I've always been switching around the show to accommodate the audience, and you know it really makes it a lot more fun for me and keeps it fresh so that I'm not complacent with the same show every night and with every audience.
People are out of their home on a Saturday night or they're at the movies or they're at dinner and a lot of the people who flip on the television are doing just that. They may have never seen your show before and you can't count on to your audience to be there week in and week out.
I knew the exuberance of playing before an admiring audience and hearing my secret voice.
When you look at the current state of reality TV, at least on the mainstream level, the shows that tend to be more successful have been around for a while. It's difficult today to show the audience something they haven't seen before, and I think that's what tends to be the secret to any great, big reality hit.
To drive a car in rural America is freedom. Before I had a car, I'd never seen a rock and roll show, I'd never seen a comic or a show.
Songs come alive every night and can be a new experience for someone. You might have someone in the audience who has never seen us before and hearing it for the first time. We are aware of that.
I've always loved David Letterman. There was an irreverence to his show that I remember, especially in 'Late Night' - it always seemed so fresh.
I've never gotten over what they call stagefright. I go through it every show. I'm pretty concerned, I'm pretty much thinking about the show. I never get completely comfortable with it, and I don't let the people around me get comfortable with it, in that I remind them that it's a new crowd out there, it's a new audience, and they haven't seen us before. So it's got to be like the first time we go on.
The audience too should be respected by being presented with a film as they remember it, and for those who have not seen it, as it was intended to be seen. Anything less is a degradation of the film and its audience.
If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more.
You know, it's a big version of an episode, which I think is necessary at this point because we're drawing in people who not only people who have seen the show before and are devoted to it, but people who have never seen it before.
My show is constantly evolving... new tricks are added, old ones are dropped... so it stays fresh. But it's the randomly selected participants from the audience that make it fresh and provide some of the best comic relief.
When I started in television, it was brand new. It was the miracle over in the corner of your room. Now the audience has seen every story line. People have heard every joke. They can predict the plot almost before a show starts. That's a hard, sophisticated audience to reach.
When you're playing the same dirty dozen night after night, the moments that keep it fresh are those when you just let go and trust everyone.
I'm not the kind of person that can do the same thing over and over and over, so that's why touring, playing in a different venue every night, in front of a different audience, is so rewarding, you know, because it always feels fresh.
I genuinely have never been in an audience where most people want that person to fail. I've never been in an audience like that, and I've never seen it as a performer. Only in my dreams, in which case they are always throwing tomatoes and going, "This is the most boring thing I've ever seen."