Neal Brennan Quotes

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.

Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, 'This is where I wanna be.'

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.

The beautiful thing about stand-up advice is that it applies to anybody, any gender, any race, any age. The best thing you can do - everybody will tell you - is get on stage as much as you can. I would add to that: get on stage as much as you can - with the people you admire.

I feel that if you can play on the streets or in a comedy club, then in a theatre it's a doddle because you've got an audience.

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.

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.

As much experience, education and awareness as one can attain is important for a comedian.

As a comedian, I'm forced to have a tough skin. Until people laugh, they are detractors. You walk into a new audience where nobody knows you, they go: 'Make us laugh. Show us what you're made of. Prove why we should be listening to you.'

After I got my first laugh on stage, I was hooked.

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

I did a standup show called 'Show Me the Funny,' so from that I got some TV stuff and people would book me for gigs. I wasn't really good enough at that point, so had to catch up with expectations.

I think you develop strong instincts when you're a comedian. You have to pay your bills by making people laugh every six seconds... or not. I had to do that for 22 years.

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

I wasn't properly performing in Canada. I was just starting out, and when everyone starts out, they're terrible. I'm sure there are some Kellyanne Conway videos of me just really dying on a stage.

One place that I really feel comfortable is being a comedienne. I'm very socially inept. There's so many things that I can not do in life, and this is, like, the one thing that I have mastery over. It's my world. And anybody who's coming to the show, it's like they're coming because they know that this is my world.

You say a line and you wait for them to laugh, then you say another line and you wait... It felt weird to me. But it's interesting and the energy is almost like theatre, I suppose, with all the people 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.

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. To me, that's more pure.

I never wanted to be road comic.

I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.

There's no real preparing at home for stand-up. You just go and you just do it.

There aren't any concrete steps to becoming a comic.

I've seen other comics, with great pleasure, watching their own specials, and I don't know how or why they do it.