Bobcat Goldthwait Quotes

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

Stand-up keeps you alive. It is definitely the most specialized field in comedy because you need to stay sharp and well-tuned every night.

Being a dancer and a singer gave me some advantage with regards to having a stage presence. I always take my timing from the audience because they are half of my act.

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.

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

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

I have to visualise my jokes, live my jokes, feel the audience because every audience is different. It's like having a different dancing partner every night.

You learn timing on the road. You learn structure and how to read an audience. You learn so much about the business of laughter that you can't learn on a set, because it's all on you. Sometimes you bomb, and you know not to tell that joke again... You just hope people find the humor in the awkwardness.

I would love to do more TV and do movies for the experience, but my ultimate focus is stand-up. It's the number one thing that I love most because there is nothing like being with a live audience.

It's important that when you do standup, you do small places like coffee shops and also big places like colleges. It helps you find the little nuances in your set that don't work, and you can shave off the excess.

The more you work in this business as a comedian, the closer you get to just being yourself onstage, on camera, the more well received you are.

I was always just like, 'Standups are making it up.' A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn't until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

The moment for me, thinking I might actually want to do comedy professionally, was when I did public speaking at school. I found out I was good at getting up in front of class. In the fifth grade, I did a speech on 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.

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

I've been performing stand-up comedy for ten years, it's what I love and will always do.

Why do you act? You act for an audience. In the theatre, you're in their presence. Film stars don't know what it is to have an audience.

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

The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.

The great thing about a sitcom is that you're in front of a live audience, so you really get in touch with what audience reaction is, but also there are lots of elements of film that you're dealing with, and there's kind of a great boot camp or graduate school mentality to it, because you're going to suck.

In Manhattan, I often do two or three or more shows a night, so I'm always working on new material.

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.

Live stage is being made as you go along. You feel the energy. There's nothing like a live audience.

Ever since I was a little kid, whenever my parents would have company over, I would put on shows, whether they would be magic shows, singing shows, dancing shows, little skits.

Acting was merely a pastime; I wanted to make films. But theatre, ah - now that was a labour of love. Can there be anything better than performing without retakes and cuts, in front of people you can see, hearing them breathe in the darkness of the hall?