A Quote by Maria Bamford
I am a wild orchid of comedy, so I can only do well under specific conditions... There are people who I think can do any room, and do stadiums and thousand-seat theaters, and then there are people like me who just perform for my parents.
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For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else.
I want a room that I can definitely pack out. I don't want to sweat that part, "Am I gonna have enough people?" So I usually pick like a hundred, a relatively small room. Also, I'm looser in a small room. I don't want to record an album in front of a thousand people, not that I could draw a thousand, but I just want a room that I can really work back to front. That's just a very comfortable place for me to be loose.
I perform in theaters, international stages with people screaming for me, and then I go back to my hotel room, take all my makeup off, and I'm alone.
Some people get into comedy because they love comedy. Then there are people who have a message and have realised that if they can be funny, maybe people will listen to it. And then there are people like me, who are just addicted to making people laugh.
Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.
I'm doing 5000 seat theaters and audiences are going nuts, it's fantastic and it makes me very happy. I'm dirty, but not like this; I just do comedy that I find funny. I'm working on a new tv show for cable and it's not set up yet.
People have a comic bent or an angularity to their thinking, and those are the people who make jokes. And it's usually people who were in an environment, when they were young, where jokes were at a premium, or at least considered important to a life. My parents always listened to the comedy radio shows, we went to the comedy movies, and my parents appreciated comedy. So kids listen and follow what their parents like.
I think that's part of being a comedy writer. You have to be confident. If you're sitting around worrying about, like, oh my God, what are people going to think, then you're not writing comedy. You have to write what makes you laugh, and then the world hopefully laughs as well.
Stand-up comedy is a really lonely profession: you 'perform for 2000 people, then you go to a hotel room by yourself and stare at a wall.
Football stadiums are just a reflection of what is going on in society. Many times in stadiums, people just feel more relaxed and say what they think when they're somewhere else.
If I'm not directing it, I need to be right in the director's ear so we can be talking about this." You do something like use the wrong music, the tone's off, and everything feels off". And I was like, "I'm not going down with this one. I wrote it, but I don't like that play." Then I thought, "Well, no one's producing my stuff, letting me star in it, and direct it at these theaters, so I'll just do them in comedy clubs."
It's hard for me to play seated theaters because people tend to sit down and get a little bit complacent, so it's less energy. It's just very dry and dead. People start to feel like they're watching a movie. The environment when they walk into it, it's not standing room only, smoking and drinking and rock 'n' roll. So it's a little bit dangerous to do that.
There's so many variables in comedy. Comedy is not this thing that's a performance like a play. It's really an interaction with every single person in the room. And if there's a weirdness in the room for any people, be it something the comedians did at the top of the set or be it the mixture of the people isn't right, something can go awry. So it's really great to see you proven wrong about someone.
I only like the live audience. I don't even like to do standup where it's being filmed. Because it affects the way the audience responds to what you say, because it makes them uncomfortable. You have to perform in a light room, and I prefer a dark room. But I love to perform, and I don't really see myself doing any television at all.
In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.
I was confident and in good shape when I first came to L.A. but nobody would cast me in any well written roles. People assumed based on my looks I was an asshole and a one trick pony. They never let me improv or do comedy. It wasn't until I built a shlubby exterior, which stood in stark contrast to my inner confidence that people gave me room to play.
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