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" I'm more comfortable doing a character than being myself. "
Matt Besser
Being Myself
Doing
Myself
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" I saw Chris Rock do standup before he was famous. I was just a teenager. That will always be special to me. "
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Me
Always
Will
" I was a DJ in college and had my own punk music-focused show all four years. "
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Punk
My Own
College
" I think it's pretty stupid to write off an entire genre of anything. It's one thing to say 'I don't like country music.' But it's pretty narrow minded to say 'All country music sucks.' Of course, that being said, all short-form improv sucks. "
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Music
Stupid
Said
" Often, when people don't do so well in a monologue at UCB, it's because they're racking their brain so hard to be funny that they're just not honest and don't just tell a true story, which is what we want. "
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People
Brain
Funny
" I think most people don't even know what 'woo pig sooie' is if they're not a sports fan or they're not from Arkansas. "
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Pig
Fan
Know
" Standups have all the talk shows, but you never see a sketch group on a talk show. Even on so-called variety shows, if you do see a sketch group or character, it's written specifically for that variety show and usually written around the host of the show or a celebrity. "
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Never
See
Talk
" It's almost kind of satisfying when you get direct proof that someone stole your bit. It makes the times you had the paranoid suspicion feel less crazy. "
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Kind
Crazy
Your
" I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying. "
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Prank
Pretty
CDs
" In most specials, the performer's up - not only not surrounded, but up on a stage - and there's a distance between them and the audience, and I think my comedy doesn't work as well in that way. "
Matt Besser
Think
Comedy
Distance
" I'd been involved with stand-up before improv, so I already thought highly of myself as being a funny person. I never thought I wasn't funny. "
Matt Besser
Thought
Myself
Person
" I got really depressed when Sidney Moncrief lost to Larry Bird. That really depressed me. "
Matt Besser
Got
Me
Lost
" I'm more of a sketch guy than a standup. "
Matt Besser
Than
Guy
Sketch
" People are either funny or they're not, and you can't teach that - but you can teach people to work together to make an idea better. "
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People
Funny
Together
" I grew up in the '80s, when breaking was cool, and then it got corny in the '90s, and it became cool again with all these choreographed B-Boy dance crews. "
Matt Besser
Cool
Again
Up
" There's nothing more pathetic than listening to a football game over the Internet, but I've done that. "
Matt Besser
Football
Listening
Internet
" I feel like there are a lot of bands or musicians that probably think improv is corny, because I think that's a sentiment out there. "
Matt Besser
Because
Think
Like
" There's something about the Razorbacks that's unique to Arkansas - I don't know how many states have just one team that the entire state coalesces around. We don't have a pro team, so everybody's into the Razorbacks. Everybody's watching the Razorbacks on Saturday. "
Matt Besser
Saturday
Know
Unique
" I guess that I was always considered a little too weird for the standup clubs and probably too jokey for doing performance art and those places where those are done. "
Matt Besser
Performance
Done
Weird
" When I came to Chicago, I didn't even know what improvisation meant, as far as pertaining to comedy. I knew about Second City, but I didn't know what the word 'improvisation' meant. "
Matt Besser
Comedy
City
Far
" Mary Holland is really funny. "
Matt Besser
Holland
Mary
Really
" I didn't even learn to play guitar until the movie 'Walk Hard,' which is probably fortunate because maybe I would have pursued it, and that would have been a waste of my time. "
Matt Besser
Learn
Guitar
Hard
" Acting is just about the script and the director giving you notes. In improv, it's more about trusting that the group will carry you. "
Matt Besser
Director
Acting
You
" When we started doing sketch comedy - actually in '91 in Chicago - making your own videos, which we did, took forever. It would take like, a year to make one video. It was just so difficult to edit and just do everything you had to do. "
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Doing
Comedy
Own
" We agree that there is a problem in the sketch and improv community where, in general, there should be more interest from a more diverse sampling of our society. That is precisely why we do have diversity scholarships and why we've put together a diversity program to try to figure this problem out. "
Matt Besser
Society
Diversity
Community
" People get recruited from sketch groups and put on 'Mad TV' and 'SNL,' but those aren't ensembles, they're all-star teams. "
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Mad
People
Sketch
" I thought the musical aspect of 'Freak Dance' was a good contrast to how dancers always try to come off as really tough in those movies - they're trying to literally come off as gangs like as if the Crips and the Bloods are also dancing in addition or instead of fighting with guns and knives and stuff. "
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Thought
Good
Dance
" The one thing that's depressing as a comedian to realize is that rock stars get groupies, and comedians don't. "
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Depressing
Get
Realize
" I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and before the Internet and before everything, just to get anything interesting, you had to go on vacation to San Francisco or something. But I think when you're in the middle of America, you feel very jealous of not just comedy but music that you don't have access to. "
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Vacation
Think
Music
" If acting with other people is in your plans, then you need to learn how to work with other people to build a comedic premise. "
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Need
Acting
You
" Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it. "
Matt Besser
Unusual
Every
Funny