal' works nicely with my ADD/ADHD symptoms. I show up, meet the contestants, and move around the set. I'm not stuck behind a pedestal reading trivia questions. I've always had problems sitting still and listening for long periods of time. The show spares me these challenges. I can live in the moment. It's like a standup act.
In my standup work, I always do these characters, older people who are just off to the side. It's easier to write a story about the guy who made it to the top, but the middle is so much more interesting, so much more murky.
Standup is a form of therapy. It is OK to tell problems to your audience as long as you are being honest and not boring them. I tell them that I am saving $75 an hour when I talk to them instead of a therapist.
It's still a soft R, but when I watch other people's standup, I'm dumbfounded that people call me dirty. That's only because I did family television.
You really have to be ambitious and have that drive to really become well known and successful as a standup.
Acting is completely different from the standup world. You have these 12- or 14-hour days, but you have a great time doing it. It's like hanging out with your friends.
I have yet to see one of those Comedy Central shows with multiple standup comics that doesn't include someone the size of the Hindenburg.
It may have lost its special-ness forever and the clubs might not being doing well but I think standup is in the best shape it has been in a long time.
I love standup and I haven't given it up.
I really never had any ambitions to be a standup comic. I was talked into it by guys that I used to work out with.
If it were just a dream to be famous, then I probably would have died a really quick death, because there is nothing about me that equals fame. I'm not a standup comedian. I don't sing.
The standup thing has been really fun, really seeing the United States instead of reading about it.
This is my chance to get out there and appease the fans of my music as well as show people that I do do standup comedy because a lot of people don't know that's where I started.
Getting the approval of Ric Flair is the wrestling world's version of Johnny Carson calling you over to the desk after you just crushed a standup set on 'The Tonight Show.'
Both the benefit and the terrifying aspect of standup is when it's going poorly, you've only yourself to blame. There's no one to bail you out. But when it's going great, all that approval is for you.
The misconception is that standup comics are always on. I don't know any really funny comics that are annoying and constantly trying to be funny all the time.
To say it very honestly, removed from ego, standup is just a thing that I understood, a God-given ability.
I will stay in the car until the last minute that I'm going to jump out and do a standup or jump out and do some interviews.
Tracy Ullman, I grew up watching her shows and standup and improv and specials. Bette Midler and Whoopi Goldberg. They inspire me to do it all. I always wanted to do it all; I never wanted to be put in a box.
I started doing standup because of Hugh Grant's best-man speech in 'Four Weddings,' which is basically a standup routine.
The podcast movement was really a creative survival mechanism for standup comics.
I don't enjoy writing newspaper articles any more than people like reading them. I'm a standup comic, not a journalist, although sometimes onstage I will say: 'What else is in the news?' Writing is work, which I'm not comfortable with.
I thought I could see how standup worked. I never thought of being an actor - or anything else, really - but I thought, 'I can see how you get on stage and tell jokes.'
Louis C. K. is one of my all time favorite standup comedians.
I still do standup.
There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.
Podcasts feature comedians being as funny as they can be in a non-censored situation. It's really akin to standup in a way. When you go see a comedian in standup, that is the most pure, unadulterated form of their art.
I even get tired performing standup, which is normally a low-impact exercise in futility but looks hard the way I do it. That's why I take a lot of breaks, often stopping in the middle of a joke to catch my breath, or blame the crowd for not laughing before the punchline.
As a standup performer, I'm onstage, and it's important how the audience is looking at me. I'm looking at whether they're leaning forward or not, those types of things. You read an energy. And it's the same thing in a scene with other actors.
Richard Lewis has this incredible ability to look like he's just... you know it's an act that's been honed. What you have to do in standup is create spontaneity, somehow; even though you've done this act a million times, you gotta look like you're almost just thinking of it now, to make it entertainer.
