Mary Holland is really funny.

I'll probably never stop improvising.

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

I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying.

I can't stand USC. They get such media attention.

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

I'm more comfortable doing a character than being myself.

Sometimes people can be offensive and not even realize it.

The most difficult thing to pull off in a musical is the choreography.

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

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

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

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

I always like being a director in terms of giving acting notes and punching up on the fly.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 used to go to those dance circles when I was a kid. When break dancing was first popular in the '80s. I would be in Boston, or I'd head up to New York, and I would stand in those circles, and I would just be blown away.

Lou Holtz, I was also a huge fan of. He was really funny. I think that's a big part of why I was attracted to the Razorbacks: I thought Lou Holtz was really funny. He is really funny. Too bad he's a born-again, or whatever.

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.

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.

Share This Page