Mary Lynn Rajskub Quotes

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.

I think of myself as a theatre comic instead of club comic because I tend to talk for a bit before I start being funny. I don't really do the one-liners and five second bits or whatever. But it's good to work stuff out sometimes.

Beyond any role that I ever had, really early on as a stand-up, I would see actors decide to try it and they would bomb miserably. What I realized was that stand-up, acting and writing are all their own disciplines.

I like to warm them up with stand-up, get them into my world and tone, and then bring other characters on. There's so much you can do theatrically on stage. You keep changing the direction and angles, and then people don't get bored.

When comics are in the room, people have a tendency to try to make them laugh. That doesn't really make you funnier. It makes you a comic's comic, but you aren't going to get a fan base doing that.

When I come out to do my stand-up set, I pretty much get bombarded with lines from movies. You try to play off it a little bit, but that's what people want to see.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.

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.

When people come to see my stand-up, they get a chance to see my characters interact with each other.

Once I started doing stand-up, everything fell into place. That was when I started acting more; I felt like I'd found my place in the business.

I definitely am a performer, and there are different styles of stand-up; I mean, some people are writers and they get onstage to get jokes out, and that's definitely not what I do. I like to just go up and, if I'm telling a story about someone, I'll play his or her part.

I've always wanted to do a segment on a talk show. Jay Leno has been such a good friend, and if he would allow me, I'd have to get it all together, but I'd like to go on 'The Tonight Show' and do a set with no props. Or come out with a trunk and never touch it. Or come out with a clear trunk with nothing in it.

Your number one job as a comedian is to be aware. You're supposed to understand the temperature in the room more than anyone on the planet - that's the whole craft of comedy.

Our job is to unleash the play. It's not just about your character or interaction with the other characters. There's an energy in all good plays which you have to find. And that is part and parcel of ensuring that an audience gets what it's about.

Stand-up was my entree into the entertainment world. I didn't have to act out somebody else's words. I could just stand there with a microphone, and nobody would interrupt me. It's the most narcissistic thing you could probably do.

When I started stand-up, the people I admired most were the people who were the most themselves onstage.

When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.

With most specials, even the best comedians will tell you they could have cut 15 or 20 minutes out of it.

Even writing a script which will be funny is not easy. To make the script come to life and make the audience laugh, I will call myself more of an actor if I am able to do that.

If you look up the definition of stand-up comedy, it's funny on purpose. A little bit of pressure there. It's basically acting. You're telling stories and acting them out for people. The more you make it seem real, really a person doing it, then it seems to me the better it works.

A lot of people get into stand-up as a back door into acting or something. But I really like writing jokes and telling jokes.

In stand-up, you do need to be having fun up there, like Richard Pryor said, but you have to know yourself well, too... You start learning, and it's like playing a piano. You know exactly what keys to stroke, 'cause really, with comedy, you're, like, fiddling with people's souls.

At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I'm acting with.

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.

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.