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.
— Matt Besser
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 really enjoyed doing stand-up. Andy Kaufman was a big hero of mine. I tried to do conceptual stuff like he tried to do.
Improv acting is not just saying the lines but connecting with the other actor.
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.
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.
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'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.
The most difficult thing to pull off in a musical is the choreography.
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 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.
We all hate those stories that end with 'And that's the story.'
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.
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 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.
Mary Holland is really funny.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The one thing that's depressing as a comedian to realize is that rock stars get groupies, and comedians don't.
Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it.
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.
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.
Understanding listening is an epiphany moment for every improviser. At least for me it was.
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.
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.
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.
Sometimes people can be offensive and not even realize it.
I actually find prank CDs pretty annoying.
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.
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.
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 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.
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'm more comfortable doing a character than being myself.
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.
People get recruited from sketch groups and put on 'Mad TV' and 'SNL,' but those aren't ensembles, they're all-star teams.
I saw Chris Rock do standup before he was famous. I was just a teenager. That will always be special to me.
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.
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.
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.
There's nothing more pathetic than listening to a football game over the Internet, but I've done that.
I always like being a director in terms of giving acting notes and punching up on the fly.
I'll probably never stop improvising.
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?
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.
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.
I'm more of a sketch guy than a standup.
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.
