Comedy is the weirdest thing in the world. You can’t practice it in your bedroom. You can’t explain timing. You can’t explain any of it. But it was the late, great Patrice O’Neal who said to me back then, “Dude, that’s not you up there.” I was like, “I know, I know.” Then all of the sudden I started telling my real stories and talking the way I really talked and people were saying, “What is he doing? He’s blowing it.” Twenty-six years later …
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The one that aired was great. Very rarely does my brain come through for me at just the right time. In that case, it did. Marc is very smart, but sometimes he can use his intelligence to be reductive and disrespectful. That's what I felt he did on the WTF episode that I asked him not to air. One of the things about my career is, I used to work the door at a comedy club in the early 90's. Some of the guys from that era (Marc, Attell, Jeff Ross) had to adjust to me becoming a comedian/writer. They still see me as a doorman at times.
I was closest with Mindy Kaling, and also least close with Mindy Kaling, on a minute-by-minute basis. And I wouldn't trade it for the word. Actually, I would trade it for the world. What am I talking about: I'd trade it for a more consistently positive relationship with Mindy Kaling. She's the best.
We like to tell each other about bits after they've been developed a bit. Usually it's because we are excited about the bit. But we generally don't share new bits/premises for fear of crossover and both of us are very private in our "incubation" phase. I hadn't heard any of Tom's stuff until his last taping in Denver. It's also more fun that way. We collaborate a lot of YMH so that's the space where we come together.
Wow. There are so many Chris Farley stories to tell. I try not to overdo it, because they are very personal, but they are so funny, people should hear them. I just told one on Howard Stern this morning that was ridiculous. But I will say here's one: Me, Him and Adam Sandler were walking to dinner, during SNL, and this cute girl was getting in a cab, and we commented how pretty she was, so Chris ran over and climbed in the cab with her, and said "hey, you goin' downtown? Let's share a cab!" and she started yelling at him and kicking him. And he finally came back, and we said "Chris, if they don't know who you are, you are just a crazy fat guy trying to climb in a cab with them."
And then we ...
Dino is one of my favorite people to work with. We connect on a very base and childish level and he's an amazing giggler. It's hard to find people who still giggle like babies at this age, Dino and Sandler (and me) are the best. It's hard to think of a single story because being around that guy is always fun and easy, so nothing jumps out. It's just one long, funny story.
no, a lot of people think i retired cause of Rogan. Anyone that knows me knows im not influenced very easily. even tho rogan is a super close friend. it was more the perfect storm of evrything. rogan, reebok, Dana, podcast success. just wasnt worth it to fight anymore.
Chris was always doing that bit to me at work. We shared an office, and you had to walk through our office to get to Chris Rock & Adam Sandler's office, so these 2 microscopic offices were back to back, and Chris' desk was behind mine, and he didn't really know how to write, or read, really (kidding!) but he would come in bored, because I would have to write my sketches to try to get on but they would always let him on, so he would get behind me and be bored, everyone would write him sketches, and he would say "Davey… turn around" and I said "if this is Fat Guy in a Little Coat I'm not turning around, it's not funny anymore." And he would say "no, i've got a whole new thing I'm doing."
And ...
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It was at the end of the show after the other comedians were done. The audience was walking out. It was not an easy atmosphere. But I figured: I'm going to learn something every time I get on stage.
I didn’t want to offend people in the crowd because I was afraid to get heckled. Also I wanted to make sure that I knew how to make a joke before I started talking the way I really talked.
I was doing five, six open-mics a night, grinding it out, and then I did a show one night and got noticed by one Amy Schumer. I bombed, but she goes ‘hey, I liked that one joke you had, do you want to open for me at the Atlanta Punchline?’ And I was like ‘Oh my God, I’ve never been on the road or opened for somebody.’ She asked if I had about 30 minutes of material, and I said ‘sure’—meanwhile I had about eight, and the eight wasn’t good.
But I said yes to it, and then I started thinking about it and I was like ‘I don’t know this girl, do I have to hang out with her? I don’t have thirty minutes of comedy.’ I wussed out and called her and told her I couldn’t do it because my parents were com...
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I just tell jokes about my own life and try to make it relatable enough for as many people to enjoy as possible.
I've always been fascinated by dark subjects, especially people's reactions to them. Why are people so uncomfortable talking about death if everyone dies? And why do people sometimes laugh at these horrible things? And why do they seem to laugh harder when it's about a dark subject? Plus, no one else seemed to be doing it.
I never set out to find my voice. It just happened organically. I’ve been doing comedy 30 years, so it’s hard to pinpoint when my persona developed. I never thought I really had a unique cadence until people started doing impressions of me to my face. As far as advice for comics about finding their voice, I would just say keep going onstage, and it will happen eventually.
I just got lucky. This is how I talk, this is how I think, this is what I look like onstage. And it’s still like that for me: I gotta write stuff and then I gotta go onstage and I gotta say it.
When I started out, I was doing more conceptual bits that were just kind of silly. And then gradually, I expanded my premises. Everyone when you start out, for the most part, your material is very brief. You don’t trust that you can stay on stage for that long and get laughs. You don’t want to overstay your welcome. So you tend not to flesh out your premises that much. As you get more confident and more relaxed, you’re able to give a premise the treatment that it deserves and really explore your ideas. That’s what happened with me—I gradually expanded, and my comedy slowly became more about me and less about high concepts.
I'm considered a "clean comedian" or "family friendly comedian," but that's just how it comes out. There's no incredible calculation behind being clean or family friendly; comedians talk about what they can get away with. Chris Rock or Lewis Black are just gonna do the type of comedy that they're going to do. If you know them, it makes sense what type of comedy that they're doing. I'm always hesitant to be identified as a clean comedian because all comedians, whether they be clean, female or African American or transgender, the only adjective they want is to be funny.
I sometimes I feel as though "clean" is this asterisk that kind of disqualifies some of my success. People are not coming to...
When I first started taking improv classes (2003), I never used my own voice once in a scene. I really didn't feel comfortable doing that. I was a distinct character in every improv scene I did until I moved to NYC and started taking UCB classes (2008). So all of that character practice was great, but dropping them was also huge for me because it was easier for my performance style to translate to TV work.
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