Billy Eichner Quotes

Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn't always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.

I'd love to do situation comedy - it's the best job in show business.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

I also had Elliot Gould and Martin Short and Nasim Pedrad - let alone Zack Pearlman who is going to be a huge star, as is Seaton Smith - out there and I love writing for them and just sitting back and watching them be excellent. And when you are sitting across from Elliott Gould sharing a scene it just raises your game.

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later.

My first writing jobs were writing Tom Arnold specials for HBO, so I love working there.

I've never written jokes. I mean, I'll write things on a piece of paper and riff on them onstage.

Most of my comedy writing happens through improvisation on stage; doing it in the moment. Going up with an idea and fleshing it out over time on stage and in front of people until it becomes a full bit.

One of the things I'm real proud of is I just made a deal with 20th Century Fox, and I've got my own production company now. I'm developing some television and movies for other people because I have a lot of fresh new ideas. To write is what I love the most.

I like to use a bit of chaos when I shoot. I think it may be something from the way I shot my first film - I was very scared, of course, and I prepared everything, I wanted to make sure that the characters did the right thing at the right time on the storyboard. But then I realised that in life, there is so much more than what you can predict or write in advance, that when you shoot the story, it's good to leave some gaps where you lose control. I think this combination of chaos and organisation gives a kind of quality.

I never plan. I never know what the next page is going to be..... But that's the fun of writing a novel or a story, because I don't know what's going to happen next.

I try to write three jokes every morning, although I don't know what they are. I write them as fast as I can, then I put them away for a month. So I couldn't even tell you what they are, or if they're good. I just assume they weren't.

Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.

Working on The Daily Show, I co-produced all those field segments, and that's another huge thing.I probably did more than 100 field segments.

It's an odd job, making decent people laugh.

It's a lot of work to put a brand-new monologue and a brand-new show on the air and find comedy every single day. It's challenging and it's the hardest thing I have ever done, but it's the best-suited thing for me. The more relaxed I get and the more confident I feel, the more I get to play and be myself...

I just wanted to be a good comic and had no sense of show business, but at some point you want the opportunity to write a show about your life.

Somebody's real voice is probably the hardest one that somebody could attempt. The characters are all, believe it or not, rooted in a reality of some sort. I've met and talked to people, and they're also fusions of showbiz periphery. But the best thing was, if you did your own voice and you were the star of the show - if it came to blows and they had you on the ropes and you had to leave, then they could just get someone to sound exactly like you.

Sarah [Silverman] writes her own jokes. She doesn't just go through her life and talk about everything. She sits down and crafts jokes. Sometimes her inspiration comes from areas of her life that are risqué. But she is an A-plus professional joke-writer in addition to being very attractive and a great performer.

I would be jokesmithing. I had files with tons of disses that I would try to write as I was on the train going to school.

The key to writing for Richard (Pryor) was to just push his buttons and then know when to push the buttons on your cassette recorder. You'd get him started, then surreptitiously start recording when he got inspired and started walking around the room and improvising in character. Then you'd get it all transcribed and take credit for it.

I never really know what I'm going to write next until it comes to me. So we'll just have to see what happens.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not. So it's hard for me to come up with things, because I don't write stuff, I don't write my act down.