Jackie Mason Quotes

In the U.K. and Ireland, crowd-work is a big thing. It shows you how funny someone would be if you met them off-stage. Americans don't care if you're funny off-stage. They want to see the writing; they want to see the work you did.

Just me onstage with a mike having an intimate relationship with the audience. I don't get nervous for that. I just get excited.

Stand-up, for me, is really more of an addiction, so you have to feed the beast whenever you can.

I like to hold the microphone cord like this, I pinch it together, then I let it go, then you hear a whole bunch of jokes at once.

I think a theater show is a pure version of me doing my material. The theater crowd is a bit more polite, there really aren't hecklers, and there are a lot of people there to see me, and they're excited about the jokes and hanging out with me for a show.

I think as a standup performer you have to feel the audience. So the audience kind of dictates what they get, you know?

I'm sure there's going to be some material from This Is Not Going To Be Pretty. I usually use that song to just introduce myself to the audience, although the patter in between the song is always different.

I think the challenge is going out in front of a paying audience with absolutely nothing and trying to entertain them for two hours. Thankfully, I only think about that right before we go on, and then once we're out there, everything's fine.

Your number one job as a comedian is to be aware. You're supposed to understand the temperature in the room more than anyone on the planet - that's the whole craft of comedy.

A lot of comedians are really funny onstage, but they can't do a podcast.

A responsive crowd is great - they help you see new things in your comedy.

I'm always making micro-adjustments onstage, listening to the audience, and what a crowd is like can be infectious.

Getting onstage and trying out all of my material and what works well with audiences and what doesn't, what works well in different atmospheres, has been the best training.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

I love storytelling and I love just relating directly to an audience. That's why we do theatre, it's because we love contact with the audience. We love the fact that the audience will change us. The way the audience responds makes us change our performance.

I was born to do sitcoms, where you get an immediate response from the audience.

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.

There's something about small venues that's amazing for developing material. It's almost like you can not only hear people's response, but you can understand it. In bigger venues you lose that, but you gain this sense of camaraderie in the audience.

I'm like the master of ceremonies being funny, and then sometimes people you're with, girlfriends and stuff, are like, 'God I wish I had the person on stage to be with all the time.'

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.

You've got to be like a fan at your show, just wild out. I make eye contact. I get in the crowd and kick it with 'em, stage dive, mosh. I make 'em laugh. I go out there and turn up, have fun. There's no set list; I don't have rehearsals.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

A performance is only as good as the audience you are playing to. A lot of times you feed off of the audience, and we always try to give them all we've got and sometimes you don't get a lot back, but we've never been dead whenever we've performed.

I really love live performing!

If I get a hard audience they are not going to get away until they laugh. Those seven laughs a minute - I've got to have them.