Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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

" 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. "

" 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 really enjoyed doing stand-up. Andy Kaufman was a big hero of mine. I tried to do conceptual stuff like he tried to do. "

Matt Besser

Mine

Doing

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

" I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

" 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. "

" Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it. "

" 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. "

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

Matt Besser

Got

Lost

" It seems like the real television networks, the amount of people that watch each network is going down and down, and the amount of people that watch each website is going up and up. "

" 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 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. "

" I like musicals that are sometimes comedic, but I haven't even seen the Monty Python musical, and I'm a huge Monty Python fan. "

Matt Besser

Fan

Sometimes

" 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. "

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

" Mary Holland is really funny. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" A story is ultimately a memory. It's important when you're telling a story to think about why this memory is a memory. You don't remember everything in life; you just remember certain things - so, why this one? "

" 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. "