Browse by
Find a post
Posts - Page 16
I would do it, but I’d have to be a Seinfeld or a Ray Romano, being myself. Imagine me crying on TV. That wouldn’t work. I did an audition once where my dad died in the script, and I was like ‘uh, dad, you’re dead.’ They were like ‘get out of here.’
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...
The ceiling for comedy in New Orleans is about a foot-high, so you have to army crawl your way through it—it’s that low. New York was no question. I went to film school here a year before, and I just fell in love with the city then, so I came back. In New York you can get a lot of stage time [as a comic], and I needed and wanted that.
It was the worst transition ever. I moved here with $800, blew through that in about two days, got an apartment in Crown Heights, got mugged three times in a year, my landlord died of AIDS, and the first day I got into my apartment, there was a pigeon in it, just flying around. So it was pretty rough. I got a job as the file clerk at the film school filing pap...
My comedic role models are guys like Groucho Marx, George Carlin, Chris Rock, Bill Murray and Colin Quinn. But as I get more into comedy I’m starting to dig more intellectual types.
Being an introvert sucks. I get off stage and I’m a wreck again. People always wonder, “Hey, if you’re an introvert, then how can you perform in front of crowds?” But stand-up is perfect for an introvert. I get to prepare what I say to you, it’s all worked out, you listen intently and if you talk, you get thrown out. Then I get paid! What a perfect gig.
George Carlin said that comedy comes from looking around and saying, “There’s something wrong here.” It’s that and the twinkle feeling when an idea hits you. Something hits you then you write it out and tweak it on stage. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn’t. And you repeat that over and over again.
Q: As a lover of Russian literature, who would you say your favorite Russian author is? Thoughts on Dostoevsky vs Tolstoy?
A: Well, to say that Tolstoy Gogol and Dostovesky are the great novelists from Russia would be akin to say that William Faulkner, Mark Twain and Harold Robbins are the great American writers.
I said fuck on Saturday Night Live and I thought I'd be fired for it. I wasn't really embarrassed about it but I'm surprised I didn't say it a million times since it's live TV.
I separate their work completely from their transgressions. Everything about their work is extraordinary. Everything about their transgressions is utterly ordinary.
Q: The greatest comedic novels (Don Quixote, Tristram Shandy, Pale Fire, Based on a True Story) all make heavy use of metafictional elements. I'm leaving out A Confederacy of Dunces because I hated that book. Anyway, were you consciously drawing upon that tradition in BoaTS? Or did the story you wanted to tell naturally take you in the direction of metafiction? I ask because you have claimed to hate meta.
A: I love all those books. I do hate meta but I was forced into by the scriptures of convention. I was hired to write a memoir, but secretly wrote a novel so I had to use the techniques of meta to mask it. I did it so well the New York Times called it a nonfiction.
The two greatest living writers are Cormac McCarthy and Alice Munro, so I would suggest a collection of Alice Munro short stories and McCarthey's masterpiece "The Road." My personal favorites are "War and Peace" and "The Death of Ivan Ilych" both by Tolstoy.
I don't like any impressions of me but since Jimmy Fallon is the best impersonator I've ever met, when he does it I must believe that that's what I sound like.
Well, it depends on your view I suppose but it's been my experience is that life's purpose is to suffer. To abide the inevitable pain and to bear it in a noble way.
I was told later that Stephen was uncomfortable but I didn't mean to. The conversation just flowed to British children's entertainers being largely pedophiles and I don't know why Stephen Merchant was tiptoeing around it.
He returned to host the show when I was a cast member. And I did a character that pinched girls's asses, and said "YOU LOVE IT." And he's a great fan of it and thought it was going to be a huge character. And then it didn't get past dress rehearsal. And he said, "That's showbiz."
Imagine a woman in a sports car, impossibly beautiful, speeding down a winding road and looking out her window at a man who is skiing down a mountaintop. And then the man comes to a stop, snow flies from his feet. The two lock eyes. And both know each will be the other's entire. And the car speeds off.
Ideas exist outside of man. And drift into one's consciousness if one allows it. None of these ideas are mine, I only take them from the ether and put them back out in a more solid form.
I've never messed with a talk show host. I'm just trying to make my segment as spontaneous and interesting as I saw talk show guests be when I was a boy.
The best part is standing on the stage with your comedy being able to turn a passive audience into an unruly mob. The worst part of standup comedy is the insane pressure on the spine and lower back from standing up for so many hundreds of hours.
Popular categories
Foam corner
Making a show
Inside baseball
Filmmaking
Favorite books
Favorite comedians
Coming up with ideas
Relationship with other comics
Advice for aspiring comedians
Childhood
General life advice
Writing
Favorite movies
Acting
Relationship with fans
Working with other comedians
Styles of comedy
Performing
Podcasting
Comedic influences
Saturday Night Live
Favorite memories as a comedian
Favorite music
Reflecting on own work
Fan stories
Favorite jokes
Creativity
Finding your voice
Yuks
Screenwriting
Mark Normand