Matt Besser Quotes
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I don't think 'Freak Dance' is a parody; it's more reference than anything. People don't think of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' as a 'Frankenstein' parody. It's kind of like that.
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I like musicals that are sometimes comedic, but I haven't even seen the Monty Python musical, and I'm a huge Monty Python fan.
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I think most people don't even know what 'woo pig sooie' is if they're not a sports fan or they're not from Arkansas.
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Instead of improvisers who want to be funny by themselves, we aim to try and make the scene itself as funny as possible. As a creator, I think that's someone you'd rather work with, whether it's a movie or a sitcom; that kind of methodology is good for collaboration. People want to be with those kinds of performers.
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So many comedians, if you asked them, 'What's your priority in standup?' it's probably gonna be to make people laugh or to entertain them. That is just way down on my priority list, if on my list at all. I'm into breaking records. If I can do a set and break a record and get no laughs, I'm happy.
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It seems like the real television networks, the amount of people that watch each network is going down and down, and the amount of people that watch each website is going up and up.
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When I came to Chicago, I didn't even know what improvisation meant, as far as pertaining to comedy. I knew about Second City, but I didn't know what the word 'improvisation' meant.
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For all you Joe Besser haters who claim that he was the worst Stooge, that's not true - Curly Joe DeRita was the worst stooge. Joe Besser was the second worst.
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A story is ultimately a memory. It's important when you're telling a story to think about why this memory is a memory. You don't remember everything in life; you just remember certain things - so, why this one?
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People are either funny or they're not, and you can't teach that - but you can teach people to work together to make an idea better.
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There's a creative vibe at U.C.B., and to maintain it, we can't pay people. If you pay, then you have to assign worth to shows, and then people will resent that.
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We all hate those stories that end with 'And that's the story.'
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You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene.
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I thought the musical aspect of 'Freak Dance' was a good contrast to how dancers always try to come off as really tough in those movies - they're trying to literally come off as gangs like as if the Crips and the Bloods are also dancing in addition or instead of fighting with guns and knives and stuff.
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I do believe if we opened up a comedy theater in a city, that we're going to be able to teach improv better than whoever's there already. In general, I think I could say that.
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Many improv groups give off the same positive annoying vibe that I associate with Christian Young Life groups with shows that more resemble children playing than a comedy performance.
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Improv acting is not just saying the lines but connecting with the other actor.
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I used to go to those dance circles when I was a kid. When break dancing was first popular in the '80s. I would be in Boston, or I'd head up to New York, and I would stand in those circles, and I would just be blown away.
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I was a DJ in college and had my own punk music-focused show all four years.
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Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it.
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In most specials, the performer's up - not only not surrounded, but up on a stage - and there's a distance between them and the audience, and I think my comedy doesn't work as well in that way.
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I guess that I was always considered a little too weird for the standup clubs and probably too jokey for doing performance art and those places where those are done.
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I'd been involved with stand-up before improv, so I already thought highly of myself as being a funny person. I never thought I wasn't funny.
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Often, when people don't do so well in a monologue at UCB, it's because they're racking their brain so hard to be funny that they're just not honest and don't just tell a true story, which is what we want.