A Quote by Ben Falcone

So much of improv can be really long, and that's kind of what makes it funny. — © Ben Falcone
So much of improv can be really long, and that's kind of what makes it funny.
It's great when improv is encouraged. It's a really fun thing. It depends on who's in the movie and how their process works, as well. It takes a director who is open to that because you have a script, but then something funny could happen on set. So, to have people around you who encourage improv is really exciting.
Well people love to go dirty and stuff like that. It's funny, because even really dirty things can kind of inspire, but all things inspire really dirty improv and monologues. So then really dirty things can inspire the exact opposite. It's kind of a crapshoot.
I think it's a lot richer than what we call fleshy improv, I think it's very funny, puppet improv and fleshy improv.
And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.
I had a teacher who recommended I take improv classes in Chicago - I'm from Evanston, Illinois - so I did improv classes at Improv Olympic, and that kind of opened me up.
Sometimes you have to kind of keep proving that you're improvising. That's the game, or the goal, of long-form TV improv, is that you have to kind of keep reminding and showing people that you're improvising, because they won't believe you really.
I'm UCB trained - I came up learning about game, which is a really big part of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. They teach you about game, and game in a scene is what makes the scene funny. And oftentimes, it's the character - this is really improv dorky stuff.
There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.
It was easy to make fun of Bush, but it was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel and it didn't really feel all that good because it was so easy to do. I would much rather live under a thoughtful president. Even if it makes it harder to be funny about politics, it makes it more interesting to be funny about politics.
The improv stuff, that's always surprising so a lot of times that's really funny.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
We live in a time where improv is king and people love improv, and I think there's a time and a place for that and people who are really good at structuring improv.
The thing about improv that I really love in scripted television is that it really makes a moment authentic.
It's so much harder to make a living off improv. Improv is so rarified and for such a specific audience.
I had been on this improv team at this really great improv theater. It's called iO now. It used to be called Improv Olympic. They have showcases for Lorne Michaels and other writers and people who work at 'SNL' usually about once a year, although I don't know if it always happens.
Organizations like the CIA and the FBI are still kind of supermen, kind of SS troops: We're blond and the best and everyone else should be incinerated. They don't know right from wrong. That's what makes a satire of these government bureaus really funny.
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