A Quote by Jo Koy

With Comedy Central, they produced it and did everything - I just had to walk up there and tell the jokes - whereas with Netflix, I was heavily, creatively involved, from the logo to the lighting of the room to selecting the venue to selling the tickets and promoting it.
I always wanted to be a comedic actor - that's what I wanted from the job - to do comedy and to create my own comedy. But I still love doing stand-up and will probably be doing it forever. I'd love to be an old guy who can't really walk, can't really stand-up, and I have to sit on the stool and tell jokes.
I don't even know of a room that doesn't have a flat-screen TV in it. These are things that just come in environments these days. And if you were going to walk into a space, where did you come from? Was there a bathroom around the corner? These are things that are authentic, and that's what makes successful television. It's not pre-produced garbage. It's believability and connection. The environment has to tell that story.
Because my early music was heavily produced, people assume my voice was also heavily produced.
There are many differences between Netflix and Comedy Central.
I actually imagined 'Thunderbolts' as a straight-up comedy book in a lot of ways, like a very dark comedy book, whereas 'Red Lanterns' is more of a cosmic saga that has some jokes every once in a while.
Everything from the logo to the products and different looks that you see, has been put together with so much detail. There is no way I wouldn't be completely involved. It's very important for me that I give my whole to everything that I am involved in. Otherwise, what is the point?
When I first started doing my stand-up act, I played the banjo, did comedy, magic tricks, juggled, read poetry. I stuck it all in. I didn't know you were supposed to just stand up and tell jokes. Essentially, that's what my act became: those five elements - except I dropped the poetry.
There are jokes I know I want to tell, and there's sort of a rough order, but usually I try to change it up every show, to improvise and talk with the audience. I think when you tell jokes, if you're not careful, you can end up telling the whole list of jokes and then that's it. And that can get a little boring.
I did a 'Last Comic Standing' audition in 2006, where you're just performing for three people in a comedy club, in a big comedy club, and I remember them cutting me off, asking about my name in the middle of one of my jokes. Yeah, it's just real weird when you're doing stand-up in that type of sterile, unnatural setting.
The premise of anything you do - whether it's writing a song or any business - is ultimately that it hinges heavily on your belief in the thing that you're doing and promoting and selling. It's a reflection of who you are in a very deep way.
Stand-up comedians know how to walk into a room, even if you're not performing, just read the temperature of a room, and can easily sort of tell what's going on or what people are sort of feeling in the room, and it allows you to sort of approach people.
Whereas men of an older school, like myself, smoke for the pleasure of smoking, men of this school smoke for the pleasure of pipe-owning-of selecting which of their many white-spotted pipes they will fill with their specially blended tobacco, of filling the one so chosen, of lighting it, of taking it from the mouth to gaze lovingly at the white spot and thus letting it go out, of lighting it again and letting it go out again, of polishing it up with their own special polisher and putting it to bed, and then the pleasure of beginning all over again with another white-spotted one.
On my first European solo tour, I was selling maybe 50 tickets a city until I showed up in Paris and heard the show was already at 150 tickets, which, at the time, really blew my mind and took me by complete surprise.
There was so long from when we did the pilot and then when the show was eventually picked up by Comedy Central - and, in fact, we had to shoot the pilot twice.
When I walk into a Best Buy, I now see, right from the front door, a giant Apple logo. I see a giant Samsung logo. I see a giant Microsoft Windows logo. And those are stores within a store.
I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy.
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