Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Neil Mahoney was definitely the visionary in taking 'Freak Dance' from stage to screen. He made it more cinematic. He brought the choreography, all the ways to shoot that. I was more the director of actors. I was in front of the camera directing, and he was behind the camera directing. "

Matt Besser

Camera

Dance

Stage

Related Quotes:

" I'm more of a sketch guy than a standup. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" People take toasting way too seriously - especially the clinking glasses part. There are always a few people who are seated too far away from each other to easily clink. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" There's nothing more pathetic than listening to a football game over the Internet, but I've done that. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" 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

" I was a DJ in college and had my own punk music-focused show all four years. "

" Mary Holland is really funny. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The one thing that's depressing as a comedian to realize is that rock stars get groupies, and comedians don't. "

" I'll probably never stop improvising. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" I got really depressed when Sidney Moncrief lost to Larry Bird. That really depressed me. "

Matt Besser

Got

Lost

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying. "

" 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. "