I'm more comfortable doing a character than being myself.
Matt Besser
People get recruited from sketch groups and put on 'Mad TV' and 'SNL,' but those aren't ensembles, they're all-star teams.
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.
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 like musicals that are sometimes comedic, but I haven't even seen the Monty Python musical, and I'm a huge Monty Python fan.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We all hate those stories that end with 'And that's the story.'
I was a DJ in college and had my own punk music-focused show all four years.
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 got really depressed when Sidney Moncrief lost to Larry Bird. That really depressed me.
I'll probably never stop improvising.
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.
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 saw Chris Rock do standup before he was famous. I was just a teenager. That will always be special to me.
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.
I thought the musical aspect of 'Freak Dance' was a good contrast to how dancers always try to come off as really tough in those movies - they're trying to literally come off as gangs like as if the Crips and the Bloods are also dancing in addition or instead of fighting with guns and knives and stuff.
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.
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.
Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it.
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.
I can't stand USC. They get such media attention.
So many comedians, if you asked them, 'What's your priority in standup?' it's probably gonna be to make people laugh or to entertain them. That is just way down on my priority list, if on my list at all. I'm into breaking records. If I can do a set and break a record and get no laughs, I'm happy.
Understanding listening is an epiphany moment for every improviser. At least for me it was.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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 don't think I've ever had a conversation with a comedian who stole except for when it's been in anger.
You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene.
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.
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.
Mary Holland is really funny.
I'm more of a sketch guy than a standup.
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.
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.
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 actually find prank CDs pretty annoying.
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.
Sometimes people can be offensive and not even realize it.
I always like being a director in terms of giving acting notes and punching up on the fly.
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.
There's nothing more pathetic than listening to a football game over the Internet, but I've done that.
The most difficult thing to pull off in a musical is the choreography.
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.
