A Quote by Rachel Dratch
In theater, it's just you and the audience. It's less of a popularity contest. It's just you and the audience, and they're laughing or they're not laughing, that's the only gauge you really have. But with TV and movies and everything, it's like "Well, did you get a meeting at so-and-so?" and "So-and-so's really hot right now," which is all the stuff I'm probably still not used to.
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I think I'm better wired for television. I love variety as far as a project. I'm easily bored and the schedule of a television show, it just keeps you going. I love theater and I think doing a sitcom in front of a live audience is the closest you can get to theater, and it's really the best mix of like standup and theater, is really a sitcom. I started as a standup and I still continue to do that as well, so I think I'm just a TV guy and happy for it. I think my movie career is kind of like my social life, I'm picky and not in demand. So it perhaps is working out.
I always think it's just best to just make stuff and to carry on making stuff, even if it's not off your own back, because that's the only way... especially as a comedy writer, I make short films and then show them to live audience, so if they're laughing you know you're doing something right.
I think one of my favorite pieces I've ever done on the show which was about Hezbollah Israel conflict in 2006 and it was very pointed. It was a beautifully crafted piece of satire and it's a weird thing to say but it had a joke in there about 9/11 and I remember the audience sort of laughing but also kind of not knowing how to respond to that joke and it was just so - and I remember the tension after we did this joke on the air and there was this palpable gasp in the audience, but they were also laughing. And I thought oh, wow, that is something that is not being said in the Zeitgeist.
The beauty of shooting on something that's not in front of an audience is that you can just cut out the times you're laughing. You can cut to the other person and try to use that moment, right before you break. There's an energy to those performances. There's a reason people were laughing. There was something very special. That little extra something was in that line delivery or in that improv, so you try to use that stuff.
I remember certain people in the audience laughing and I wanted to ask: 'What are you laughing at? This isn't funny.' Now I realize that laughter can come from insecurity. They don't know how they should be feeling.
Sometimes critics disagree with the audience, and that's fine. I make movies for the audience. I guess I hope that the critics like it, but on the other hand, I just really want the audience to like it.
If you just did a horror tone throughout an entire movie you almost, as an audience, can get a little bit used to it. But if you're laughing one minute and, you know, somebody's doing something quite horrific the next minute, it's a little more shocking.
Even as a kid, I'd have a recorder, and I'd lean it up against a TV and record 'I Love Lucy.' I loved hearing the audience laughing. It was really exciting to me.
I think I know who my audience is. It's pretty satisfying, and I think we all need to take care of ourselves and laugh as well as do everything we can to fight back right now while being mindful of laughing and enjoying ourselves where and when we can.
In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.
I would love to be on a really good show and share all the stuff that goes into creating a big TV show and get my audience into it. I think that makes it personal and makes the audience feel like they're a part of it.
The audience is the most revered member of the theater. Without an audience, there is no theater. Everything done is ultimately for the enjoyment of the audience. They are our guests, fellow players, and the last spoke in the wheel which can then begin to roll. They make the performance meaningful.
Sometimes crying or laughing are the only options left, and laughing feels better right now.
When an audience is laughing with a character, they make themselves so vulnerable, and they open up. They expose their heart the moment they're laughing, because they're relaxed and they're disarmed.
Most of the time, the songs have jokes in them, little sarcastic things, or purposely kitsch or something. So that's going along with a story, like I do in life, just talking to myself and making fun of stuff and laughing at stuff that's serious. And sometimes it's a good idea to put the laughing into the songs. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's all right just to be serious. But most of the songs have some kind of joke in them.
One thing I hate in ethnic comedy is giving the audience the opportunity to laugh in a racist way at a thing. A lot of times dwarf comedians will do that, Arab comics, and gay comics will do it; everyone is laughing, but they're not laughing at the joke, they're laughing at this crazy character.
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