Jon Lovett Quotes

There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.

Comedy is such a vulnerable thing. With drama, you're not trying to make someone cry. If you do, great, but that's not your goal. With comedy, you're trying to make someone laugh, so to me, it's harder because you are in such a vulnerable position. You're like, 'I hope people like this. I hope I do the joke justice.'

In comedy, when you bomb, especially at The Comedy Store in front of a sold-out house? I think it would have been way worse if I bombed there than losing a UFC fight.

You always worry before your movie opens that no one is going to come out.

When I tried to play characters that strayed from who I am it ended in disaster. People didn't expect me in comedies or musicals.

Writing your own jokes, you just kind of keep working on something until you think it might work, and then you try it out and hope for the best.

I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

You never know when you'll have a bad idea for a worse joke.

The worst thing that can happen to a comedian is to do a documentary on your life and you're watching it with an audience and there's not a laugh.

When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop.

I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy. I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks, and you suck in it, then you won't get a chance to do it again.

Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon.

I'd like to go back to standup. I don't like to think I've done my last gig. At the moment it terrifies me, I get really nervous. It's a great buzz when it goes well.

That's the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person's blog story that they wrote when they were upset.

Comedy has to do with holding and releasing tension; it's very technical. It's more technical than drama.

I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

I don't have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage.

Before 'SNL,' I would do stand-up, opening for Jeff Tweedy. It was worse than bombing in that people were dead silent.

Everybody in comedy has something like that happen to them: They bomb, or no one shows up. You're like, 'Hey, I'm funny, trust me!' And the world collectively goes, 'Yeah, you and everybody else.'

I feel the life expectancy of a comedian is 30 seconds. If you don't hook an audience in half-a-minute, you're dead.

A joke bombing on stage doesn't bother me, especially if it's intended to bomb.

Just because you're laughing, it doesn't mean the audience will, necessarily.

My first stand-up experience, like most comics, was horrible. I got booed offstage. I thought I was funnier than I was. But the walk from the back of the room to the stage was the most excited I'd ever been about anything in my life other than kissing a girl. That's how I knew I had to get back onstage and do it again.