George Lopez Quotes

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.

I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.

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.

One of my greatest inspirations for stand-up was Jonathan Winters. He was a genius. One thing about him, and also Lenny Bruce, is that they were in the tradition of the one-man show. That's why Richard Pryor was so great, and George Carlin, too. They prowled the stage, they used voices, they were really talents.

I just liked stand-up comedy so much. I used to memorize Bill Cosby albums and other people's albums, George Carlin, Flip Wilson.

But long story short, I didn't start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn't love them.

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.

On the comedy side of what I love as a filmmaker are Richard Pryor, Lenny Bruce, and Eddie Murphy; those are my favorites.

When I was in high school I saw Steven Wright, a brilliant one-liner comedian, and I thought: 'That's what I should do; I should write one-liners.' And I did. My first album is mostly one-liners.

When I first started doing comedy years ago, I used to be the biggest Michael Richards fan. I used to love this dude. He was on a TV show called 'Fridays,' and man, he was tall and lanky - and I was tall and lanky. I love physical comedy, and he was a physical comedian, and I said, 'Man, I love this guy.'

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.

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.

When I started comedy, I was a big Eddie Murphy fan. I thought if you did stand-up, you were supposed to know how to act, write, and host. I thought it was all one thing. That's why it doesn't feel like I'm transitioning to acting: because in my stand-up, I do characters all the time.

I know for myself, every now and again on HBO, they'll show some of the young comedian specials from the '80s and early '90s, and it's just fascinating to watch those comedians - some of whom are people that are world-famous, like Chris Rock or Judd Apatow - to see the jokes that people had, but also, the way everything looked.

My inspiration to do comedy came from many places. Saturday mornings, I would watch Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies. I later got into watching stand-ups like Eddie Murphy, who was my main inspiration.

Whenever a young comic asks me for advice I only have two things to say. One is to try and do what you think is genuinely funny and the other is just do loads of gigs.

Stand-up isn't something I just sit down and start writing - it's ideas you come up with in the shower, while you're driving, waiting in line.

We call ourselves comedy writer-performers, and that encompasses everything, and I certainly have a very open mind about it.

I was always interested in comedy, like when I was 5 years old. I watched 'I Love Lucy' and 'Benny Hill.' I would always joke around with my sister. My mom was into comedy, too. She would go to the video store and get a couple of movies and some stand-up comedians' tapes.

The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.

I wasn't one of those kids who stole Richard Pryor records. I wasn't a comedy-nerd kid. I had no concept of stand-up. Actually, the only inkling of stand-up I had was I read one of Paul Reiser's books when I was, like, 12. I found it at a yard sale, and I carried it around with me for six years.

Getting up in front of the toughest crowds, you know, playing pubs in South Armagh - where people didn't necessarily even know what stand-up comedy was - you had to force yourself to do it. It went against every instinct in your body, but you did it anyway.

My friend gave me a VHS tape of Eddie Murphy's 'Raw.' I watched it so many times, I fell in love with it. I would watch it every day, just picking it apart. And then I started doing open mics around Maryland and D.C.: that's where I'm from. And I haven't stopped since.

I love doing stand-up, and the more you do outside of stand-up to raise your profile, the better your stand-up becomes in terms of the quality of gigs.