Top 94 Quotes & Sayings by John Mulaney - Page 2

It was funny to be an emcee, because you're so at the mercy of the club. You can show up for the weekend hoping to get the $400 - and get fired. I had to prank whoever they told me to prank.

If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes you're communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that's right in front of you as a guide for that.

I really set out to do this traditional looking and traditional sounding multi-cam sitcom, but then make the world as elastic as an animated show could be. Make the world as surreal as we wanted it to be.

The best-case scenario is everything goes perfect and smooth, but we're also a new and weird show. So all my conversations were, "Hey last night didn't go perfect but we kind of know what we've got in store for everybody episode-wise."

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

It's really fun to be writing and producing your own sketches. You almost have more control.

I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it's a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it.

I like that idea that what I do might be mainstream. Might be.

Stand-up for me is just my opinions on things, so it wouldnt be as fun translated into a sketch. Nor would a sketch be as fun if it were me standing there saying it.

On Friday night, it was fun [to know] that if you bombed, or whatever was going on, that you'd be on TV at 11. It was a cool feeling, and you'd get a couple hundred dollars.

That was an interesting thing I learned I think the first time I did a late night show or something. It was like, "Oh, this is for the camera and a performance that you're giving to the people at home."

I always wanted it to be multi-cam from the beginning. In the first seeds of the idea, I wanted a live audience, multi-cam show. That was very important for me.

As I got into high school and after puberty, I was a little more inward. I was a real extrovert when I was little, but I don't know, I just got quieter With my friends, I was still an extrovert.

I do longer runs on things, a lot stories. I really like one-liners, I like a lot of different kinds of standup but I've always been long-winded.

My standup persona is like I'll heighten things, but I'm observing the world as it is in sort of a heightened emotional state.

There's [John Mulaney Show] jokes that I have in stand up that I wouldn't try to put in, I would try to have someone just speak extemporaneously in the middle of a scene about an episode of "Law and Order" or something.

I also had Elliot Gould and Martin Short and Nasim Pedrad - let alone Zack Pearlman who is going to be a huge star, as is Seaton Smith - out there and I love writing for them and just sitting back and watching them be excellent. And when you are sitting across from Elliott Gould sharing a scene it just raises your game.

I had a lot of fun writing things that died during dress rehearsal. Sometimes I remember the crazy ones that died even more fondly than the ones that did really well.

A lot of comedy clubs are set up with people sitting at little tables and you have everything from the way they are seated to them ordering or taking a sip of a drink, these can make a comedian go harder and faster in a club.

I remember writing standup jokes without having done sets. But as soon as I did my first set, it didn't matter. Everything I thought would work didn't work. And everything I was iffy on was funny.

Everyone's very relaxed about brand names in television.

I don't know if there's a strategy really so much as, like I learned doing standup and had to learn fast, you always just try to give your favorite, strongest stuff as early as possible and you start with what you like the most.

In every case, I find pre-planning noble, but not always that useful in comedy. You know comedy once you're doing it.

I was just trying to blend the standup that I do almost with like the visual sketch stuff that I did on "Saturday Night Live." And so in terms of how elastic in the world is, we'll see what we can get away with [in John Mulaney show].

Part of standup is being loose and having a good time yourself and that translates to the audience.

Understudies don't normally get invited to openings.

I have tons of jokes with moments in them over the years in stand-up that don't get a laugh but I love them so they stay.

I'm a very straightforward person. But that's fine for a comedian. Because a lot of times you're talking about everyone else.

An episode that is near and dear to my heart is the entire cast in one room for the night because we get bed bugs in our apartment building so we have to stay with Martin Short.

"The Doula" was and is a very, very special episode to me because I think it's very funny and very weird and it also is 100 percent based on my life, in that I fainted three times during Sex Ed in real life the three different years.

I've done festivals in the past where I'd be a guest, it was like, Wow, maybe someday I could play Town Hall - but that'll be a long way off. So it's very exciting.

With the first episode [of John Mulaney Show] I tell a story that happened to me accidentally chasing a woman down the subway.

Having done stand-up on television and in stand-up specials for like Comedy Central, you learn quickly that for that type of performance you're playing to the camera.

I definitely look like a toddler. I feel comfortable and I have a lot of fun out there [John Mulaney Show]. And if I were to be extremely egotistical, I'd say I got a tiny bit better.