Greg Fitzsimmons Quotes

Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.

There's so many ways to do stand up, and I think for awhile, people weren't really maximizing the freedom of it.

Anybody with a sharp brain and a mic can become a comedian, but there's a need to move beyond it. The audience wants to witness the marriage of theatre, comedy and something more.

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 I hit the scene, there was Billy Connolly and Max Boyce. It was all mother-in-law and Irish jokes, and we broke the mould. Now there are thousands of comedians out there, and I don't think I can be above it all.

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.

When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.

Performing comedy in San Francisco to begin with is pretty wild. You've got to - you've got the human game preserve to play off of. And it's a lot of great characters everywhere. You work off that, and then you play the rooms, and eventually you get to a point where you're playing a club that is a comedy club, with other comics.

All I know how to do is take what's on my mind and spit it out funny. I don't know what else I could do besides comedy.

I never did stand-up. If I've been funny ever, it was with other actors.

My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at - with a partner, doing comedy sketches.

There was no Groundlings or Upright Citizens Brigade where I was from. Looking back on it, I was trying to do sketch comedy in my stand-up, which is still kind of what I am doing now. To go full-circle here, it's kind of like one-man sketch.

I took a stand-up comedy class because I'd always wanted to.

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.

You can't just expect anyone to turn comedian because it's something that should come naturally, but not when forced on someone.

There's an elusive element to comedy, but nobody gets it for free. That's why comedians seldom criticise each other.

The rule is to try and never play the same thing twice when you have the freedom to do that in the song.

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 think I am someone who is very interested in structure and different ways of delivering jokes.

I started pursuing stand-up comedy in 12th grade.

Doing comedy was liberating in a way.

I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.

No, I never really set out to be a stand up. I wanted to be a writer of some sort. I thought I'd do a bit of stand up and hopefully that will lead to stuff and little did I know it kind of snowballed. Before I knew it I was doing stand up 300 nights a year.

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.

One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way - and see the comedians grow.