Especially with a comedy, you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something.
I just want to be funny, I just want to do comedy.
A lot of ones I've really chased and wanted - as a comic, I've always wanted to do a 'Mock The Week' - it's always discussed, but for whatever reason it doesn't happen.
Too often, these comedy guys now only care about getting on and then getting off and getting rich.
Every comic is taught that you're supposed to have a great seven-minute set and then get a sitcom. And I don't want to get the sitcom.
Very early on, I met this one comic who said if you're not doing stand-up every night, you're not doing it. And so I just kind of believed that and worked off that.
When I first started doing stand-up back in Philadelphia, the idea of being a professional writer was completely beyond me. It didn't even occur to me that that was something you could do.
I get frustrated by the fact that comics go on stage with some kind of agenda beyond comedy - I'm not sure it should be about that.
Anyone who does stand-up comedy can agree that doing a late-night spot is a dream of theirs.
When I used to work the road, I remember I used to ask myself in the mirror, literally, like in a movie, back when I was not very good at all, I'd say, 'What's it like being the greatest comedian in the world?'
I always had one goal, and that was to be a real funny stand-up comic, and that's pretty much what I'm doing. And everything else is kind of like gravy - TV, movies.
I love comedy and I did a few gigs here and there but it never really took off. It was too scary.
When you do a comedy, the goals are much clearer to me.
If you watch most of the stuff on TV and in movies, it's usually put-down humor. It's like somebody being mean or cynical or thoughtless to another person. I never wanted to be that type of comedian.
Everybody wants to be Doug Stanhope; everybody wants to be Bill Hicks - and those are great people to aim for, but they had the fundamentals down. They knew how to be funny.
Nobody really wants to be a stand-up, they want to get on TV.
I always told my parents, 'Just give me till I'm 27 to do comedy, to make it'.
I've always wanted to be in comedy... growing up with Asian parents and not seeing yourself represented in media - it was always just a daydream.
I would love the opportunity to create my own program. I feel like a TV show with a format of monologue with lots of sketches thrown in could be really fun. But you know, that may never happen. Minimally, I just want to keep making stand-up.
