I can’t imagine a time I don’t want to do standup.
I don’t like to post fresh standup material, because I want to use it in a special. The stuff I like to post online I like to be off-the-cuff moments.
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.
The demand for standup in the eighties was created by how easy it was to exploit ‘comedians’ and create very cheap television programming.
Standup is just dirtier, a far more risque kind of thing.
We’ve all seen comedians look like they’re reaching just a little bit too much for the laugh. This is counterproductive. The conceit of standup is that it is effortless, which makes the prospect of generating new comedy a tricky one: you are trying to be funny without looking like you are trying to be funny.
I never really saw myself as a standup comedian. I always just thought of myself as someone who used the eight minutes or 10 minutes she was allotted and had a blast.
I did a standup show called ‘Show Me the Funny,’ so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn’t really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.
The energy of the metal is what I’ve always loved and the energy I do on stage with standup, I mean, I’m not Metallica, but I’ve always extremely attracted and driven by that energy and the thought-provoking lyrics and drive. That’s an attitude every standup show I go in. I go in to crush your face.
I personally knew and worked with Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy hired me to open for him at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas when I was a 19-year-old standup comedian, and that’s where my fascination with his incredible story began.
I never did standup before. It just looked like it was really hard, looked like there was like up days and down days – and I’m too emotionally unstable for that. I need to always be funny and always be loved.
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.
I don’t do standup.
I am a standup comedian who has performed comedy in the Middle East in front of thousands of Muslims. And believe it or not, they laughed at plenty, especially when we poked fun at local culture. The Lebanese loved it when you would make fun of their driving and how, in Lebanon, a red light is just a suggestion to stop.
As a comedian, it really gelled when I started doing standup. Because standup is so much about bravery, especially in the early days. There is no doubt that it is going to go terribly for you over and over and over again. But you cannot get funny without bombing.
My wife and I take what we call our Friday comedy day off. We watch standup comics on TV. The raunchier the better. We love Eddie Izzard.
I joined a campus competition, as I felt I could do comedy, and I won. Then I started doing standup gigs in 2009 while completing my law degree, but I never told my parents. They only discovered a few years later.
Until I started doing standup, there were some very bleak days.
I’ve sold shows based on my standup twice to CBS, but they’ve never gone past the script stage. TV is very competitive.
Getting on stage doing standup anytime is hard. You never know what you’re going to say. You live and die on your next word.
I never decided I wanted to be an actor. I just started doing standup because I love standup. Everything else has sort of been these tiny steps leading to this.
When I said I could beat Alexander Gustafsson in a standup fight, people laughed at me. They thought, ‘No way.’ But I believe in what I’m seeing every day.
I have an ElliptiGO. It’s a standup bicycle. You don’t pedal; you stride on it. It allows me to have the same striding motion as running without the impact.
When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.
I saw Chris Rock do standup before he was famous. I was just a teenager. That will always be special to me.
Every performer I talk to will, with different words, talk about the sanctity of a good standup show, how it can really feel spiritual. When everybody is laughing, fixed on the same thing, you feel like you transcend yourself.
I do standup once a year, when I host the CMAs.
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.
It’s not a hard job, radio or standup, there are hard parts of it, sure. There are guys who do ten hours of construction a day don’t want to hear me talk about my job being difficult. Compared to what a lot of people do, this is genuinely easy.
I would hate to be a standup comedian for ever. It would not be good. It would be the worst.
You don’t know that you’re not a solo artist or standup comedian or drag cabaret artist until you try it.
A standup set ends on a buildup of tension and subsequent release for a big laugh.
I listen to a lot of standup comics.
With standup, I was thrown into the deep end at a very early age, without being able to swim. Acting was the same.
If I was doing standup I would worry that someone would think I was being preachy, whereas, with a character, it always tends to be the opposite of what I think. You can get away with things.
GSP is at the top of my list in knowing how to use strategy, how to bring an opponent out of his game, how to beat a guy without taking a beating. And he’s good in standup and good at grappling.
NBC anchor Brian Williams is a standup comic in disguise.
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.
In standup, you look for a common ground that people have.
My first summer in college, I interned for Arena Stage in D.C. and taught a disastrous class on standup comedy to middle schoolers at the Arena Stage camp. I had never taught anything before, and needless to say, I quickly lost control of the class.
I’m a standup comedian who can’t drive. I have never learned. I don’t trust my hand-eye coordination. You’re looking at someone who once dropped a cricket ball on to his own head during a routine catching practice; I don’t think it’s a great idea to have me in control of a high-speed metal death robot.
I had a band before I did standup – I’ve always done music. I got known for being funny, and that’s how I make a living – and from acting – but I never stopped playing and producing and recording music.
If you like standup and decide that it’s overtaking your life and want to hate it, watch 1,000 standup comedians who are trying to get on a TV show.
The experience of watching other standups is either: 1) you see your mate doing standup and it’s really bad and you’re heartbroken, or 2) You see your mate doing really well and it’s heartbreaking.
When I started doing standup when I was 17, I was talking about being Indian and specifically ethnic jokes. Straightforward stuff that was fairly ignorant that I knew would get the laugh. It wasn’t flipping stereotypes; it was using them.
If there are things that are off limits, why would you do standup?
If someone doesn’t like a comedian that’s fine; a lot of people probably don’t like my standup, and that’s fine. But I think that the problem is people want you to get in trouble. That’s the issue.
I did standup comedy. I opened once for Jay Leno.
I often run teaching down in my standup, but I had some great years, and it’s a great job. It represented a place where I knew what I wanted to do but didn’t have the courage.
It’s a unique fraternity to be a standup. I think everybody understands, you know, opportunity, and everybody – especially at the top – are genuinely rooting for you.
That’s what’s great about standup comedy: the instant feedback. You get up on stage, you tell a joke, if it doesn’t work, come back the next day with a better version of it.
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.’
I guess standup is really painting pictures with words – especially for me, as I describe quite fantastical, visual things. My art teacher, Dexter Dalwood, always seemed to think they were linked. We bonded over our love of Vic Reeves.
Standup led me to acting because I liked standup, and I saw people on a stage, and the closest, nearest thing to me was doing plays. It was like, that’s the same thing as standup – people are on a stage; they’re being seen and saying things – so, because of my love of standup, I moved towards acting.
I had a crisis of confidence and ran away from being a standup for a while.
I have always told my family that I don’t want my birthday to be celebrated and that they shouldn’t get me anything, even though if they didn’t I’d probably write a standup routine about it.
