Comedy Imitation Quotes

Back when Jerry Seinfeld was just another comedian hanging around the clubs, I'd imitate him to amuse myself and the other comics. The club owners would say, 'What are you doing that for? Nobody knows him.'

I can't stand tribute bands. It's nice, bless 'em, but it's not right. They can't capture the right spirit. You never see a tribute comedian, a tribute Les Dawson.

Comedy is like music; it builds on itself. Once someone comes up with a theory or a different way of doing things, people start to mimic it on some level. That's why you go back to the guys you loved in the 80s... and it just seems tired now, because it was all foundation.

I'm not an impressionist, per se, but if you do any kind of comedy - and they ask you to do that, most of the time - there's some degree of appreciation, I think, involving somebody you like.

When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.

They're working their way down. Next year, Todd Bridges gets the award. When I was a kid I wanted to be Eddie Murphy and now I'm a rip-off of Eddie Murphy.

I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy - Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley - who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.

A popular character in old Italian plays, who imitated with ludicrous incompetence the "buffone", or clown, and was therefore the ape of an ape; for the clown himself imitated the serious characters of the play.