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Paul F. Tompkins on the material he’s currently developing: “It’s about getting older and maturing—getting my life together, becoming a grown-up, and a lot of the stuff that goes along with that, like relationships, and my mother dying a couple years ago … Just the things that happen to you.” (March 2010 interview with AV Club)
The material PFT brought to Seattle last weekend included all of the topics he mentions above — including his own mother’s funeral. And it was impressive. Many talented folks can develop a serviceable 30 minutes on the “challenges” of being young, single and mildly neurotic. It takes someone far more mature and skilled to deliver funny, memorable discussions of life’s scariest challenges and saddest moments.
Photo 5.15.10 by WhatHappened
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“I LOVE SELF HELP. Help me to help me help me help ME help ME. I have a hard time being sincere on stage, but off stage- it’s all solid eye contact, low voice and a deep yearning to understand.” - Maria Bamford, interview with Dead-Frog, April 2008
Photo by Resilient Rabbit at the Comedy Death-Ray show at the 2009 Vancouver Global Comedy-Fest.
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Mike Birbiglia: “Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn’t get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I’m doing jazz. That’s kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks… Maybe I’m the Kenny G of comedy.”
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Jack Benny: “It’s not so much knowing when to speak, as when to pause.”
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Eddie Murphy: “Whatever the fuck make the people laugh, say that shit.” from Raw
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Mitch Hedberg: From 2004 AV Club interview
O: Were you using your one-liner style from the beginning?
Mitch Hedberg: … The one-liner style, that came because I’m not a good storyteller. I would add on to a concept that I thought was funny but was getting no laughs, and I’d get more uptight. I decided to get to the point quicker, get rid of all the fat. When I tell a story, it’s always been very much just the facts, so all my jokes are really stories that are broken down to the most factual sense.
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Bonus Nichols and May poster that I simply couldn’t resist.
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Mike Nichols and Elaine May. From a 1999 interview with Film Comment magazine:
FC: “Do you remember how you met her? What your impression was of her?”
Nichols: “My first impression of her was of a beautiful and dangerous girl that interested me enormously, scared me.”
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Russell Brand, interviewed by Dawn French: “I think that the way many people talk about music, comedy has been that for me. I don’t have the core affiliation that many people have with music. But I have the rhythms from Black Adder and Fawlty Towers in my head the way other people remember riffs.”
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Eddie Izzard, 2007 AV Club Interview, on working stream-of-consciousness:
“… all you got to do is keep the gate in your mind open, you’ve got to. If you ever get fear in your brain, then you think, “Oh, I’m not going to be able to do this, it isn’t going to work any more,” and it suddenly stops. You think you can’t do it, and you suddenly can’t. And then it stops and you get fear and then you’re just stammering. It’s a little dodgy, it’s like walking a tightrope and having a conversation at the same time.”
