Wyatt Cenac Quotes

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.

I believe it is important for comedians to know who came before them.

I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.

People ask me about my influences and I say all the comedians in the 1970s and Dave Allen was a massive influence and a very big influence on a lot of modern comics.

When I hit the scene, there was Billy Connolly and Max Boyce. It was all mother-in-law and Irish jokes, and we broke the mould. Now there are thousands of comedians out there, and I don't think I can be above it all.

25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.

There's so many ways to do stand up, and I think, for awhile, people weren't really maximizing the freedom of it. We were all kind of doing a similar kind of stand up, and I started to see some original voices come out of Boston.

It went from Bob Newhart to Flip Wilson to Bill Cosby to Richard Pryor to George Carlin to Cheech and Chong. I had all these records.

I've met so many remarkable people so far, coming up through stand-up all these years, who just aren't alive anymore. Because they are dead. Some really great people who helped change my life and career, people like Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, Rodney Dangerfield, Johnny Carson.

Everybody wants to be Doug Stanhope; everybody wants to be Bill Hicks - and those are great people to aim for, but they had the fundamentals down. They knew how to be funny.

One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way - and see the comedians grow.

I remember being captivated by Steve Coogan and Eddie Izzard and wanting to do what they did. That generation of comedians was my main influence.

When I started stand-up - and this is in the '90s - there was definitely people hadn't watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy.

My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that's where I started, that's where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.

I just like doing comedies, and think that my timing and love for the genre set me apart from other young women who look like me.

When I was in college, I would go out, and I would go to these open mic nights at Stitches and Nick's Comedy Stop, so I was going to classes during the day, and then at night, I would be signing up on the lists.

I was influenced by a lot of stand-up comedians... Eddie Murphy back when he was doing 'Raw.' I watched that so many times as a kid, I can probably still quote the entire thing to this day. Chris Rock. Dave Chappelle. George Carlin. A lot of the guys who were sort of edgy for their time.

You don't really know when stand-up material is TV ready; it's just at what point you're willing to let it go and not work on it anymore. I'm not sure there is a point at which you think: 'And that is finished.'

I learned from the guys before me - Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

And Barry Levinson is insanely funny. I don't know if you know this, not everyone does, but he and Craig T. Nelson were a comedy team back in the coffeehouse days of the late '60s.

Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.

'Saturday Night Live' will always be this amazing, powerful behemoth, but it's also not the only thing happening in comedy anymore.

I pray to the shrine of 'Mr. Show.' It saved sketch comedy.

There was no Groundlings or Upright Citizens Brigade where I was from. Looking back on it, I was trying to do sketch comedy in my stand-up, which is still kind of what I am doing now. To go full-circle here, it's kind of like one-man sketch.