I don't have an act. I just talk. I'm just Lenny Bruce.
It never hurt Lenny Bruce's career to get arrested for swearing. It did back in the time, but he broke those doors down by doing the stuff that he believed in.
When I first started out, 'Time' magazine did an article on what it called 'the sick comics,' and they were myself, Shelley Berman, Nichols & May, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, and Mort Sahl. We were considered 'sick.'
Sodomy is in the Bible, to be read in churches. I wouldn't rule it out of Mr. Bruce's act if he cares to comment on it.
I loved reading when the critics in New York would say that some of my films reminded them of Lenny Bruce.
I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.
Bill Maher fancies himself the reincarnation of Lenny Bruce.
I want to write the reparations joke that makes people go, 'Yay! I'm so happy!' It's easy to go onstage and just make fun of all the 'isms' instead, but we can't all be Jeff Dunham. Although that pays very well... it pays way better to be Jeff Dunham than it ever paid to be George Carlin or Lenny Bruce.
If you listen to Howard Stern, go back and listen to Lenny Bruce, so you can hear what real talent is.
They shouldn't call anything a boot camp unless you're going off to war. Standup boot camp has been a fantastic thing, for the people putting it on. They keep you out in the woods and won't let you come back until you're funny. Lenny Bruce came up with his Religions Inc. bit on a day hike.
My influences were Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce.
Mother Goose is on the loose, stealing lines from Lenny Bruce.
My dad was a big fan of comedy. He wanted to be a stand-up. He loved Lenny [Bruce]. He also loved Lord Buckley and jazz and stuff. He was a hipster. My parents were kind of beatnik-y, you know, for Salt Lake City. But my humor, I think, came from wanting to disarm people before they hit me.
I'm not offended. Lenny Bruce taught me that everything's funny. You can make everything funny. I don't think that assassinations are funny, I don't think you can make fun of ISIS, but almost everything is funny. And If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at? So I don't mind ethnic humor. I like ethnic humor. I like dialect jokes. Laughter is a very subjective thing. If it's funny to you it's funny. And a lot of things are funny to me.
I mean, I was always interested in people like Lenny Bruce, people who are breaking the old rules and making new ones.
In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of.
But the only comparison that I want to Lenny Bruce is that I'm funny. I'm Freddie Prinze, Puerto Rican all the way.
I believe myself to be a worthwhile and inventive performer in my own right. But I'm not in a league with Lenny [Bruce], certainly not in terms of social commentary.
I was also a big Woody Allen fan. When I got into college I listened to Lenny Bruce but it's taken me years to put him into context historically and really get what he did.
Lenny Bruce is a very moral man trying to improve the world and trying to make audiences think.
When I was 16 or 17, I saw Lenny Bruce being taken to jail. They took him off stage because he talked about race.
Any comic like myself owes everything he has to Lenny Bruce. He was the originator. The godfather of uncensored American stand-up is clearly Lenny Bruce.
I'd heard that Lenny Bruce used a lot of profanity and obscenities in his act, and I was curious.
I'm trying to think if there was ever the Lenny Bruce-y, observational, George Carlin kind of magician: "You know what I hate is ..." I don't think that ever existed.
My idea as far as comedy goes has always been to push the limits of what's acceptable for a woman to do or say or be. My hero in that would be Lenny Bruce, who teaches us that words have no meaning. It's the intent behind them that is what's important.
