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" Many improv groups give off the same positive annoying vibe that I associate with Christian Young Life groups with shows that more resemble children playing than a comedy performance. "

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" 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. "

Matt Besser

Pig

Fan

Know

" 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. "

" I don't think 'Freak Dance' is a parody; it's more reference than anything. People don't think of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' as a 'Frankenstein' parody. It's kind of like that. "

" Don't invite me to a surprise birthday party. I don't have room for that secret. I've got enough real secrets I have to keep: dark, life-destroying secrets. "

Matt Besser

Enough

Surprise

" You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene. "

" 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. "

" You can do a whole scene in acting without ever checking in to what the other guy is saying - it's not going to come off great, but you can get through the scene - whereas in improv, that's gonna be impossible. "

" 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

" 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. "

" Sometimes people can be offensive and not even realize it. "

" Instead of improvisers who want to be funny by themselves, we aim to try and make the scene itself as funny as possible. As a creator, I think that's someone you'd rather work with, whether it's a movie or a sitcom; that kind of methodology is good for collaboration. People want to be with those kinds of performers. "

" Right after college, a buddy of mine was moving to Boulder for some summer program, and he was like, 'Come live with me.' And I figured, why not? I love Colorado. "

Matt Besser

College

Love

" I saw Chris Rock do standup before he was famous. I was just a teenager. That will always be special to me. "

Matt Besser

Always

Will

" I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying. "

" We all hate those stories that end with 'And that's the story.' "

" I never liked the glossiness of highly produced standup specials in general - I like it where it has more of a feel of the type of places I usually perform. It seems kind of weird when you do a special to go perform in a place unlike the place where you perform 95% of the time. "

" For all you Joe Besser haters who claim that he was the worst Stooge, that's not true - Curly Joe DeRita was the worst stooge. Joe Besser was the second worst. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Understanding listening is an epiphany moment for every improviser. At least for me it was. "

Matt Besser

Understanding

Listening

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I do believe if we opened up a comedy theater in a city, that we're going to be able to teach improv better than whoever's there already. In general, I think I could say that. "

Matt Besser

Comedy

Think

" Improv acting is not just saying the lines but connecting with the other actor. "

" 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. "

" People get recruited from sketch groups and put on 'Mad TV' and 'SNL,' but those aren't ensembles, they're all-star teams. "

" There's a creative vibe at U.C.B., and to maintain it, we can't pay people. If you pay, then you have to assign worth to shows, and then people will resent that. "

" I'll probably never stop improvising. "

" I don't think I've ever had a conversation with a comedian who stole except for when it's been in anger. "