Every laugh is not equal. They come from different places. That’s sort of the challenge I go towards, making sure the laughs are for the reasons I want. It becomes a back and forth dance with the audience.
I am afraid of abandonment, and, if you will, in a really existential way, being exposed as a fraud. Everyone’s afraid of it, and I definitely am. This is a fear that motivates. Oh, and heights. And getting stabbed.
I’ll get laughs in the places I don’t want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in. I don’t mean to get too deep into comedy here.
As you go on you realize “Okay I know how to get laughs but am I saying things I want to say? Am I writing jokes that I like?” You get to a point that is that so you move on.
Anyone who buys a ticket can just go in there, and I don’t like everyone, so I always see concerts as like, I’m going to get punched, I’m going to get elbowed, I’m going to get stepped on, get spilled on, someone’s going to hit me with their body odor or something.
Being around Lily Tomlin has been great, how she treats people, how she handles herself, how she goes about interpreting her character or deciding how the comedy should work.
The audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don’t have to listen to everything they think or say.
I think Batman Returns is right for riffs. I love it but it’s the ultimate Tim Burton movie. There is so much that happens that’s crazy and there are a ton of things to riff.
Sometimes I have young comics that ask me, “What should I do when I meet an agent or a manager and they ask me stuff?” And I say, “Well, they always usually ask, ‘Where do you see yourself in five years, 10 years, 15 years?’ And it’s good to have an answer for that.”
There’s a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.
![Baron Vaughn Quote - I can’t do Christopher Walken impressions anymore, thanks [Barack] Obama.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/i-cant-do-christopher-walken-impressions-anymore-t-683x1024.jpg)
