When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.
For comedians, we're all kind of tweeting our thoughts instead of spending time developing them. You can gauge how good a joke might be by how many times it gets retweeted, but it takes discipline to go back through the tweets and then develop jokes from them.
I love comedians. They're my community.
Everything will be seen on your computer or BlackBerry or whatever devices we will be seeing in the future. Comedians will put their content on whatever server and send it to you specifically. We may even lose the live performance.
I'm happy to say that I'm a lesbian in the world. I know there are people who don't want to be called women comedians, but I think it gives a path to the fact that we live in extremely patriarchal times.
I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'
Whatever talent I had, I'm sure it helped that my parents were in the business and that I grew up around actors, comedians and directors.
Honestly, it's hard to learn about comedy from comedians. Comedy is not something that you necessarily learn or can imitate. You're funny or you're not, and you hope what you're doing is funny.
People think comedians don't do drama. Comics are drama. And what is drama, as opposed to comedy? It's all the same to me.
Obviously those who burn to be professional jesters mean that they want to be successful comedians. And those are always an elite, microscopic portion of the population. But oh, how they try.
I think comedians should focus on what makes them happy, what art form fulfills them the most. Don't be calculated about it and say, 'Okay, I'm gonna tweet, and I'm gonna podcast, and I'm gonna do standup, and one of those things is going to lead me to my own TV show.' I don't think that should be the goal.
I used to like writing for comedians - I enjoyed the challenge of making other people funny.
Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny and self-reflective.
I have worked with a great many comedians as opposed to comics, although I have worked with comics as well, I make the distinction.
Because I'm around comedians all the time, in my downtime I tend not to watch comedy. Something the whole family enjoys is 'You've Been Framed!' It satisfies all of us. It's universal, and we all laugh a lot.
Comedians are sociologists. We're pointing out stuff that the general public doesn't even stop to think about, looking at life in slow-motion and questioning everything we see.
A lot of people tend to glorify the role of satire and comedians. They put them up as role models, as fighters for the truth and against tyranny, and I think that's overrated.
There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.
The comedians who I admire that are really good, they always take it to a deep psychological place.
I feel like a lot of comedians do have that deep, dark thing. I have my stuff, but I don't go to that dark place. Things are just way too good.
Comedians sometimes forget that there's an audience. You gotta be conscious that you're performing for other human beings.
When I see a good singer, I get teary-eyed. Part of it is jealousy because all comedians are frustrated rock stars. That's a fact.
I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.
Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they're uncomfortable laughs.
I mean, the death in the late eighties and early nineties really shook out a lot of hacks. The pond just sort of dried up for a lot of really bad comedians.
When I was on TV in the '80s, I wasn't thinking, 'There's a 10-year-old kid watching this and in 15 years, he's gonna be doing stuff that was influenced by me.' I was trying to get my five minutes together. So now that those people are comedians and they're influenced by me - it's bizarre.
Who knew Rob Lowe was funny? On 'Parks and Rec,' we've got some of the funniest comedy writers, some of the funniest comedians in the world working there. And if anything, we don't just effuse to one another and be like, 'Oh, Rob Lowe's really funny,' if he wasn't.
There are comedians that I like. I think a lot of it, you just figure out on your own. It's definitely one of those things that you get good at by doing it a lot. But I like Jim Gaffigan. Patton Oswalt. Janeane Garofalo.
I always think everyone else is funnier than me. I look at other comedians and I say, 'I wish I was that good.' People think I'm funny, and I say, 'I'm not.'
Professional comedians, surprisingly, have a lack of humor. They're insensitive to the insanity of our times.
I'm such a comedy fan that I just love laughing and so admire comedians who have brought me joy.
In general, comedians are attracted to vice.
Why would a lazy guy become a parent of five? Then again, why would creative people who inherently don't like change and criticism become writers, actors, or comedians? There's something about this process. I joke about it: My kids have made me a better person, and I only need, like, 34 more of them to be a really good guy.
As comedians, we are all laughing because life is so horrible. Life is so difficult, and I cope with it by making jokes about absolutely everything.
Comedians want to be rock legends for a day - that sounds fun to them.
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.
