Lily Tomlin…I used to watch reruns of Laugh-In and she was always my favorite part. She’s this very unique talent and the way she does things has been a very big influence on me.
Sometimes you’re not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn’t mean it’s not funny. It means you haven’t explored it enough.
The thing is that where I want to go isn’t necessarily tied to what’s going on there politically, but I think Vietnam is a really beautiful country. I think Thailand is also really beautiful.
[Harold Pinter] is a British playwright and is one of my favorite writers. Harold was very obsessed with when memory becomes mythology, that at some point you change your memory to fit who you believe you are.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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 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.
You can fit two United States and maybe a third one into the entire continent of Africa, but on a map we make the entire continent of Africa look like the size of the United States, which is why a lot of people don’t know that Africa is a continent. They think it’s a country because it looks as big as we do.
I read recently that I was born in Arizona. I wasn’t born in Arizona. I was born in New Mexico, but I can understand why people might confuse those two Southwestern desert states.
The album [Blaxistential crisis] artwork is by a friend of mine who is a brilliant artist named Sara Pocock. We’ve been friends for a couple of years and she worked with me on the animation. I believe she’s still working over at BuzzFeed.
![Baron Vaughn Quote - [Harold Pinter] is a British playwright and is one of my favorite writers. Harold was very obsessed with when memory becomes mythology, that at some point you change your memory to fit who you believe you are.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/harold-pinter-is-a-british-playwright-and-is-one-o-683x1024.jpg)
![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)
![Baron Vaughn Quote - The album [Blaxistential crisis] artwork is by a friend of mine who is a brilliant artist named Sara Pocock. We’ve been friends for a couple of years and she worked with me on the animation. I believe she’s still working over at BuzzFeed.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/the-album-blaxistential-crisis-artwork-is-by-a-fri-683x1024.jpg)
