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There are some extremely acceptable male comedians out there: Joel Osteen, Abraham Lincoln, the man who played Phil Spector in HBO's 'Phil Spector.' But even those guys, while insightful and amusing, aren't exactly funny.
The Edinburgh Fringe is a tough beast and you do whatever you can to get through it. But it's really the worst place to see comedians; everyone is so tense and nervous because it feels like Ofsted inspectors are out there.
I think sometimes comedians and entertainers and artists, sometimes they get onstage, and it's all for what they want to do. I think you still need to do stuff for the audience. They're the ones who are making it possible.
If you're showing people where it's smooth sailing, where is the joke? If you go back to any movie, even a conventional movie, with any comedians, they're either not terribly intelligent or they're not doing something well.
Coming from an immigrant background, where a lot of parents don't want their kids to be comedians, success was just showing my mom that I could make a living. I was like, if I can get my mom off my back, that was my success.
Comedians, we're just people who whine. But we happen to be funny when we whine. Like, if Jerry Seinfeld wasn't funny, you'd want to punch him in the face; he'd just seem like a whiner to you. But the fact is that he's funny.
I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.
I discovered that it's not really about the language. It's about how the words are pronounced and the delivery. We have plenty of good English-speaking comedians. It's O.K. if I have my accent, my gestures, my way of speaking.
One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way - and see the comedians grow.
A lot of people, especially comedians, just feel like, 'Oh, I can be charming and whatever, and have fun, and everybody is just going to like me.' But you've got to work. There's got to be a real work ethic that gets you better.
Most Scots might be able to identify six vegetables - but only two MSPs. There are parts of Scotland where you rarely get more than 40% turnout at the polls. There's a big disconnect there, and I think comedians bridge that gap.
The image people have of comedians staring defiantly over a stationary line of good taste is simply inaccurate. We don't approach this line, put our toes over it arrogantly and then scamper back to safety. The line doesn't exist.
It's also that comedians don't have the kind of narcissism that actors have. They're writers who perform their own material. It's more interesting. And they're sexy because they risk more. Stand-up comedians risk more than anyone.
I've inherited a Jewish sensibility and sense of humor from my parents and all those who came before me. All the Jewish comedians, character actors and writers I was exposed to also reminded me of my family in their sense of humor.
Everything will be seen on your computer or BlackBerry or whatever devices we will be seeing in the future. Comedians will put their content on whatever server and send it to you specifically. We may even lose the live performance.
I think when I was young, let's call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That's really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.
I opened up for Richard Pryor in 1992. I had a conversation with him. All those other comedians can say what they want about what they did, but I opened up for the man. Paul Mooney and I are probably the only ones that can say that.
You can be good at comedy, which means you'll be given spots, but beyond that it is luck that pushes you to the next level. There are loads of brilliant comedians who haven't had the breaks, and plenty of average comedians who have.
Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words - they work 'blue.' If you don't want to hear a joke that's blue, you shouldn't go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing.
I am on Facebook, but it's mainly for friends and family, so it's not my real name. But I am on Twitter a lot. I resisted it for so long, but I love it because I get to connect with people I look up to - actors, comedians, and singers.
The comedians all finished their acts with a song. They would get a certain amount of money from the song publishers and would use that money to pay the writers. None of them paid very much for their comedy material, but it all added up.
I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.
The truth is, for however much my stories come out of things that have happened to me, they're not darkly or as deeply personal as someone like Marc Maron or a lot of comedians, but they are essentially my life and my interpretation of it.
'Smart Funny & Black' came about because I felt that black comedians were being considered as only capable of a certain type of comedy - sort of physical, kind of silly - and I felt like we are not a monolith, and our comedy isn't, either.
We have been sold a Muslim boogeyman. We are buying into it, and we are terrified, and that terror is causing people to lash out at comedians like myself or women wearing hijabs, or anyone who seems to defend equality for Muslims worldwide.
The journalistic and political classes are very eager to borrow the cultural authority of comedians when it suits them, sending out gala invitations and posing for photos in hopes that a bit of that edgy satirical shine will rub off on them.
It's funny how comedy is, you look at people like French and Saunders, when they started out they were very alternative. A lot of those alternative comedians have ended up being mainstream, they know that longevity is about being mainstream.
I love 'Another Round.' It's Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton's podcast that's through BuzzFeed, and they're real funny and really themselves. And I like it because it's very funny, but it's outside the realm of comedians talking about comedy.
Interesting-looking people have always been comedians, and it's rare that someone who has the choice to model ends up being a comic. Except for maybe Whitney Cummings, but that's about it. That's why she's special: because she can combine it.
At comedy festivals, we always get grouped with other musical comedians, so you can get to know them and see what everyone is doing. it's really fun and awesome that we're the only girls, because we can tackle issues that guys can't sing about.
I'm actually a big fan of Kathy Griffin because I think she's really funny. I think she's really self-deprecating, which is something I like to see in a comedian. I think those are really the best comedians: people who can make fun of themselves.
I was trained classically, and that's something that I want to do, but I do want to say that right now it's a good market for female comedians, and I want to explore that right now. I really do want to do dramas and meatier roles, especially film.
Only comedians can talk about death, life, God and Virgin Mary. If I was a tragic actor, I couldn't allow myself. But with this accent I can do it. I can talk with death in person because I am a clown. Yes. And I am proud to be a clown - very much.
I found out I had a real love for comedy and comedy writing. The logic was, there weren't too many female comedians, so I thought I might as well try a field that had fewer competitors than the field I was in, which was acting, singing and dancing.
I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.
When I was a kid, I loved all the silent comedians - Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin. And I used to imitate them. I'd go to see a Buster Keaton movie and come home and try things out I'd seen. I learned to do pratfalls when I was very young.
Stand-up comedians know how to walk into a room, even if you're not performing, just read the temperature of a room, and can easily sort of tell what's going on or what people are sort of feeling in the room, and it allows you to sort of approach people.
You can't erase Bill Cosby's contributions. That's the conflict. He's one of the most influential comedians of all time, and 'The Cosby Show' is one of the most influential sitcoms ever. When I watched as a kid, I wanted Cliff to be my dad. Everybody did.
A lot of times, people will have after-parties or try and host an event for comedians, and they misunderstand us. They think it should be wild and crazy, or loud music, and comedians are typically pretty mellow people that just want to talk to each other.
There's so many good comedians in D.C. I started hanging out with those guys. Dave Chappelle was there. Actually, Dave was too young to be in the clubs, so when his mom couldn't make it, he would ask me to pretend I was his aunt, so he could do open mike.
I don't consider myself a comedian, but you work with some comedians, and sometimes these guys are incredible on their feet - it's just amazing - and that's not what I do. But it's always fun, and I don't really care as long as the character is interesting.
When a lot of people are distrusting the news they watch, comedians are stepping up talking about things that most people are too afraid to talk about, shining light on problems nobody else will admit, whether it's Samantha Bee or John Oliver or Trevor Noah.
I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
We're lucky enough, especially in these 'Madagascar' films, to be working with some of the best people in the industry, who are not only great actors, but great comedians and improvisers and filmmakers. And they then become a part of creating their characters.
For comedians, we're all kind of tweeting our thoughts instead of spending time developing them. You can gauge how good a joke might be by how many times it gets retweeted, but it takes discipline to go back through the tweets and then develop jokes from them.
For me, funny is funny, and what's unfortunate is these comedians aren't being allowed to operate in rooms for everybody and that everybody can laugh and say, 'Okay, I find that person funny, and I don't just have to find them funny because they look like me.'
The feeling of being an outsider was a big part of my childhood. I think that helps comedians. That feeling of being an outsider. That desire for a perspective that's all your own. The idea for me to make stuff myself with my own meaning came from that as well.
I'm an entertainer first. But I do as a stand up comedian, the way for me to evolve is to make a difference, to make people laugh and learn and do something different. Because there's too many comedians out there just making people laugh. And anybody can do that.
I'd say Jon Stewart has remained funny the entire time. Jon always makes it funny first. And he's just, he's talking about serious things, but in a funny way. Other comedians will talk about serious things in a serious way, and then you don't know what's going on.
You learn to laugh at yourself, and you also lean on comedy as a crutch to kind of take the edge off because comedians often are self-deprecating, and they cross lines that they shouldn't. Stuff like that brings a smile to my face every once in a while when needed.