Ad-Lib Quotes

In the old days, that was my ad-lib for hecklers in the joints I worked. It stuck with me. I hardly say it now, say, to fans, even though people do send me hockey pucks.

Improv is not something I had a lot of experience with, because for a long time, my only experience in front of a camera was all television, which is pretty rigid script-wise, except for the occasional scene where you toss in an ad-lib just to elongate something. Like, say, you're walking down a hall and you just don't have enough dialogue, and you throw in something. But you don't really have time to do other than what's written. It's very rigid. Shows have a certain rhythm that nobody wants disturbed.

I never rehearse. Never! I think it's a waste of time.

Sometimes I try to improve the language, the lines, or the delivery, but I don't ad-lib because I think that makes it really hard for everybody else involved.

When I worked with Chevy Chase, Michael Ritchie would say, "Just ad lib and try to break me up. Just insult me. Anything." When we were doing his close-up, or when my back was to the camera, I would come up with jokes or quips or anything, to get a real reaction out of him. He was smart enough to know that was gold. So it was great fun working with him and Michael, and getting to see how the two worked together. I think Fletch and Clark Griswold were Chevy's two best roles. He's so incredibly talented and still vastly underused.

I don't act, anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind.

There are a lot of things that make Kyrie's game unstoppable. But his ability to ad-lib and come up with things on the fly is special.

You have to grab moments when they happen. I like to improvise and ad lib.

I'm a news junkie. I generally ad lib it. I find a story I want to key off on, open the mic, drag it in the Dropbox, and they pull it out the next morning.

When I went out and did what I did in the world of professional wrestling as Stone Cold Steve Austin, pretty much anything and everything thing I said was ad lib, on the spot, just let it fly and go for it.

I'm not even really a joke-teller. I can do ad-lib and banter, but I don't do jokes.

Once during a taping there was an actor who kept blowing his lines. It happened again and again. Finally Norman Fell came out-he wasn't even in that scene. But Norman came out and you know what he did? He killed the guy with a hammer.

Improvisation is the ability to talk to oneself.

If somebody says, "Oh, we're going to improvise!," I'm like, Oh, get me out of here.

Darkwing Duck and Don Karnage are the most fun to do, because they're both probably the closest to me - I kinda improvise a lot of them, kinda ad lib.

In 'Boomerang,' they didn't have a script at all, they just told me to come up with some stuff.

What happens in improv is you create your own storyline.

A lot of improvisation ends up being about just thinking outside of the box in the scene. It's not improvisation as much as it is quickness or making it real.

I try to preload as little as I can. I like to come to the set with minimal preparation.

Seventy years of ad-lib material, and I am speechless.

Steve Carell is the most spectacular ad-lib improviser ever. And just doing a scene with him, it's just one incredible topping himself on every take.

I've never had a written script.

It may seem like improv because it flows quite naturally, and a little bit of leeway for improvisation is good, but you have to be judicious with it. So it's good, but sometimes people deify it. You can't improvise your way out of a paper hat.

I don't worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.

I ad lib most of my dialogue. If I did remember my lines, it would be too bad for me.