Quotes from Matt Besser

I think most people don't even know what 'woo pig sooie' is if they're not a sports fan or they're not from Arkansas.

I don't think 'Freak Dance' is a parody; it's more reference than anything. People don't think of 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show' as a 'Frankenstein' parody. It's kind of like that.

People are either funny or they're not, and you can't teach that - but you can teach people to work together to make an idea better.

Mary Holland is really funny.

Lou Holtz, I was also a huge fan of. He was really funny. I think that's a big part of why I was attracted to the Razorbacks: I thought Lou Holtz was really funny. He is really funny. Too bad he's a born-again, or whatever.

I feel like there are a lot of bands or musicians that probably think improv is corny, because I think that's a sentiment out there.

You're always starting with a nugget of truth, whether it's a song or an improv scene.

I'd been involved with stand-up before improv, so I already thought highly of myself as being a funny person. I never thought I wasn't funny.

Improv acting is not just saying the lines but connecting with the other actor.

When I came to Chicago, I didn't even know what improvisation meant, as far as pertaining to comedy. I knew about Second City, but I didn't know what the word 'improvisation' meant.

Instead of improvisers who want to be funny by themselves, we aim to try and make the scene itself as funny as possible. As a creator, I think that's someone you'd rather work with, whether it's a movie or a sitcom; that kind of methodology is good for collaboration. People want to be with those kinds of performers.

We agree that there is a problem in the sketch and improv community where, in general, there should be more interest from a more diverse sampling of our society. That is precisely why we do have diversity scholarships and why we've put together a diversity program to try to figure this problem out.

I used to go to those dance circles when I was a kid. When break dancing was first popular in the '80s. I would be in Boston, or I'd head up to New York, and I would stand in those circles, and I would just be blown away.

I thought the musical aspect of 'Freak Dance' was a good contrast to how dancers always try to come off as really tough in those movies - they're trying to literally come off as gangs like as if the Crips and the Bloods are also dancing in addition or instead of fighting with guns and knives and stuff.

Often, when people don't do so well in a monologue at UCB, it's because they're racking their brain so hard to be funny that they're just not honest and don't just tell a true story, which is what we want.

Acting is just about the script and the director giving you notes. In improv, it's more about trusting that the group will carry you.

The most difficult thing to pull off in a musical is the choreography.

I'll probably never stop improvising.

I'm more of a sketch guy than a standup.

So many comedians, if you asked them, 'What's your priority in standup?' it's probably gonna be to make people laugh or to entertain them. That is just way down on my priority list, if on my list at all. I'm into breaking records. If I can do a set and break a record and get no laughs, I'm happy.

I guess that I was always considered a little too weird for the standup clubs and probably too jokey for doing performance art and those places where those are done.

I never liked the glossiness of highly produced standup specials in general - I like it where it has more of a feel of the type of places I usually perform. It seems kind of weird when you do a special to go perform in a place unlike the place where you perform 95% of the time.

Every funny story has at least one unusual thing in it.

I don't think I've ever had a conversation with a comedian who stole except for when it's been in anger.