Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.
You've noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn't, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize - all of this matters.
If I had a choice, I would do comedy all the time. It's just the most challenging thing. To make someone laugh is the most challenging thing, and the most rewarding thing, in entertainment.
You can give a guy a funny line, but you can't make him say it funny.
I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character.
Ninety-nine percent is in the delivery. If you have the right voice and the right delivery, you're cocky enough, and you pound down on the punch line, you can say anything and make people laugh maybe three times before they realize you're not telling jokes.
Comedy, I figured, was the thing that came to me the most easily. Playing the trumpet and piano took practice. I thought that was a waste of time. I'd go out on the street corner and be funny. In a minute.
I did try when I wasn't doing the singing to do as much comedy as I could because I thought with Comic Relief you are duty bound to anyway.
I don't really have a pattern yet. I don't know if I'll develop one. As far as comedic integrity, I don't have integrity in general, comedic or otherwise.
What I'm doing when I'm doing my speaking engagements is that I'm delivering serious material with humor. So, instead of delivering humor without a particular point other than to entertain people, I'm delivering comedy in a serious way.
It's the hardest thing to come up with an hour of material that can consistently keep people laughing.
The jokes I was always attracted to, and that I would tell for the longest, were jokes where I cared about the subject. Whenever I wrote a joke where I didn't care, even if it was really funny, the third time I told it, it would lose steam.
I'm definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won't. Then three years later I will finally try it and it'll kill them. I got to give them more credit.
Over the past 50 years Bob Hope employed 88 joke writers who supplied him with more than one million gags, and he still couldn't make me laugh.
And there's wordplay and there's rhythms and you have to be able to get the poetry out of it. You have to be able to sell my jokes. And if you're talking about somebody like Sam Jackson, they do that. Sam Jackson can do that. Sam Jackson can turn it into the spoken word that it was always meant to be and he can sell my jokes. And Christopher Walken can do it and a lot of people can do it, all right.
Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.
Comedy is commitment and playing a character and falling into the role, and I've been doing that since I was 19 years old.
The best comedy is always played straight down the middle.
In reality, as a comedian, you're successful because you're funny, and you should be able to be funny about anything.
I've never considered myself a comedian. I'm a comedic actor.
Comedy is much harder, it's a lot more exacting. You can't just be real and you can't just use the same kind of techniques you use to fill up a regular scene.
I always wanted to give people the more exciting version of what I think a comedian should be - because I didn't grow up with comics, I grew up with rock 'n' roll. And when I saw a lot of comics, no matter how good they might have been material-wise, I would get a little bored with them after 10 minutes, only because I feel comedians don't really know performance.
When I say, 'I can't stay long, I'm in-between meals,' that plays differently on the radio than it does in person. So I have to pick material that works because the words are funny, not just because of the images.
Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.
I don't know if I even consider myself a comedian really - I do comedic acting in some films and dramatic in others.
