Tim Heidecker Quotes

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

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.

Jokes that make me laugh out loud when I write them almost always bomb. I have no idea why.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

I don't like the pressure to try to tell the best jokes. I'm not good at jokes.

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

I always hate telling my jokes in print 'cause I always feel like it reads so not funny and people read it and they think, 'Oh, so that's what that guy does in his stand-up? That's terrible.'

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

Writing humor in my column isn't as dangerous as performing it. If I fail in front of a live audience, the humiliation is as great as anything a human being can suffer.

It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.

With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.

It's grueling never knowing if the audience is going to think you're funny. It's soul-destroying when they don't laugh.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.

I like the purity of stand-up because it is all about whether people laugh at your jokes. Either they laugh or they don't.

I went to Montreal. My first gig went very badly. They just weren't laughing at anything. I found out they were a load of Christians, and it was a gig to raise money for a new church roof.

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

There are lines that I know are going to get a belly laugh, but after a few shows I get sick of hearing myself say them so I drop them.

Before 'SNL,' I would do stand-up, opening for Jeff Tweedy. It was worse than bombing in that people were dead silent.

[sam] Kinison, when he started out, he'd come to Canada when I was first starting, and he'd always [bomb].

I'm scared of slipping up, of just doing a joke that makes me laugh.

As comedians, we have the opportunity to convey a message that will have an effect. The best can make you laugh and cry, the way musicians and actors can.

Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.