The advice we always give to anyone is, if you want to make comedy or any other kind of film, or TV, or whatever you're interested in, the best advice we can give is to just start doing it, and don't wait to have people give you permission to do it, or wait for huge budgets, or huge crews. You can shoot on your phone now, and edit on your laptop, and start getting whatever is your style is, going. And that seems to work really well for people.
Related posts tagged 'Advice for aspiring comedians'
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Related posts tagged 'Advice for aspiring comedians'
Start your own room. Build an audience. People in small cities get excited about entertainment options. You can run that town. Unless you suck.
stop fuckin around. just get on stage. there's nothing else to do if you want to do stand up. you need to get on stage. figure that out and the rest will follow.
Start a show. Host the show. at a bar or any space. then you have guaranteed stage time and you do other comics favors by giving them spots so then they will give you spots on their shows. also hang out a lot at comedy clubs.
Go to the open mic and befriend whoever intimidates you the most and just work as hard as they do. It’s what helped me. I always had this group of people I could call and be like, should I stay at home and write? And they’d be like, you’re bullshitting yourself. Stop avoiding it and go to the mic.
I got started in comedy writing because i would write serious things and people laughed. My advice is growing up exactly like me with my brain and body.
Well, it didn't seem like I had much of a choice. I don't think that - you know, I don't think that my hand would have cooperated with my brain if my brain was telling my hand to write something it didn't really want to write. But I remember when there was some interference from NBC with "Seinfeld" when we first started doing it. And fortunately I didn't have a family at the time. So it's - it was very easy for me to say to them, no, I'm quitting; I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that, and I can't do it.
And for me, it wasn't a big deal to just pack up and go home. Like I said, I hadn't - I didn't have a family. It's much harder. That's the first piece of advice I'll give anybod...
I think moving to LA was huge for my career. For those young people, eventually you go to either NY or LA. Listen to your gut. If you're in NY and think it's where you should be, you should be there. Don't believe the crap about NY. LA isn't full of plastic or phony people. I've met some of the best people in LA. If you hang in and work your ass off, you'll one day pick your head up and have made progress.
You have to really want it and/or believe deep down you can do it. And/or hit rock bottom with your alternate career choice. I was coming apart at college, sucking as a predental student, and I heard about a standup contest. I wrote an act and went for it, and if I had bombed I may have given up right then. Fortunately I won and the validation made me unstoppable, as far as knowing what I wanted to do from then on. Not that unfamiliar a story, insecure actor/writer is self-effacing, scared to assert himself, gets a little success and shifts in animal mode.
I don't know how badly you want to do this for a living, but if you do, go for it hard, take chances, and if you're not as lucky early o...
I never had a plan. I just sort've ambled along, doing exactly what I wanted every day of my life. It turned out well. I could easily be sleeping in a ditch now. I'd say always follow your passions. Even if you fail, you've had a great time trying.
First of all, sit your parents down, and tell them that you want to be paid for something the rest of your life that you have passion for. And tell them, "Let's make a deal. If this doesn't work for the first five years, then I'll go and be a doctor." That's kind of like the deal I had with my dad, because I was on full athletic scholarship, and I wanted to quit to become a comedian. Basically... I just quit and became a comedian and he didn't approve. But he DID approve after he saw how funny I was.
In saying that, if you want to be a writer, then concentrate on being a writer. If you want to be an actor, concentrate on being an actor, because they're two different things. I got hired as a...
That guy, when I was in my early 20s, he’s not listening to advice…. [There’s] this story I’ve told before: I might have been about 18, and I was playing the Fort Lauderdale Comic Strip, and Rodney Dangerfield shows up. And he bumps everybody. So I go, “Mr. Dangerfield, can you stay and watch my act?” He’s like, “Uh, yeah, sure, kid.” So he does his show [and] I go up after Dangerfield—everybody’s scared to go up. And I fucking killed after Dangerfield, right? Then I came backstage and was like, “Hey, what did you think?” And Rodney was like, “Eh, I don’t know, kid, you talk that language, where are you going to go with that, talking about race stuff?” I was just shattered! Rodney had just s...
some things don't change. You need to get on stage as much as possible and vary your stage experience as much as possible and not quit and take care of yourself and always question why you say the things you say and enjoy yourself. The context of history and technology just is what it is.
Question: how do you organize and develop your material and various jokes? Do you have notebooks full of detailed notes and jokes, or do you just sketch them out and wing it on stage?
Answer: I believe in detailed notes and jokes, and also winging it onstage. But, not for your first open mic. For your first open mic, my advice to you would be to make sure you have what you're gonna do memorized, to the point that one of your friends can gently slap you across the face, and you'll still be able to get it out of your mouth.
getting paid does NOT make you any better at standup, trust me. i wish it did. it's all about getting as much stage time as possible. it took me 2 years - my first gig, i got paid $20 and i drove 8 hours to do it. worth it.
advice: get onstage, however possible. there are no shortcuts. you need to put in the time.
The best thing you can do is write, write, write, and write. And read. A lot. And fail. The more you fail the better you'll get. At SNL you could have an amazing show and then just BOMB the following Wednesday at the table read. Stay tough. Don't compare yourself to other people. Just follow your path and have fun.
i don't think standup is a place for networking or getting discovered too quickly. it's really something you need to spend a lot of time on before getting good, and it's a good idea to hold off before exposing people to your work. there are a couple of times when it felt like a break, but you can't tell a break when it happens to you. you just hope people see your work and like it. And keep doing it. About 4 years into comedy is when i got filed from my mail-sorting job and relied on comedy. it still feels like a frightening risk.
This is a very common problem for most comedians. Lemme ask you this - How bad was your childhood? If it was really bad, chances are you're already comfortable with feeling like a failure. So you're actually ahead of the game!
Stand up is You vs You so tell that scared little bitch to calm down. You aren't fighting in Afghanistan or battling cancer. You're just telling shit jokes to strangers. Good luck and godspeed. Go for it!
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