Michael Showalter Quotes

It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.

Comedians really are like a species. That's not to be exclusive. Anyone can kind of become one. You have to pay your dues, though.

I've always liked and appreciated storytellers like Garry Shandling and Bill Cosby - more long-form comedy. So starting in San Francisco, watching all these great comics - Patton Oswalt, Dave Chappelle - you get to see them a bunch, and you go, 'Wow, this is where I need to be.'

Those early days of comedy are when you get addicted to it.

I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.

I grew up loving David Letterman and Pee-wee Herman, but as far as live performance comedy, all I knew were the Jerry Seinfeld-type comedians of the world, and that's what I thought live performance comedy was all about.

Theo does comedy now, and he's traveling around the country doing comedy, and I actually just saw him, he's from Louisiana, and I just saw him when I went home to visit my family in Louisiana. I saw his comedy show and he was brilliant.

I think when I was young, let's call it high school, and even before that, I just loved comedy, and I loved comedians. I grew up watching Laurel and Hardy. That's really a long time ago. I loved Jerry Lewis. I just loved comedians.

Little did I know that earning a living at stand-up is the hardest thing you can do. But once I started doing it, I just loved it, and I realized that I was actually kinda good at it, and then that was it.

Podcasts feature comedians being as funny as they can be in a non-censored situation. It's really akin to standup in a way. When you go see a comedian in standup, that is the most pure, unadulterated form of their art.

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.

After the comedy boom of the '80s, there was a certain formula that comedians had to do and could do in order to be successful touring comedians, and those were mainly observational comedians who had a very strict structure of what made an act, and I think it was very performance oriented.

I've actually done a lot of comedy.

I think I probably would have gone into stand-up.

My first love is doing my own comedy stuff.

The thing about stand-up is that you end up meeting your idols.

When I came to America, it was Dave Chappelle and a lot of comedians on ComicView. That was my first exposure to stand up comedy, actually.

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

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

People who do comedy really are the nastiest people on the planet.

A lot of comedy is really DIY. You're kind of doing it yourself.

All of my life doing interviews, comedy has been my favorite thing, comedians are my favorite people.

I just respected comedians whether they were or they weren't, from, you know, new or old.

A lot of amazing comedians that I've worked with just really follow their instincts and you can't really teach someone comedic timing. And you just kind of have it.

I've always wanted to do a real comedy. I haven't done enough, and it seems silly not to do more, considering the fact that people tend to laugh at me.