Comedic Influences Quotes

I used to watch 'Coming to America' every day after school. I have full-on long-running inside jokes with friends and family about different scenes in that movie alone. Also, my brother and I loved 'The Golden Child,' so, yeah: I was a huge fan of Eddie Murphy growing up.

I was into 'In Living Color,' 'Martin,' the 'Ace Ventura' movies. I love slapstick stuff, too: 'Naked Gun' and 'Caddyshack.'

When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.

I have too many influences to name. I like a wide variety of stuff, which I think has been helpful. I liked every comedian I saw on TV growing up in the '80s. Every comedian.

When I was a little kid I loved the Marx brothers and discovered Monty Python when I was 10 or 11-years-old. I used to take a tape recorder and hold it up in front of the TV to record entire episodes to play over and over again, so that I could memorise it.

Bill Burr, Freddy Soto, Joe Rogan, Tom Segura… those people influenced me a lot more than any of the older guys like Richard Pryor.

As a kid, I loved Paula Poundstone and Richard Pryor. But my mother was a huge influence on my comedy.

I kind of was raised at The Comedy Store by comedians. When you see my dad on stage before me and then you see me, you'll see where I got a lot of my stuff.

Chaplin was my idol. I remember watching those movies at this little theater in Woodstock, N.Y., when I was probably 6 and laughing so hard at the surprises, like Keaton suddenly being dragged by a streetcar.

'Wayne's World' is my all time favorite comedy. I used to watch it on VHS on repeat with my brother when I was ten years old.

I started when Chris Rock did 'Bigger & Blacker.' I used to watch that before I went onstage as inspiration to get hype, but I noticed I started taking on his cadence and talking like him. I was also doing the New York-style comedy thing, which was angry and annoyed. I was creating a persona instead of trying to embrace my own.

I don't know why all three, my comedic idols are... women.

I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.

I'm wildly different than Maria Bamford or Sarah Silverman, and might be more similar to some male comics.

Young stand-ups, we ought to do comedy in George Carlin's spirit, in Richard Pryor's spirit, in Jackie Gleason's spirit, in Lucille Ball's spirit, because they did it with the spirit.

I worshipped guys like Bill Maher, Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld, and was doing my variation of that. But as a young person with no political point of view or life experience, it was as funny as you can imagine.

I started as a stand-up comedian. I wanted to be Carol Burnett when I was growing up.

Every comic went through their Mitch Hedberg phase - the glasses, the hair in the face - and you knew immediately when they were doing it.

I always wanted to be a comedian, even when I was a little kid. I had a funny father who was in the news business, by the way. He was a radio news guy. So the news was always in my house, and funny was always in my house. It was sort of just baked into the DNA that I would do this for a living, but I can remember being less than 10 years old and dreaming about being a comedian.

I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.

When I started out I was definitely more traditional. It was 1988. Everyone was doing the Jerry Seinfeld.

The earliest stand-up comedy I was aware of was Bill Cosby. I watched Saturday Night Live as soon as I was aware of it, and Monty Python used to be on PBS at weird hours, so I used to try to watch that. And I loved George Carlin on SNL, that was the first stand-up I ever really remember seeing on TV. And then Steve Martin. I guess I was in fifth or sixth grade when Steve Martin showed up, and he was instantly my idol. And Richard Pryor around the same time too, I sort of became aware of him, though I don't remember the first time I saw him.

I grew up watching stuff with Jim Carey, Robin Williams and Sandra Bullock in them. I've always been attracted to the actors who are a little more off beat.

I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it.

The girls that I grew up with, and my friends and I, we just never had interests in common. I loved comedy. I loved Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, and Goldie Hawn movies. I just wanted to laugh. I liked women in comedy, and I liked male comics as I got a little older. My interests just never matched up with other girls'.