Dave Attell Quotes

The Apollo seats 3,600 people: I could hear them making a huge noise for Milton Jones and Lee Mack. If the audience doesn't make the same amount of noise for you, you feel like you've failed.

With stand-up you've just got that one chance. Audiences can be quite fickle.

With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.

As a comedian, I don't know if they're laughing because it's funny or if they're laughing at me because I'm not funny. And I'm thinking, 'Who cares? They're laughing.' If you go on stage, and they're laughing at you full-on for 60 minutes? You know, whatever puts them in the seats.

I like the stage lights to be bright so I can't see people because I will inevitably only see the ones who aren't laughing.

I've had plenty of friends tell me that their first time doing stand-up, they do well, and then they tank for a while after that. Kind of like the first time you do a drug, you're like, "Huh! This is pretty darn good," and then you spend all your money trying to get the same high.

When you go out there to do comedy, you feel like you're doing battle with the audience a lot of the time. You're either going to get 'em, or you're not.

It's weird because standup can be like therapy. Comedians can't be satisfied with just having fun with our friends. We've got to figure out a way to do it on stage.

But I also know in standup, there's nowhere to hide. You get on stage and you deliver, or you are eviscerated and you are thrown into a pile of bodies at the bottom of a mountain.

It's grueling never knowing if the audience is going to think you're funny. It's soul-destroying when they don't laugh.

When you're going for a joke, you're stuck out there if it doesn't work. There's nowhere to go. You've done the drum role and the cymbal clash and you're out on the end of the plank.

Seeing bored-looking fans staring at you while you DJ is about as horrible as it gets.

But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.

The bigger the audience, the better with comedy.

I started to do a study on how not to do stand-up comedy. Yeah, it's lonely work. You die, you die alone. It's you, the light, and the audience. If you win, you win big. If you lose, you lose big time.

I'm a frustrated stand-up comic. If you hand me a microphone and I get one laugh, then I'll go on for 20 minutes.

Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I'm facing them.

That's kind of fuse for the show - those first 10-15 seconds you're onstage. The curtain drops and you see the crowd for the first time and they see you for the first time. The response and the energy that's going on right there - to me, that sets the tone for the rest of the night.

One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.

We as comics do want an immediate response from the audience. It's really quiet on the set, and there are only the producers, and the director, so a comic is looking for someone to give a reaction, even if it is the camera guy.

I find Washington audiences are basically the same as every other audience; they watch me and go, 'Who's idea was it to go see him? And is it too late to ask for my money back?'

The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

I much prefer doing comedy. I get a little paranoid when the audience is not laughing.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

My dialogue probably reveals the paranoia of the stand-up: if you're not quick and interesting, they will be gone.