A Quote by Jim Norton

Lenny Bruce did clean TV. You have to be able to do that, I think, to succeed because if you want to promote something, you go on 'The Tonight Show' or 'Letterman' or whatever, you can't be dirty.

Jim Norton

Quote Topics

Able Because Bruce Clean Did Dirty Go Lenny Letterman Promote Show Something Succeed Think Tonight Tonight Show TV Want Whatever

Quote Author

Jim Norton
American - Comedian
Born: July 19, 1968

Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.

Joe Rogan

I did a TV show called 'Lenny Henry Dot TV' a couple of years ago and I hated it. These things always happen when you don't have time to reflect. And I didn't do anything on the telly for three years.

Lenny Henry

I was always the class clown; I made my family laugh, and that was when I was always happiest. I grew up listening to stand-up comedians' albums and watching them on TV, on 'The Tonight Show' and Letterman.

Sarah Silverman

Being a harsh, dirty comic, the last person on earth I ever expected to help my career was Jay Leno. I had always thought of performing on 'The Tonight Show' as an unachievable goal, because I bought into the myth that only squeaky clean, family-friendly material would be welcome there.

Jim Norton

'Dirty Jobs' is maybe the simplest show in the history of TV, with the possible exception of 'The Gong Show'. I go around the country; we've shot in every state. And we spend a day with people who do jobs that are dirty or dangerous or ridiculous or difficult.

Mike Rowe

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce.

Billy Connolly

Yeah, I had a talk show canceled. Okay, let's go back to the list of people who had talk shows canceled. Johnny Carson had his first talk show canceled. Jon Stewart. Letterman. Conan O'Brien, if you look at 'The Tonight Show' as a show that got canceled.

Pete Holmes

I don't want to do something just to be on TV. If I did I might as well just go on and put a meat pie on my head! If I go on TV I want to be doing something I want to do.

Lisa Stansfield

Die Hard With A Vengeance shooting was a great time, because we had an interesting script. The first script was called Simon Says, and something was going on, because some days we'd get to work, but we wouldn't actually have dialogue. We would go to Bruce's Willis trailer, and they'd say, "Okay, you have to go from 168th Street to 97th Street today. We're going to do it in the cab, and Sam, you say this. Bruce, what do you want to say?" And that's how Bruce's "hey, Zeus!" thing came up.

Samuel L. Jackson

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.

Billy Connolly

You start out with Mad magazine, and you go right through the sort of black humor of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner... If you put Lenny together with Mad magazine and run it through the brain of a college student, you get National Lampoon.

P. J. O'Rourke

I'm interested in acting roles that I want to do, that are meaningful to me in some way. I think, because my kids are still pretty young, if something is meaningful and it's a good little part that I could do or feel that I can have fun with, then I'm interested in it. I'd like to be able to do a TV show or something and really have a voice in it.

Joan Cusack

I wouldn't totally rule out doing Letterman or the Tonight Show if I had a set that I just happened to write that I thought was funny but was still appropriate for network censors. But I'm not going to go out of my way.

Joe Rogan

As an actor, you can show up on a set and be on a TV show for three or four years, or whatever it is and, by the end of it, you just want to do something else.