Andy Kindler Quotes

First off, no one award-wise ever rewards comedy, which is... whatever. I don't care about that.

Comedy is hard to do, and I don't know why it doesn't have its own category in awards. I don't understand why people think it's harder to do drama than it is to do comedy. It doesn't get respect. It's hard. It's really hard. It would be more gratifying to get something for a comedy, because it doesn't happen much or at all.

When I'm joking around, I'll say I'm a pop star, because it's silly.

Before stand-up, I didn't even have an agent. Once I started doing stand-up - boom. I got an agent. In fact, I got three agents. I got a lawyer. Now I get taken seriously.

I'm not going to say the market is flooded, but there are a lot of people doing comedy.

Many years ago, I was a young and, dare I say it, very hot new comedian. Maybe even the hottest of all if the now defunct Perrier panel of judges were to be believed.

Lots of people knew who Kevin Hart was a decade before he hit it big.

Even though I do a more traditional type of being funny on television, I still know a lot of comedians and stand-ups and improv actors.

I've spent the last few years just really actively pursuing comedy and that's something I always wanted to know how to do.

Anything with the power to make you laugh over thirty years later isn’t a waste of time. I think something like that is very close to immortality.

When you do see me, you'll get the idea from when you see me that it's all off the top of my head. A lot of it is a beginning, middle and the end. But it's different every night. I have a lot of jokes in my back pocket I've said over the years.

Monty Python paid me £20,000 to write, direct and assemble them - the cheapskates! I told them I'd never earned less in a year since leaving Cambridge. The first show sold out in 43 seconds and we ended up performing ten in total. We had no idea there would be such demand.

I do an act, and I've been doing an act for 50 years. I do a variety show, which is a musical comedy show. I do comedy, and I do singing, Broadway show tunes and different songs that I like. Been doing it for many, many years.

Your only guidepost is your own instinct and judicious editing. In my stand-up act I learned that in the first 10 minutes I could say anything and it would get a laugh. Then I'd better deliver. In the movie it's the same thing. You get a lot of laughs when people first sit down and then the story better kick in. Many years in front of an audience, I would hope, give me a sense of what works.

Looking back, I didn't realize until years later what a huge influence Red Skelton was in my stage demeanor with the band. I mean, I always liked things that were funny, and later I realized that having a sly sense of humor was a way to get attention and even respect in school.

When I started doing my act, I wasn't married and didn't have kids. I was probably 29 years old. Some people say that's not a kid, but when you're 50, and you look back to when you were 30, you were a kid. You look back on your 30s and think, "I was an idiot!" But I would just do things then I thought were funny. I couldn't have cared less who thought anything about it.

The first time I got on stage I was 10 years old and I did impressions. I did cartoon characters and I really got the bug for this life when I saw that people were laughing and saw the attention I was getting.

Whether it happens over 10 years, like with a lot of people, or with one hit movie that thrusts you into that world, when you become successful as an actor, you become well known. In the end game, that's just part of the business.

I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year - they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards. So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I've ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up - motley isn't the word for that group. Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage - I had to bury myself in my napkin.

My now-wife - we got together in '81, we married a few years after - she's been very good in the past about going in the theater with me to see actresses I had known. But then, she's not an actress.

I love Jane [Krakowski]. Jane's been a dear friend for maybe a dozen years. We've worked together on many shows and concerts and readings. We did 'Damn Yankees' together and then we did 'Xanadu.' Jane did all the workshops of 'Xanadu' before it moved to Broadway. She's hysterical and our voices blended. We had a similar sensibility.

One of the things that's funniest about the entertainment industry and comedy is that people go 'Oh, you're great, but I don't know what to do with you.' The great thing about the Internet is that nobody has to figure out what to do with you. You can figure out what to do with you, and you can say, 'I made this thing, and I'm going to put it out, and now if people want to come see me and buy things from me they can.'

I think it was Cosby who also said to me, 'If only 2 percent of the world thinks you're funny, you'll still fill stadiums for the rest of your life.'

Comedy is crowded. There are hundreds of comedians in every place in the world.

[Clowns] gotten a really bad rap in the last few years. People have really given into their own fears and have celebrated their fears in that way. American Horror Story didn't help.