Brian Regan on the most difficult thing about standup
Plus other great quotes from Robin Williams, Gilbert Gottfried, Bill Burr, and Chris Rock.
Check me out in Virginia and Maryland this weekend. Ticket info here.
Some great comedian quotes from Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work by Jesse David Fox.
Lynch mobs:
Gilbert Gottfried liked to say, “The internet makes me feel sentimental about old-time lynch mobs. At least lynch mobs had to put their shoes on, go out, get their hands dirty, and deal with other people.”
Starting out:
Robin Williams was asked if he got laughs when he started out and responded, “You have to. There is very little stand-up tragedy.”
Why Bill Burr resents alt comedy:
“I resent the alternative comedy scene for one reason only,” he says. “That scene created a situation; it basically distilled all of the horror out of attempting to be a comedian. No heckling, no drunks, no obnoxious behavior, no aggressiveness [from the crowd]; every fucking reason it takes balls to be a comedian; every fucking reason that people wanted to be a comic but never fucking did it, they’ve removed [those things] from the situation and [they’ve] created this fucking comedy womb.”
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Regan gems:
Brian Regan: “The difficulty in doing stand-up comedy is not knocking down the pins, it’s setting up the pins.”
Brian Regan has my favorite way of describing what the job of a comedian is. “Let’s say you have five hundred people in the audience. Who has the ability to connect to five hundred individuals?” he explained. “Instead, you try to make that group one thing. And then I just try to make that one thing laugh.”
When is it okay to laugh at pain?
Two years prior, [Ali] Wong had a miscarriage, but struggled in talking about it onstage. It was [Laurie] Kilmartin who gave Wong the advice that the audience needs to know the comic is okay in order to laugh. With the special, as she said in an interview at the time, being pregnant while doing that material was how she communicated she was okay.
On ego and self-esteem:
“I had this great combination of big ego and low self-esteem,” [Chris Rock] explained. “And the ego gets you out onstage, but the low self-esteem is the thing that makes you practice so much because you don’t believe in yourself at all.”
Related:
On shock therapy, righteous indignation, and why comedy's so lonely
Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work by Jesse David Fox is filled with great quotes and standup comedy insights. I enjoyed it a lot!
Dear Matt,
Thanks for sharing!
Love this from Brian Regan: “The difficulty in doing stand-up comedy is not knocking down the pins, it’s setting up the pins.”
Thanks for setting up THESE pins!
Love
Myq