Ben Miller Quotes

I don't do one-liners, because you don't learn anything about that comedian.

Don't get me wrong, I'm under no illusions, I've got a very old-school, mainstream leaning to the way I present my comedy because I actually like jokes and don't just do observational stuff.

I started out splitting my time between the Kansas City and St. Louis comedy scenes, which both had bluer sensibilities than other cities that I've worked.

I am always a great fan of keeping things on an eye level for comedy because it plays better.

I don't think my film style has changed. I'm doing the same kind of jokes I did when I was younger.

I've always had my voice as a comic. I was never that into politics, or prop comedy.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I do mostly comedy, and it tends to be a subtler comedy. But I think that probably lends itself well to commercials.

I never like to do parodies. I never do. It's just not my style of comedy.

I'm not going to give up the shock part of my comedy.

I grew up loving David Letterman and Pee-wee Herman, but as far as live performance comedy, all I knew were the Jerry Seinfeld-type comedians of the world, and that's what I thought live performance comedy was all about.

It's that I wasn't suited to do the kind of comedy that these people were coming to hear - mainstream comedy.

I'm hardly a known name, but I don't want to go, like, 'Oh, people call me a storyteller comedian, let me just go up and just talk about my day.' I don't want that to happen.

What they call 'alt-comedy' now is basically what comedy was like in the '80s. People tried different things, and everybody went to the clubs; there was no other place. Then somehow, the clubs became infiltrated by Dice Clay and Carrot Top types.

After the comedy boom of the '80s, there was a certain formula that comedians had to do and could do in order to be successful touring comedians, and those were mainly observational comedians who had a very strict structure of what made an act, and I think it was very performance oriented.

I never wanted to do observational humor because I never wanted to tell people what they were seeing.

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.

There's no idea or concept in comedy you could do that hasn't been attacked from some angle. But if you start leaving punchlines out so you'll look cool, I don't get that. But I don't watch standup anyway, so I don't know what they're doing.

My standup is observational, but it's self-observational, and it's self-deprecating, definitely.

Standup comedy was my weird hobby. I would drag my poor parents out to the only open mics that were in coffee shops instead of bars. I'd get up and go, 'Hi, I'm 17, and I have jokes about matriculation!' At the time I was like, 'Why is no one laughing?'

The name of my first comedy album was 'Raised by Cable.' Coming up and watching all of these weird movies on different channels was such an influence on me and an influence on how I do standup. It informs everything I do.

I'm not a comedian who wants to spend far too long on stage.

In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.

All I ever wanted to do was tell jokes for a living.

When comics are in the room, people have a tendency to try to make them laugh. That doesn't really make you funnier. It makes you a comic's comic, but you aren't going to get a fan base doing that.