Joan Rivers Quotes

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

With stand-up you can just be yourself on stage. And ideally, you can't see the crowd most of the time - it's just lights in your face. But I still have had terrible stage fright.

I feel like every time I go out, I want to do a good job. I want people to say that he's just as good at stand-up as he is in some of the movies I've seen him in, so I try to do the best every time I go out there.

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.

If you're a comic, you don't have a rehearsal room; you rehearse on stage. My main concern is remembering everything. I've written lots of material, but how do you memorise 90 minutes? That's one hell of a long speech. I've always had problems with that.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

Little did I know that earning a living at stand-up is the hardest thing you can do. But once I started doing it, I just loved it, and I realized that I was actually kinda good at it, and then that was it.

Everyone forgets comedians are actors. There's no question about it. A Robin Williams cannot say the same line every night for 40 weeks and make it sound fresh unless he's doing an acting job.

I've always wanted to do a segment on a talk show. Jay Leno has been such a good friend, and if he would allow me, I'd have to get it all together, but I'd like to go on 'The Tonight Show' and do a set with no props. Or come out with a trunk and never touch it. Or come out with a clear trunk with nothing in it.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

When I was starting out, I was just bringing a garbage bag of jokes onstage, pulling them out like, 'What about this? No? Alright.' I was just trying to be funny about anything.

Open mics are a great way to rework your material to see what punchlines land best.

At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I'm acting with.

I call it 'new forms'. When you're starting out, they ask you to do four or five minute sets, but once you're a headliner, you do like 90 minutes. I try to think of different things to divvy up the show, like doing drawings, playing music... I gotta carry the show, that's the problem.

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.

I don't know any comedian who tailors his act to his audience. Maybe people say they do, but I can't even imagine them.

I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

TV is easier: it's all planned out for you and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over.

I feel that I am a good actor.