Demetri Martin Quotes

When someone says to me, do you do stand-up I say absolutely not. I like to think of it as a theatrical performance. With me the show changes maybe five to ten percent every night. Of course, whatever I see in front of me and sometimes I get on a little run about it and it changes the show. And my delivery is such that people who have seen me many times say Gee, I never heard that before. Actually, they have, but I might have changed it around.

I often think it can often be very difficult for comedians to revisit the same gag. I think Russell's a bit more than a comedian.

With stand-up, it doesn't matter who you are. If the audience claps because they love your movies, that clapping stops after five seconds, and then it's your job to make them laugh.

You can't just yell jokes at people.

Doing stand-up takes the fun out of being funny.

My stand-up has always been very character-based. I'm not really the kind of person that's like, 'Hey, here's what's on my mind! Tip your waitress!' I would create the jokes based on the character I was playing. It was always a performance-based thing for me.

And as a stand-up comic, that's the one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with. I'm not uncomfortable with sincerity in my regular life, but, like in terms of my product that I offer, I think that it's weird, because comics used to be way more sincere in the '80s.

Comedy is commitment and playing a character and falling into the role, and I've been doing that since I was 19 years old.

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.

I always wanted to give people the more exciting version of what I think a comedian should be - because I didn't grow up with comics, I grew up with rock 'n' roll. And when I saw a lot of comics, no matter how good they might have been material-wise, I would get a little bored with them after 10 minutes, only because I feel comedians don't really know performance.

A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.

I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

For aspiring comedians? Don't listen to me. Just go on stage and do what you think is funny.

In my Comedy Club sets, I just work on what is fresh and try to build that show as long as I can. I don't like to do burnt material on stage. Even though my crowd loves to hear me do old stuff, I don't like to do old stuff.

Comedians rarely have writers, and if you do it's usually a sign of laziness.

I've never considered myself a comedian. I'm a comedic actor.

All the subject matter I talk about isn't new; all comics talk about the same things. But it's how you talk about them or present them or what you look like up there that makes the difference between an okay comic and a great one.

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

I believe that comedians do what they do, and then they get credit or criticism for doing it. There's nothing planned about this.

I am a comedian but it's usually not a compliment to be called a prop comedian but I guess I sometimes use props. And I always confuse humorist with comedian. That's strange.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

People said to me, "You know, when you record a special, you're going to regret it. The one thing you'll regret because you're a comic is you'll think of better tags."

Now, I think the people who are still doing stand-up are doing it because they love stand-up.