I definitely am a performer, and there are different styles of stand-up; I mean, some people are writers and they get onstage to get jokes out, and that's definitely not what I do. I like to just go up and, if I'm telling a story about someone, I'll play his or her part.
In improv, the whole thing is that it is a relationship between the two people, as a back and forth. In standup, you don't really want to be listening to what somebody is saying; you want to project your jokes into their face.
If you have doubts about someone, lay on a couple of jokes. If he doesn't find anything funny, your radar should be screaming. Then I would say be patient with people who are negative, because they're really having a hard time.
When I was very young, I didn't really write my own material. I just memorized other peoples' jokes. Established comics, like Stanley Myron Handelman and people like that. And then, for every comic, you develop your own style after a while.
Really, I'm pretty laid-back, always cracking jokes.
You can be funny and say what you mean; these ideas are not mutually exclusive. Some of the best jokes came from people who meant it. See: Pryor, Bruce, Carlin, etc.
Any time you can build jokes around a story that resonates on an emotional level, it is going to have a big impact.
Awards shows have devolved into self-parodies - liberals in limos, corny insider jokes delivered by the hosts among bad teleprompter reading from the some of the best thespians on the planet.
A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.
You can write jokes at any point of the day. Jokes are not that hard to write, or they shouldn't be when it is literally your job.
I like grown-up comedy, where it's about character and attitude and life as opposed to obvious gross-out and jokes.
I learned to think about religion, race and sex through the complex and often unattractive medium of jokes.
I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.
I've included these little jokes and mysteries in my writing for the amusement of readers.
When you have a couple hundred people in one huge space, that's gonna lead to jokes and it's a breeding ground for practical jokes and teasing.
What I'm doing in the work I do, I prefer not to just have a series of jokes. It's nice when audiences can connect with the characters as well.
I have no idea what my best material is. Different people like different things. I'll say this: The political stuff gets the press, but the relationship jokes sell all the seats.
As you get older, as you become more sensitive, feel more, it becomes harder to make jokes. You censor yourself.
I love practical jokes and humor. That there's frankly no joke that I don't think is funny. I love practical jokes, but I don't like being scared.
Every sketch goes through a rewrite stage where a group of writers sits around a table and pitches more jokes and ideas for the piece.
I am a bit of a Cheap Pete, but I do spend a fortune on books and false moustaches and practical jokes.
A friend of mine jokes that I have a painstaking royalty complex. Like maybe I was a duke in a past life.
In my early writing, all of my characters were exactly the same person. They all spoke the same, made the same types of jokes, reacted the same, etc. I think they were all just me in disguise.
I think very long and hard about every possibly offensive joke I want to make. I really hate mean humor and would hate to make anyone reading my jokes feel truly bad.
Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon.
I am constantly the butt of jokes.
I take a lot of pride in managing to be funny without having a victim at the end of my joke. I laugh at a really dark joke as much as the next person, but my jokes, I feel, don't have to hurt anybody to be really funny.
My Instagram got deleted a lot of times. I used to do rough jokes and curse a lot.
I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.
My first job on the radio was writing jokes for a Baltimore DJ called Johnny Walker, who was sort of a '70s era shock jock who all the teenage boys listened to in my school.
I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.
I'm 100 percent convinced that Pablo Escobar was a human being. And he was a very interesting one. For sure, he was a very, very, very mean and awful human being in many senses, but he wasn't an alien. He was a person. He had friends; people laughed at his jokes. And he was a very contradictory person as well.
My whole family is very sarcastic and constantly making jokes.
Way back in my mid-20s, I started making notes. I would just jot things down: lists of street names, songs, peculiar turns of speech, jokes, whatever.
I used to watch 'Coming to America' every day after school. I have full-on long-running inside jokes with friends and family about different scenes in that movie alone. Also, my brother and I loved 'The Golden Child,' so, yeah: I was a huge fan of Eddie Murphy growing up.
There's a million jokes about what's going on with Batman and Robin. It's a classic thing to call out the homoerotic nature of the men's adventure show.