Noel Fielding Quotes

If I was at the Comedy Cellar at midnight you yelled at the back of the room. But you, for television, play it to the camera because yes you're communicating to the people at home using the studio audience that's right in front of you as a guide for that.

It's hard to get laughs when you're new.

Sometimes they laugh at things I don't think are funny, but I believe if they're laughing at me, it's a good show.

I was in Antwerp - which, I had about 20 shows left at that point - and a guy said, "That's Dave Attell's." Also, Antwerp was my smallest audience, so the guy was right there. I was like, "What?" He said, "Dave Attell does a bit about, 'Why are there luggage stores in the airport?'" I had never seen that, and I would never ever, ever, ever - please believe me - I would never lift material from somebody ever, and certainly not knowingly.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.

When I'm doing stand-up, it's just me depending on me. I know how to go out there and make people laugh. I've been doing it since I was a teenager. I trust my instincts. I just go out and talk. A lot of the time I let the material come from the top of my head.

I am always a great fan of keeping things on an eye level for comedy because it plays better.

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

I learned as a young man that I don't write jokes, but that I can deliver more mundane material and get a laugh. I call myself a humorist.

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.

It's good to do stand-up. It kind of wakes you up and makes you feel like you're doing something. You got the crowd right there. That's all fun.

If I tell a joke on stage and the crowd laughs for a minute, I stand there for a minute and enjoy them laughing before I go on to the next joke. On TV, if I stand there for a minute while they laugh, I look like an idiot who can't remember the next joke.

Standup is more me talking the entire time. There's definitely an exchange of energy because that room, that audience, is giving back.

I did one of the worst shows for that kind of thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is one of the most liberal spots on the planet. There were numerous people who walked out, somebody had thrown a beer, I had people yelling and screaming.

I completely understand why a businessman would fire me from 'Saturday Night Live'. Because he was seeing Jay Leno kill 10 minutes a night, doing his monologue with wall-to-wall laughs and applause, then I do 10 minutes a week to, sometimes, breathtaking silence. He's just listening for the laughs.

I did get good enough to get on HBO's Young Comedians Special, but I certainly wasn't the person who got launched off of HBO's Young Comedians Special. That would be Ray Romano that year. I had some semi-intelligent jokes, but when people would see me, they would think, "Oh, that's a good writer." No one would ever have said, "Oh, that's a good performer."

If I could make the same amount of money doing standup it would be no contest. The problem is that if you do make that kind of money doing standup, it's not in clubs, it's in big auditoriums and large venues, and I really think something is lost when you do standup for a big crowd.

The whole thing with comedy is that you are always in control. Writer, director, actor, producer, and sometimes bouncer. And you are just a piece of their puzzle.

Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn't get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I'm doing jazz. That's kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks ... Maybe I'm the Kenny G of comedy.

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'm not a comedy writer, I'm a comedian, so I only write stuff that I would want to say.

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.

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to.

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.