Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler #7: Paul F. Tompkins

Aisha Tyler: As a comic, and I wonder if you feel this way too, you acquire an affinity for the experience of a bad set. At least, you get inured to it over time.

Paul F. Tompkins: Oh yeah. Absolutely.

AT: I remember walking out and being like, “Oh, that was the worst set of my life. Oh my god, so funny.”

PFT: So much about um, about any kind of um, career in show business is rejection of one form or another. And the fact that you can get used to it and let it roll off of your back is insane. You know, its really crazy that… I never thought that that would happen. But its like, learning to not take it personally is a thing that just happens over time and its ah… and thank god that it does but…

AT: But to people that it doesn’t, I mean those are the people that wash out or get drug habits…

PFT: Absolutely…

AT: I mean, god bless them, because its not fun to constantly be told you’re not good enough.

PFT: No! No, no, no… you’re judged on your appearance and everything…

Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler #7: Paul F. Tompkins / 8/30/11

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn / Guest: Marc Maron

Jesse Thorn: To you it seemed like the idea that you were doing well seemed like you had an opportunity to do something, to go further, in order to do less well.

Marc Maron: Well, I think that what that is, is not so much less well as that, like, I get the, sometimes I get the feeling that like, when I do bits that work and uh, uh, especially like now, I just got done with like, really 6 months on the road, and I’m very tired of the bits but all the bits I’ve been doing for the last few months have evolved. And some of them are very new, and I’m very happy with them but, but there… I think its more about not self sabotage, but more like, “Okay, you think you know me? How about this now?”

JT: I feel that you were requiring something more of the audience rather…. That you see this as an opportunity to like, to push the audience more…

MM: Well I, I think that’s true and I’m not sure that I can exactly tell you where that comes from but a lot of what you’re saying… the agenda is not so much to find something that isn’t funny that, that I can try to make funny but it is how I write. And a lot of times when I’ve got an audience that has loved me for a half-hour and that I can do no wrong by, part of me thinks, “Well let’s see… this just happened… or I have not been able to process this on stage yet…” so these people like me, so let’s take it out. You know, let’s put it out there, and see if I can make it funny. And that doesn’t always work. But it’s really where the process starts.

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn / Guest: Marc Maron / 10.23.11

The AV Club Interview: Joan Rivers

AVC: The scenes where you’re doing standup are much rawer than people might expect.

Joan Rivers: Comedy is raw; that’s what comedy is today, and that’s where I’m at today. I always say—I go to play Cleveland, Ohio, and I always tell the interviewers, the ones doing the pre-press, “Don’t come for a walk down memory lane.” Those people shouldn’t come. It isn’t going to be grandma jokes. I think I even say that in the film, because my comedy has always been strong and outrageous, and that’s just where it is today.

------

AVC: In a movie, you don’t get to pick the take they use, but onstage, you’re essentially autonomous, unless the audience doesn’t want to hear it.

JR: If they really hate you, but you’re still autonomous enough that you can turn to another subject. Bill Cosby, who’s a friend, said, “I go out there and I work very hard for about five minutes. If they don’t like me, I go into automatic.” I go out there, I work very hard for five minutes, and if they don’t like me, I work harder. I go to the very end. I think, “Maybe you want to talk about… babies!” I punch the end.

The AV Club Interview: Joan Rivers / June 9, 2010

Tell it like it is: Comedian Mike Birbiglia's guide to better storytelling

Mike Birbiglia: A lot of times the best way to find out what the story is about is to walk onstage without having it completely nailed down. Because it’s in that moment of pressure where, almost, your party instincts kick in. Like where you’re at a party and someone’s like, “Hey Mike, tell that story from college about how you overslept for class and missed the final.” You get onstage and the audience is staring at you. You’re feeling out the crowd, and you’re feeling out what they’re identifying with, and you kind of go to that. That’s like taking the big piece of stone and chipping it into something that might be a bird, or might be a dog of some kind—it’s something, but it’s not a stone anymore.

Tell it like it is: Comedian Mike Birbiglia's guide to better storytelling / The Onion AV Club / By Steve Heisler / September 17, 2009

Charlie Rose: An hour with actor Jim Carrey

Charlie Rose: Where does the physicality come from that has been a hallmark of what you have done?

Jim Carrey: I think of my inner child as like this palsied maniac, you know, that pulls his lip over his head. That’s what I see. I see somebody trying to get attention. Again, it’s the miracle worker, you know, I identify with that character in ‘The Rainmaker’ so strongly.

CR: The conman?

JC: Absolutely. He’s not a conman. He wants to believe it.

CR: He believes what he wants to believe.

JC: He wants to believe and he also knows he has some kind of power… and we all have that power. But he uses it. And I use it. He wants to prove to everybody that he’s special, that he’s worthwhile… 

Charlie Rose: An hour with actor Jim Carrey / aprox. 23:13

How the Comedy Nerds Took Over

In 1992, I sat in a comedy club in Toronto with an 86-year-old Henny Youngman, and as he watched the performer onstage, he grew so enraged that he almost heckled his own opening act. A young comic was warming up the audience with “crowd work” — asking people where they’re from, working off their responses, etc. — and Youngman looked on with disdain. “ ‘Where you from?’ ‘Where you from?’ ” he muttered. “Who cares where they’re from? They paid to see you. Tell them some damn jokes.”

----------

Most comedians would like comedy to be considered an art. If so, they must also accept that every art needs an active amateur class. There are amateur-theater troupes, amateur-writer groups and weekend garage-rock bands — and now there is the comedy nerd. The conflict between club comics and alternative comedians will likely continue, as long as each side feels threatened by the existence of the other. The definition, however, of what it means to be a “real” comic will remain the same.

A real comic can’t stand the idea of not being funny or of an audience he can’t win over. In this respect, stand-up is a lot like boxing. Just as a fighter must believe, when he steps in the ring, that he is going to win by a knockout, a comedian has to believe, however improbably, that he is going to make every single person laugh. He understands intellectually that this may not happen, but he must be emotionally convinced that it will.

“Either you’re a comic or you’re not,” Henny Youngman told me before that show in 1992. “You prove yourself, and you make a living at it. Then you’re a comedian. Otherwise you’re a guy who thinks he’s a comic.”

How the Comedy Nerds Took Over / By ANDREW CLARK / The New York Times Magazine / April 20, 2012

Deathsquad: The Ice House Chronicles #20

Joe Rogan: Sometimes when someone says something to you, and they’re correcting you, they might be right, but that’s not why they’re correcting you. They’re correcting you because they’re psyched that they found something that you fucked up on. Or they’re psyched that they found something that’s a weakness in you. And its really hard to accept advice from those kind of people: people who say things cunty.

Like I am really sensitive to the fact that when I give some advice I try to, unless I’m like trying to defuse some crazy drunken social situation, I try to give them advice in the most humble and easy-going way of explaining that, you know, I have been through this exact same fuck up. "Just look at it like this, this is what helped me." I’m like really sensitive. 

But some people aren’t. And some people when they’re correcting you, the reason why they’re correcting you is because they want to make you feel like shit. They don’t like you shining in front of them, they don’t like something that’s good. And they might be right, they might have found something, but they’re so psyched that they found something wrong in your game. They’re psyched that they found something wrong in the way you tell jokes.

The real key to life is to turn those people into your employees. Every one of your haters, every one of your critics, or anyone who gives you maybe even good advice but maybe in a cunty voice. Those people work for you. And what they do is they give you even more incentive. They provide a free resource. The most important resource maybe ever, and that’s motivation. Those people provide motivation to prove them wrong. So these cunts actually work for you.

Deathsquad: The Ice House Chronicles #20

What I've Learned: Mel Brooks

You build a wall of comedy one brick at a time. If something doesn’t work, you’ve got to dismantle the wall and start all over again to make sure the bricks are interfacing and that they architecturally support the idea. The premise has to be solid or the comedy isn’t going to work. When something isn’t working in Act Two, sometimes you have to go back to a reference in Act One that wasn’t developed clearly enough to get the explosion you want later on.

Good comedy is never frivolous. It’s based on human experience, on human adventure, on human feelings. So it has to be profound.

If you take risks, you are going to fail. When you do, my advice is to watch Swing Time with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Fred falls in love with Ginger on the street and follows her to a dance studio. She’s a dance instructor. So he enrolls to learn how to dance. He’s madly in love with her, so he keeps on falling, slipping, you know, to prolong the lesson. He can’t get it, just can’t get it. He’s on the floor after falling for what must be the eighteenth time when Ginger tells him, “Give up, honey. You’ll never learn to dance.” The owner of the dance studio hears this and says to her, “How can you tell this man he can’t dance? You’re fired!” And Fred says, “No, no, she’s taught me a lot. Let me prove it.” And so they get up and start in on this song that goes: “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.” You were waiting for that Fred Astaire explosion, and when you get it, it leaps over your expectations. You’ll never see a more thrilling dance in your life. That’s the kind of stuff that I love. Give them what they expect and then try to top it.

— Mel Brooks

What I've Learned: Mel Brooks / BY CAL FUSSMAN / Esquire Magazine / December 17, 2007

Shakespeare Is Arrogant: An Interview With Anthony Jeselnik

Matt: You once said that the most important thing for new comedians is to continue with your act even when no one is laughing so they can practice being heckled. What are some of the most memorable hecklers you’ve had to deal with?

Anthony Jeselnik: That quote is wrong, actually. What I said was that comedians should continue with their act even when no one is laughing because you never know who is watching or who is going to walk in the room. Rodney Dangerfield called it “Being a tank.”

That doesn’t help with hecklers. If someone heckles me, I shut them down. I’m usually pretty nice with a heckler, actually. But I was just in Toronto and some 21-year-old rich kid heckled me within a minute of taking the stage. I kept asking him “who are you that you think you could come to a show and act this way?” All he would say was “my dad is well known in Toronto.” That just made me more furious. Finally, after I trash this kid for a few minutes the club throws him out. As soon as he’s gone, the kid’s friends say “his dad is ‘The Cash Man’” and the audience goes crazy. Apparently, “The Cash Man” is the “Crazy Eddie” of Toronto. He buys used jewelry and makes a lot of bizarre, corny commercials and everyone hates him. I went on to have the set of my life.

Shakespeare Is Arrogant: An Interview With Anthony Jeselnik / thelaughbutton.com / October 7, 2010 

Bernie Mac: In his own words

He (Bernie Mac) likes to tell the story of the night he watched from the wings as Flip Wilson bombed in front of a club audience. As Wilson's jokes failed, someone in the audience yelled, "Do Geraldine!" Wilson reached into his coat, donned the wig he used to wear as the most famous character from his variety show, and said, "Y'all want to see Geraldine? You got her, honey!"

The Geraldine bit drew laughter and applause, and Wilson quickly got off stage. Mac approached him and told him how great he was.

"You thought so?" Wilson asked, holding up the wig. "This bitch got more laughs than I did."

Bernie Mac: In his own words / By Alan Sepinwall / The Star-Ledger

Q&A With Andy Samberg, Viral Video King

Chris Hardwick: Do you think that the trappings of traditional media make online comedy less funny?

Andy Samberg: When we do the music videos now, it’s the most we spend. Which is kind of ironic, because in the beginning it was like, look how cool we can make it for cheap. But you know, we have a record deal, so we’re trying to compete with the biggest videos. Such a huge part of our joke is having it feel like modern pop or modern rap or modern whatever genre. But a huge part of that is mimicking the style of the videos, the excitement and glossiness. We learned that on “Jizz” and “Boat” especially.

CH: We got so Charlie Rose there for a second. “When you were working on ‘Jizz’—”

AS: Oh, man, that was like the episode of Inside the Actor’s Studio with Dave Chappelle, when James Lipton plays a clip from Half Baked and says, “That was a remarkable piece of acting.” Chappelle just dies laughing. That was my favorite thing ever. There’s no way to talk about comedy seriously without sounding like a dickhead.

Q&A With Andy Samberg, Viral Video King / wired.com / April 15, 2011

Charlie Rose: An hour with actor Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey: You have to allow yourself to be seen. That’s the risk. The risk is, especially for someone who is comedic, who has that… that weapon at his disposal…

Charlie Rose: Just to go off into a rift…

JC: Yeah, to risk being seen is the toughest thing in the world. We are all very shy people, you know, people who do comedy. We’re shy and the emotion is right there on the surface. If you prick me with a pin I would fly around the room. You know, so ah, that’s the risk. You’re showing them yourself . Your true authentic self and the chances of being rejected, uh, are much more important. You know, much more, terrifying.

Charlie Rose: An hour with actor Jim Carrey / aprox. 22:30

KISS ME LIKE A STRANGER by Gene Wilder

(Gene) Wilder says, "She (Gilda Radner) was a pest, a brat, narcissistic, insecure; she wanted everyone on earth to love her.

"After concluding that I loved her and couldn't live with her, when we said goodbye I breathed a sigh of relief. I got to my home I said, 'Isn't this nice, that little pest isn't dragging me down any more.'

"I stood like a zombie for a minute and I dropped to my knees and I started pounding the carpet on the floor... because I had to have her back. I needed a fix and the fix was her."

Wilder reveals the toughest thing about living with his ex was accepting her drinking problems and bulimia, which cost her her teeth.

He recalls, "Shortly after eating she would go in and get rid of it. She said, 'All I ask is that you don't monitor me.'

"When you throw up continuously, the acid starts to wear your teeth down.

"She also had a little flask. I said, 'What's in this? What are you drinking?' She said it's Tab and vodka. I said, 'But it's a quarter to eight in the morning.' (She said) 'It's to calm my nerves my little bit.'"

Wilder Reveals The Truth About Gilda In New Tell-All / contactmusic.com

KISS ME LIKE A STRANGER by Gene Wilder

Aziz Ansari Interview

Aziz Ansari: People think everything happened all at once, but I’ve actually been doing this for eight years. 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.

Askmen.com: You make it sound easy. It wasn’t terrifying?

AA: I mean, it was terrifying the first time, but it was fun. And people laughed. So that was good. If it had continued to be terrifying, I probably would have stopped. I’m not very brave. As long as people laugh, it’s not scary.

AM: And they’ve always laughed?

AA: Well, writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best. After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times and then one night it’ll flop. And that’s when I really take a hard look at myself and say: "Well, that crowd is obviously wrong. That crowd has absolutely no idea what it’s talking about."

Aziz Ansari Interview / askmen.com

Inside the Actor’s Studio: Jim Carrey

Jim Carrey: I did a lot of things with my face… I did a lot of things physically. Its hugely important to understand the emotional life of the character and what you want and what’s actually happening and what your character is after but, you know, you also, I believe, you know, when you get above and beyond the words and everything else… there’s another space. And its that physical space and a tiny physical thing can change people’s minds about you completely.

Before I did ‘Man on the Moon’ I, I was uh, hanging around Nick Cage and it was about a month before and he said, “What’s going on with you? What’s wrong with you?” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And he said, “Your eyes are different. You look different. You’re not the same. What the hells going on with you?” Like that, because I was already going into that place of, uh, where I believe Andy (Kaufman) came from. And, um, that was his yearning (makes a facial expression) to stay connected to wonder.

But the physical thing I did, um, was just shave a tiny, just a little tiny bit off the points of my eyebrows. I just cut the points… driving me crazy ever since. Now they grow like that long (indicates length). They’re like, “REMEMBER ANDY? REMEMBER THAT CHOICE?” You know, that kind of thing, I gotta cut ‘em all the time. But, uh, but that made such a difference in my face

Inside the Actor’s Studio / Season 17 / Jim Carrey

Merrill Markoe: I love taking material and figuring out where the funny part of it is.

Marc Maron: Yeah, I don’t always know…

Merrill: It’s a puzzle…

MM: Do you?

Merrill: Well no, but I get assignments sometimes… like lately I’ve written a couple of pieces for The Wall Street Journal, of all things. And they give you a topic. And I love when people give you a topic and I go, “okay”, roll up my sleeves, “there’s got to be jokes here, where are they?”

MM: And how, what’s that process, how do you start to do that?

Merrill: Well first I walk around saying I can’t do it and I get really depressed and I sit under a table for a while (laughing).

MM: That’s part of my process too… like, “Why’d they ask me to do this. Its not the right format for me...”

Merrill: "God, I can’t do it, there’s nothing funny here, I never thought there was anything funny here…" and then you start to assemble a jigsaw puzzle…

MM: Right, do you do it from, um, do you start to… My only recourse when I’m dealing with that is: I can only speak for me. So I start writing from there. Its very hard for me to just look at externals and say, “those two things together are funny and…”. I have to be like, “How, what is my reaction to this?”

WTF with Marc Maron / Episode 228 - Merrill Markoe / aprox 1:09

Bernie Mac: In his own words

"I love making people happy," he (Bernie Mac) says. "That's what got me in this business."

One Sunday night when he was four or five, Mac found his mother crying in front of the television. She refused to explain the cause of her tears, and before her young son could press any further, Bill Cosby came onto "The Ed Sullivan Show" and started doing a routine about snakes in the bathroom.

"And my mother started laughing and crying at the same time," he says now, the story so frequently told that he could probably do it in his sleep. "And when I saw my mother laugh, I started laughing, and I wiped her face and said, "Mom, that's what I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be a comedian, so you never have to cry again."

He did his first comedy routines in his childhood bedroom, using an empty shoe polish bottle as a microphone and keeping his brothers awake with corny jokes and impressions. His mother and one of his brothers died within a year of each other, both while Mac was a teenager, and he can recite the details of his mother's fatal battle with breast cancer with the same passion and precision he uses on stage.

"My comedy comes from pain," he says. "I can't stand to see someone hurting."

Bernie Mac: In his own words / By Alan Sepinwall / The Star-Ledger

Comedy FAQs and Answers: How the Stand-up Biz Really Works

Dave Attell: On taping your show, the way I put it is this way, okay? You bomb in front of the audience — and then you get to hear yourself in front of the audience. So for as much misery as you doled out, you have to take it the next day, hungover somewhere, sitting and drinking coffee.

I guess what they would say is it’s kind of like with the Gulf War. You get to see the camera in the bomb, you know? But you’re the bomb and you get to see it, like, land and if it went in right or didn’t go in right. So that’s why I tape. You get to see what went wrong. You get to hear what went wrong.

Comedy FAQs and Answers: How the Stand-up Biz Really Works By Dave Schwensen

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Joe Rogan: I truly believe that people who steal can’t write. I really do. I think its… I don’t think you can do both. I think something happens when you steal and that this, this, this being disingenuous, this pretending, this bullshit, knowing that you’re not really doing what you’re claiming to be doing and that you’re pretending, that you’re ripping people off and lying, and projecting this false self image which is all ego, which is exactly what shuts you off from the ability to come up with new shit.

Like when you come up with new shit, its not like you thinking about you, you see something and you go, “huh, look at this right here, this is ridiculous”. And you know what I mean, its not you… its you coming up with it, but you’re not involving yourself, you’re not trying to project a certain image, you’re not, you know, making sure that people think of you a certain way. You’re not even thinking that. Because when you do think like that, that’s, that shuts off creativity. 

And when a guy steals, what a guy is doing when he’s stealing is he’s trying to make himself better than he is. He’s trying to pretend that he’s smarter than he is, he’s trying to put out stuff pretending that he figured this out and its really someone else. Its all ego. 

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Charlie Rose: An interview with David Letterman

Charlie Rose: Did it (stand-up comedy -ed) come natural for you?

David Letterman: Ah, more or less, yeah. Like anything else there are some… you have an affinity for something, there’s still many, many things to learn. I can remember the first night I was on stage at The Comedy Store and my first reaction was this bright white light and I thought it was one of those near death tales. I thought, “oh, there’s the white light, I guess I’m coming home Uncle Eddie.”

I can just remember, ah, you can just kind of… there’s something visceral, you can sort of smell the people out there because they’re all just loaded up on watered down drinks, and uh, and all of a sudden it was an out-of-body experience because I could just see myself standing there saying words that I had memorized… to the silence. But still smelling the people. And it was an exhilarating experience. But also a complete failure.

CR: And then when you got the laughs?

DL: Well that night I got no laughs. Got no laughs, ah, but I was happy I that I had done it. I was happy that I had tried it and now maybe I’ll try it again. And like anything else you just make a little progress here and you slip back a little and you continue to make progress. And I knew pretty soon that I was not cut out to be a stand-up comedian. The kind of guy that will take 250 gigs a year… he’s on the road all of the time… he goes to Las Vegas, then he goes to Jupiter, then he goes to Neptune, then he goes to Buffalo, and there are guys like that. And God bless ‘em because these are the guys that can do it. They have an iron constitution.

Charlie Rose: An interview with David Letterman / Friday, February 16, 1996

(thanks Mark)

WTF with Marc Maron / Episode 228 - Merrill Markoe

Merrill Markoe: And I’ve also come to realize that, you know, I’m very snobby about comedy. I either think its really funny or I don’t. I instantly… you’re either on my wavelength or you’re not, but I also realize that there is a whole world of things that people are laughing at that you cannot not call funny. They are funny, they’re making a big group of people laugh. They’re not funny to me. But they’re definitely funny or a big group of people wouldn’t be laughing so…

Marc Maron: Right, well yeah, because as I talk to more and more comics, like… my snobbery has diminished in light of what it really takes to be funny. You know, like it, it, no matter whether you like the jokes or not, to do comedy and to make it work is no small fucking task.

WTF with Marc Maron / Episode 228 - Merrill Markoe / aprox 1:09

Bill Cosby Interview (1969)

Bill Cosby: The first time I saw Bob (Robert Culp) was the first day we read for the series; I walked in and we shook hands, but we didn’t really have a chance to talk before they gave us scripts. Then it was the moment of truth for me: All the fears, anxieties, and apprehensions were bubbling and boiling, because now I had to prove myself. Although the producers were with me, they were really listening to see if I could act. I’d never read a single line for Sheldon Leonard — and when you think about that, about a producer banking half a million dollars on a guy whose comedy routine he liked, it becomes quite a gamble. Well, they listened, and I was embarrassed, because I was no good — really no good. I fumbled and mumbled and couldn’t concentrate or do anything right.

But afterward, Bob and I got to together and talked and, at Bob’s suggestion, we agreed to make the relationship between the white character, Kelly Robinson, and the black man, Alexander Scott, a beautiful relationship, so that people could see what it would be like if two cats like that could get along. Bob’s a fine actor and a fine human being. He could have made it tough for me; he could have made me paranoid with criticism, because my ego came into play. At the time, I was a pretty well known, up-and-coming comic and if he’s been rough on me, it would have been too easy for me to say to myself, “What do I need all this for?” In other words, if Bob hadn’t been the great guy he is, I might have copped out.

Playboy: Were you still nervous when the filming began?

BC: It was really weird man. As a comedian, I can walk out in front of 5000 people and not worry about a thing. Not a thing, believe me. But to stand up a face a camera and crew of maybe 15 guys and get uptight about it — to me that’s weird. It took a lot of weeks before I felt relaxed and able to do my thing without being self-conscious.

Bill Cosby Interview /May 1969 / Playboy Magazine

DEMETRI MARTIN [STAND-UP COMIC]

Litsa Dremousis: A couple of years ago, Jerry Seinfeld said something in an interview that I thought made a lot of sense. He pointed out that Greg Kinnear went from stand-up to film and got nominated for an Oscar for As Good As It Gets, but Jack Nicholson couldn’t jump to stand-up. He said that stand-up requires specific skills and a specific personality type, but it’s not like film. A lot of people come to film acting later in the game, but with stand-up, if you can’t do it, you can’t do it.

Demetri Martin: That’s an interesting observation. I think there are so many little hurdles and impediments with stand-up that you’d need to have this insane desire to do it if you didn’t have something that clicked right away, you know? Most people would naturally select themselves out of that. For me, it really helped me redefine failure. When I was younger, I’d get very empirical with myself. “I have a hypothesis about myself. I’ll put myself in a situation, see what happens, then I’ll draw a conclusion based on the empirical evidence. Hypothesis: I can play basketball.” So I’d try. “Conclusion: I cannot play basketball.” [Laughs] But what you learn is, conclusions are based in time. We live in time. So any definition of success is bound up with time. With other things you can say, “Can I yo-yo? Can I juggle?” Usually you have a pretty small window in which to get your answer. Stand-up is different. You can’t do stand-up for one night and say, “Am I a funny stand-up comedian?” In two months or two years you’ll start to realize it. When I did it that first night, I was nervous because I was like, “Can I be a comedian or not?” And that’s missing the point. It’s more like, “Will I enjoy this?” Because by enjoying it enough, now I have a nice big window. You can suspend judgment and make that hole very big. If I make my window ten days for stand-up, the conclusion is that I failed and that I’m not good at stand-up. If I make it ten years—if I just wait—the conclusion might be something totally different. I think it’s so cool to do things in which you discover the malleability of your own mind.

The Believer / DEMETRI MARTIN [STAND-UP COMIC] / by Litsa Dremousis / February 2006

Charlie Rose: An interview with David Letterman

David Letterman: I worked at the station for 5 years, a radio station, and knew something else was going on. I had the sense that ‘there’s something else out there’. And I didn’t think I was going to be satisfied or fulfilled doing a 4-h half hour kid’s show once a week.

And I would see these guys come on the tonight show, these comedians, and I would think, “Oh man, I wonder if maybe I could do that a little bit.” So I told my family I was going out to be a writer, you know, because the idea of me actually being in show business would have horrified and sickened everyone and now, come to think of it, the fact of me in show business actually horrifies and sickens millions (laughing).

Charlie Rose: Yeah, but then you brought your mother into show business.

DL: Oh lord… ah, so I said I was going to go out to be a writer because I felt like that’s my calling, I said, “I’m a goofy looking guy and nobody is going to really want me on the screen…” but I knew in the back of my mind what I would try is to get into comedy, to do stand-up comedy.

And in those days, uh, you knew how to do that. And that was to go right to The Comedy Store and start doing it. Before that, I wouldn’t have known how to get into comedy.

Charlie Rose: An interview with David Letterman / Friday, February 16, 1996

(thanks Mark)

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Joe Rogan: There’s been a few instances, uh, in the past where there was a guy that was kind of like clearly plagiarizing another guy and then, you know, one guy became famous with other people’s shit. It’s happened more than once. And we’ve all the real pain and frustration of watching someone do somebody else’s material where you know that they’re stealing and they’re not compensating them… they’re just stealing. And it was like a Wild West thing. It was like no one was doing anything about it and it was a… to treat it like it was no big deal… you’re absolutely crazy. It’s the core of someone’s ability to perform on stage… is having great material.

Jim Gaffigan: It’s their life. It’s their life.

JR: You could be the best comic in the world and if you have nothing to say on stage, for that moment, if you go on stage and you having nothing prepared and you have nothing to say you’re fucked. Its not going to be good. You need premises, you need material and so to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal… that the industry was treating it like it wasn’t a big deal, and we were like, “this is crazy… you’ve got an insane person…”

JG: I told you that night what you did was very important. I mean it was very important.

JR: Well for us, it had to happen. It had gotten to a point where everyone was just turning a blind eye to it because they were profiting off of it. And that’s what happens when a person becomes successful… and is a plagiarist. If it was any other form of art, you know writing, writing would be super clear, I mean the guy would go to jail. You know if it was music, they would take all your money. If they can prove you have the same beats and you’re copying it, they take all your fucking money.

JG: And we’re not talking about similar premises…

JR: Which we all have…

JG: Which is always going to happen.

Joe Rogan Experience #193

DEMETRI MARTIN [STAND-UP COMIC]

Litsa Dremousis: Let’s start with the law school thing.

Demetri Martin: OK. Cool.

LD: It’s funny now, but at the time, did your family come after you with the long knives?

DM: Yeah. It’s weird to make a decision where everyone in your life disapproves, pretty vocally and directly. They said, “You’ve got one year left. Just do it.” I had a full scholarship so I didn’t have to pay for it. They asked, “Why don’t you just get the degree so you can have it?” And I said, “You don’t understand. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and now I know. I have the answer and it’s dumb to waste any more time.”

LD: Exactly.

DM: People ask me, “You’re doing comedy. Do you have a Plan B?” And I’m like, “No, I don’t have a Plan B. I’m doing comedy. Besides, my plans are numbered. I have a Plan 2.” It’s so stupid and it’s kind of a lie because I don’t even have a Plan 2 anymore. But it is funny because you hear so much of that. “You should have a Plan B.” Most people who give you advice, it’s a complete derivative of their own fears. And it’s aimed at the fat part of the bat. You can hit a ball with the tip of the bat or even right by your fingertips. It will connect and you can hit it. But everyone’s like, “Let’s just aim right here. Let’s do the high-percentage thing.” And I’m not really interested in that.

The Believer / DEMETRI MARTIN [STAND-UP COMIC] / by Litsa Dremousis / February 2006

George Carlin's Last Interview

George Carlin: You know, you get 2500 people, acting as a single organism: the audience is a single organism and it’s you and it. And to have that feeling of mastery up there—it’s an assertion of power: here I am, I have the microphone, you came here for this express purpose. You’re sitting not in tables at nightclubs with waiters and glasses, you’re seated all facing forward in order to enjoy this and here I am, and wait till you hear this! There’s nothing like it in my experience that I could aspire to. It has as much a payoff as writing, which has a big payoff.

Jay Dixit: So, sitting in front of a computer, “Wait till they hear this, this is great material.” What’s the difference between that and actually standing on stage hearing the audience roaring with laughter?

GC: The difference is, at the computer you can stop, think back, think forward, look around, turn the page as it were, you can see the whole world all at once. On stage you’re only in a single moment ever—your mind can hear what you just said. This is a funny thing that happens for me: when I’m up there doing something I’ve memorized perfectly, and it has pauses in it—and of course the laughs are all the pauses. As you’re going along, you’re thinking of what you’re saying, you want to give it the proper vocal values, so you are kind of thinking about it, not reaching for the words, but kind of thinking about them. You’re also aware of the echo of what you just said, and whether it worked or not, and what that might mean. It’s all part of the trigonometry, I guess. And then there is the faint anticipation of what comes next. 

It’s like the feeling of conducting an orchestra. It’s like conducting an orchestra, this group of people who already like you, predisposed to appreciate you, at your service, at you’re command, and you’re just waving the baton and bringing them in, leading them forward and it’s just a nice kind of feeling.

George Carlin's Last Interview / Psychology Today / Published on June 23, 2008

George Carlin's Last Interview

Jay Dixit: You asked me to remind you to tell me about Arthur Koestler.

George Carlin: That was another impact. I was doing nightclub comedy down in the Village. I was down there in ’63, ’64, and my friend told me about Arthur Koestler’s book about the act of creation and it had a section on humor.

He was talking about the creative process. There was an illustration on the panel that showed a triptych. On the left panel, there were these names of artistic pursuits. There were poets, painter, composer. And one of them was jester. I was only interested in the jester. What he said about each of these, he said these individuals on the left hand side can transcend the panels of the triptych by creative growth.

The jester makes jokes, he’s funny, he makes fun, he ridicules. But if his ridicules are based on sound ideas and thinking, then he can proceed to the second panel, which is the thinker—he called it the philosopher. The jester becomes the philosopher, and if he does these things with dazzling language that we marvel at, then he becomes a poet too. Then the jester can be a thinking jester who thinks poetically.

I didn’t see that and say, “That’s what I am going to do,” but I guess it made an impression on me. I was never afraid to grow and change. I never was afraid of reversing my field on people, and I just think I’ve become a touch of each of those second and third descriptions and I definitely have a gift for language that is rhythmic and attractive to the ear, and I have interesting imagery which I guess is a poetic touch. And I like the fact that most of my things are based on solid ideas, things I’ve thought about in a new way for me, things for which I have said “Well, what about this? Suppose you look at it this way? How about that?” And then you heighten and exaggerate that, because comedy’s all about heightening and exaggerating. And anyways I guess I was impressed that there was another thing from my early life that probably at least influenced me to some level.

George Carlin's Last Interview / Psychology Today / Published on June 23, 2008