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If something is very, very funny but possibly controversial, if it's truly funny, then it's worth doing. Things aren't worth doing for the sake of being controversial.
The difficulty of getting a movie made through a major studio is so extreme that when a movie comes out, everyone should give it four stars because it was accomplished.
On Friday night, it was fun [to know] that if you bombed, or whatever was going on, that you'd be on TV at 11. It was a cool feeling, and you'd get a couple hundred dollars.
I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the '80s. Every comedian.
An episode that is near and dear to my heart is the entire cast in one room for the night because we get bed bugs in our apartment building so we have to stay with Martin Short.
Comfort is everything. You start doing something and you want it to be perfect right away, but most babies are born ugly and then they shake it out and you get beautiful toddlers.
I definitely look like a toddler. I feel comfortable and I have a lot of fun out there [John Mulaney Show]. And if I were to be extremely egotistical, I'd say I got a tiny bit better.
I've seen most of the major, important shows, but I watch them all at once, like movies, so my TV relationships are still with shows like 'Law And Order: SVU,' 'Shark Tank,' and HGTV.
It is 100% easier not to do things than to do them, and so much fun not to do them - especially when you were supposed to do them. In terms of instant relief, canceling plans is like heroin.
It was funny to be an emcee, because you're so at the mercy of the club. You can show up for the weekend hoping to get the $400 - and get fired. I had to prank whoever they told me to prank.
As I got into high school and after puberty, I was a little more inward. I was a real extrovert when I was little, but I don't know, I just got quieter With my friends, I was still an extrovert.
I plan to join the 'SNL' band as a maraca player and stand behind saxophonist Lenny Pickett. That way they will at least cut to me before commercial breaks. I'll be sure to look right into camera.
I remember writing standup jokes without having done sets. But as soon as I did my first set, it didn't matter. Everything I thought would work didn't work. And everything I was iffy on was funny.
As I got into high school and after puberty, I was a little more inward. I was a real extrovert when I was little, but I don't know, I just got quieter... With my friends, I was still an extrovert.
There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.
I stopped drinking when I was 23. I kind of started when I was 13, so it was a 10-year run. But I just became a bad, annoying drunk child, so when I stopped, I'd done a lot of things I wasn't proud of.
That was an interesting thing I learned I think the first time I did a late night show or something. It was like, "Oh, this is for the camera and a performance that you're giving to the people at home."
I really set out to do this traditional looking and traditional sounding multi-cam sitcom, but then make the world as elastic as an animated show could be. Make the world as surreal as we wanted it to be.
I love comedians that dive into politics. I personally don't feel comfortable, with my background, weighing in unless I have a take that I think is funny enough that I would put it in front of an audience.
When you have something that you did so many jobs on and were so front and center on, and then people dislike it, you want to learn lessons from it, and you want to move on, and you want to move on too fast.
I like to turn on the TV and watch whatever's on. Nick Kroll does that a lot. He doesn't watch important shows. He'll just turn on a documentary on Mia Hamm and watch it for an hour. Whatever's on, we watch.
It's nice when you're nervous and everybody's like, "Yeah, you should be nervous." Because a lot of times you're anxious and people say, "Relax. Shut up." And that just feels like, Well, I guess I'm also crazy.
Going on the road for long stretches can seem daunting, and I certainly miss being home sometimes, but the chance to see so many different cities, let alone perform in them, is something I am really grateful for.
I've always believed that you often need less. You don't need to hear why people are friends, you don't need to hear why people are roommates, you don't need to hear why someone would help a friend to do something.
I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it's a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it.
There's [John Mulaney Show] jokes that I have in stand up that I wouldn't try to put in, I would try to have someone just speak extemporaneously in the middle of a scene about an episode of "Law and Order" or something.
A lot of comedy clubs are set up with people sitting at little tables and you have everything from the way they are seated to them ordering or taking a sip of a drink, these can make a comedian go harder and faster in a club.
I don't know if there's a strategy really so much as, like I learned doing standup and had to learn fast, you always just try to give your favorite, strongest stuff as early as possible and you start with what you like the most.
"The Doula" was and is a very, very special episode to me because I think it's very funny and very weird and it also is 100 percent based on my life, in that I fainted three times during Sex Ed in real life the three different years.
I was just trying to blend the standup that I do almost with like the visual sketch stuff that I did on "Saturday Night Live." And so in terms of how elastic in the world is, we'll see what we can get away with [in John Mulaney show].
The best-case scenario is everything goes perfect and smooth, but we're also a new and weird show. So all my conversations were, "Hey last night didn't go perfect but we kind of know what we've got in store for everybody episode-wise."
It's important to remember that life is a joke and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don't think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.
It's important to remember that life is a joke, and that outlook grants a lot of perspective, but I don't think comedy should change and become political due to other things. It should just laugh at that cosmic joke that life is all the time.
It's been very funny to try to act like an adult. Even getting dressed. Every day, I'm like, 'Should I wear a blazer and walk around with an umbrella? Do I carry a briefcase?' Because I'm trying to be some image of the adults I saw on TV growing up.
If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes you're communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that's right in front of you as a guide for that.
Sometimes I - with comedy, it's like someone liking you in high school. They either do, or they don't. And when they don't, they don't. And that's it. There are no appeals. You show up, and you're like, 'Hi! I'm -' and you stumble, and they're like, 'It's over.'
I never turn on the crowd. Sometimes, you think it's a terrible show, and then afterward, sometimes people say they really liked it. So turning on the crowd is only going to alienate the few people who might like it. What do I do in that situation? Get through it.
I think for many of us - speaking for just a pocket of the country - we trusted Obama. So when you leave your baby with your mom to watch, you don't run home and check the nanny cam. But now we've left the baby with Gary Busey, so we're going to be a lot more on it.
Occasionally you get that one person that says "I really like that one part of this joke" and you go, "Oh thank you that's my favorite part too." But no, in order for it to be authentic hopefully you have jokes that everyone can just get on board with and then you have a few things for yourself.
I have found that people who really want to work at 'Saturday Night Live' and pursue it get pretty close. You have to be funny - but everyone who works there, it was their dream to work there. So it's kind of nice in that way - there's a lot of people who say, 'I just always wanted to do this, and now I'm doing it.'
I also had Elliot Gould and Martin Short and Nasim Pedrad - let alone Zack Pearlman who is going to be a huge star, as is Seaton Smith - out there and I love writing for them and just sitting back and watching them be excellent. And when you are sitting across from Elliott Gould sharing a scene it just raises your game.
I was new to acting on a stage in a narrative as opposed to acting on a stage as a stand-up. And like everything else it's just like comfort level. The first time I did stand-up I was at a place called the B3 in New York on Third and Avenue B and I not only didn't take the mic out of the stand, but I clutched the stand of the entire time.
Bill Clinton fascinates me because, at the time, it seemed like his shenanigans and the people after him were the biggest political stories you could ever imagine. I remember when the 'Starr Report' was published in the newspaper, all of us were reading it in the high-school cafeteria, and a dean started taking the newspapers away from us.