A Quote by Robert Klein
There is a cliche that probably has some anecdotal evidence on the side that comedians are very depressed people, but that's because no one is ever going to seem as funny in a normal conversation as compared to when they're up there onstage in the spotlight making a huge audience keel over with laughter.
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I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.
Some people love being onstage and really open up, and I'm sort of the opposite of that. I don't crave the spotlight. I'm still not comfortable even talking onstage.
I've never been in the position where that conversation is a serious conversation before the movie even comes out. On one side of it, that's so great because you've got such great potential. The other side of that is that there's a level of pressure. Now, that clearly means that there's an expectation level, from the studio side, potentially from the audience's side, and from our side.
I have seen and heard comedians who had really funny 'stuff' but yet could not make the people laugh; then, again - I have seen others whose stuff was anything but humorous, and the audience would howl with laughter.
To a certain extent I am taking a leap of faith. I'm adding up the evidence on either side, and I'm seeing the evidence of there not being a God is overwhelming compared to the evidence for there being a God.
When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.
Stand-up comedians say that anyone in the audience can be funny, but people paid to see us because we're just a little bit funnier. In the same way, I think anybody can play music - in fact, I think everyone has music in them, but some of us can do it a little better.
You're not going to stay in business, the business of making movies very long because you need the resources in order to keep going. So you have to try and find a niche audience or some kind of audience that has the same likes, dislikes and aesthetic sensibilities that you have.
Why do all these people want [comedians] to be serious? The reason they want that is these are people who aren't funny. Anybody funny can be serious, but people who have no sense of humor, they can never be funny - and frankly, they're jealous. There's very few comic actors. Think about it. There aren't that many. It's hard because you have to be able to do both.
It's easy to be silly in real life, but making stuff up onstage, that seemed hard. Better to be the funny person off-the-cuff in the room than to risk being unfunny onstage.
I've been among their critics [MBA programs]. Much of what I've seen in business schools is quite non-rigorous. Anecdotal histories are stretched to illustrate favored slogans. Evidence of their effectiveness is similarly anecdotal.
If conversation was the lyrics, laughter was the music, making time spent together a melody that could be replayed over and over without getting stale.
I think sometimes comedians and entertainers and artists, sometimes they get onstage, and it's all for what they want to do. I think you still need to do stuff for the audience. They're the ones who are making it possible.
I think that laughter is very close to terror and horror. Maybe that's just me, but that sort of all - over rush that happens when you are either laughing or terrified or weeping...? I think that comedians, in and of themselves, make other people laugh because they aren't necessarily the happiest people in the world. So they know a lot about dark things.
For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I'm making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I'm going.
A lot of comedians are really funny onstage, but they can't do a podcast.
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