Judd Apatow Quotes

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable. You must reach the emotional and intellectual level of ability where you can go out stark naked, emotionally, in front of an audience.

You instinctively discover how to entertain an audience.

When I'm performing, I'm not even thinking about the song. I'm thinking about the audience.

I will have a playlist ready that I'll play out to the audience before I walk on stage, and I'll listen to that same playlist in the room, so by the time I walk on stage, I'm in the same frame of mind the audience is.

As much as only playing clubs can become tedious, performing in huge venues can also become off-putting. To go from one to the other feels great. And sometimes playing clubs can be even more stressful, because you really have to think about what you're going to tell the audience between songs.

When you're relaxed, the crowd can see it. They can feel it. They can tell when you're being real, or they can tell when you're forcing it.

I think it's important when you're acting to be as relaxed as possible even if you're doing something intense. You're basically in a state of dynamic relaxation.

The number one quality is charisma. You have to be able to connect with the audience. That is that magic "it" factor that designates a star from someone who is just never going to be a star.

You don't look down at your feet. A lot of comedians want to look down at their feet, but you break contact with the audience.

A good DJ is always looking at the crowd, seeing what they’re like, seeing whether it’s working; communicating with them. Smiling at them. And a bad DJ is always looking down at what they’re doing all the time and just doing their thing that they practiced in their bedroom

There's no room for failure performing [stand-up] for a black audience. If you don't get them right away it's tough winning them back even if you're doing top-notch material. If you didn't win them right when you walked out there, it's tough.

I'm grateful that I had that uphill battle for 10 years of going onstage and having nobody know who I was, because you have to win them over. I have a lot of friends who were stand-ups, and they just stopped after a while, because they didn't like that battle. And then they would get on a sitcom and get visible and get back into it, because the audience was just way easier on them. That's why they're okay stand-ups, but they're never going to be great, because they don't have that presence. They never built those muscles up.

You don't psych yourself up for these things, you do them... I'm acting for the audience, not for myself, and I do it as directly as I can.

Whenever I perform I try to connect with the crowd and give off energy so when they walk away from the show its remarkable and its something they talk about it, like 'damn I cant wait to come back to my show.'

I won Iowa not because the demographics dictated that I would win Iowa. It was because I spent 87 days going to every small town and fair and fish fry and BFW Hall, and there were some counties where I might have lost, but maybe I lost by 20 points instead of 50 points. There's some counties maybe I won, that people didn't expect, because people had a chance to see you and listen to you and get a sense of who you stood for and who you were fighting for.

If you see a good fight, get in it and fight to win it!

Only in the theatre was it possible to see the performers and to be warmed by their personal charm, to respond to their efforts and to feel their response to the applause and appreciative laughter of the audience. It had an intimate quality; audience and actors conspired to make a little oasis of happiness and mirth within the walls of the theatre. Try as we will, we cannot be intimate with a shadow on a screen, nor a voice from a box.

The longer you play, the more you realize that you can't lose focus for one play or two plays or an entire drive. Those things are the difference between wins and losses. You have to figure out how to refocus after a bad play or how to stay focused when you're up in a game. Those are things you learn from experience in playing this position. I've learned a ton of ways and have different triggers for how to regain my focus if I've lost it.

You're always fighting the contradiction between the supposed intimacy of a two-person conversation and the blunt reality that you're trying to sell the play to people who are sitting maybe too far away from you.

Sometimes you have to wait for the right deal. They all seem good, at least at first, and they may make you some quick money. But when the right deal comes, and it fits into your [overall] plan, it's just overwhelming success. Sometimes, with the long-term deals, you have to take a risk if you're going to get a reward. It's exactly like fighting. Sometimes you have to take chances to get that huge win.

I do not lose; I just do not get decisions sometimes. You lose when you quit. I have never quit. When it comes down to a decision, judges make a decision as to which fighter they want to win the fight. I have always been able to survive no matter whom they decide to give the fight to.

The audience and I have an intimacy that is, I believe, rare, most times out.

We deliberately chose a small theatre so that the show was still intimate and the audience would become a part of the show.

If you're a good fighter on the street, you don't have to tell anybody that you're good at fighting. Let someone else talk about how great you are at this or that or whatever is the case. And if no one finds out then no one finds out, that's fine too. But I think leading by example is always the strongest.

I'm addicted to those moments when you're on stage and the audience is so quiet you could hear a pin drop and you realize that you're in communion. That's an incredible experience. That's a cosmic experience, as far as I'm concerned, without getting way out there.