A Quote by Hannibal Buress
When people say, 'How did you start in comedy,' I say my family was kidnapped by ninjas when I was very young, and to get them released I had to do a killer five-minute set. And even after I did that, you know, I started doing comedy under tough circumstances, I still kept at it because I enjoyed it.
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In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.
I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'
I think I'm one of those guys who was sort of always in comedy. I thought of myself - and other people seemed to think of me - as funny from a very young age. I was a very young comedy nerd and I even did sketch comedy in high school and college. I wrote and shot sketches on video and acted in them.
It bothers me when people say 'shock comic' or 'gross-out' because that was only one type of comedy I did. There was prank comedy. Man-on-the-street-reaction comedy. Visually surreal comedy. But you do something shocking, and that becomes your label.
I started doing stand-up at the age of 20. This was back in 1976, around the time (coincidence?) that the first comedy clubs were starting. The young comedians of today gasp when I tell them how many shows I did that first year: 500. Five nights a week.
I've had so many horrible things happen in my life since I did 'Home Improvement' that it's worried me about doing comedy because - how do I say this - I'm a much darker person than I was.
I think there's just too much comedy. Sometimes I get requests from people: 'How do I get into comedy?' And I always say that what we need is more people in health care. And less people in comedy.
I think the best kind of comedy is the least self conscious. I think if you just sort of let the comedy happen without the elbow nudge, did you get it, did you get it. I love straight face comedy or subtle - relatively subtle comedy.
Voice actors I used to know who were starting out in comedy were guys who did a lot of voices. They were usually comedy actors who developed their comedy by doing tons of impressions and voices that were usually very funny. And I never did any of that, so that's, I guess, why I don't consider myself a voice actor.
As a man and as a sports figure, you have to set limits and set boundaries on what can and cannot happen. Once you do that, your family will start to respect you. 'OK, I get it, he's all about football and handling his business,' and that's what I've done. In the past, when I was a young man - a younger man - it was hard for me to say no. Since I'm older, wiser, I know how to handle people, know how to say no, know when something is right and something wrong. I use proper judgment.
What interested me the most was that when I [traveled to Europe] I knew what Joseph Beuys was doing, he knew what I was doing, and we both, we just started to talk. How did I know what Daniel Buren was doing, and to an extent, he knew exactly what I was doing? How did everybody know? It's an interesting thing. I'm still fascinated by it because, why is it now, with the Internet and everything else, you get whole groups of artists who have chosen to be regional? They really are only with the people they went to school with.
I love doing comedy. You don't get many good comedy scripts. They're rare. But, I do love playing comedy. Even in drama, I like to try to find the humor because I think it's very human.
I very much enjoyed doing 'Law & Order,' playing a killer - that was fun, and they had a family feel around the set, so it was a happy show to do even though the subject matter was quite the opposite.
Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them. That's how I saw myself, in comedy.
One of the things I enjoyed when working in manga was when I couldn't tell where anything was going because there weren't narrative tropes and structures I was used to. After doing it for seven years, I got to the point where I did see structures. I did start to learn, but at first I didn't know where it was going. It was very exciting for me.
As a man who tried to explain in his own way that people have to learn to get along with each other. I did it with comedy because that's what I'm familiar with, and I think it's more acceptable to tell it in comedy form. But that's how I'd like to be remembered.
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