Quotes from Matt Besser

We all hate those stories that end with 'And that's the story.'

Sometimes people can be offensive and not even realize it.

I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, and before the Internet and before everything, just to get anything interesting, you had to go on vacation to San Francisco or something. But I think when you're in the middle of America, you feel very jealous of not just comedy but music that you don't have access to.

Standups have all the talk shows, but you never see a sketch group on a talk show. Even on so-called variety shows, if you do see a sketch group or character, it's written specifically for that variety show and usually written around the host of the show or a celebrity.

There's a creative vibe at U.C.B., and to maintain it, we can't pay people. If you pay, then you have to assign worth to shows, and then people will resent that.

Many improv groups give off the same positive annoying vibe that I associate with Christian Young Life groups with shows that more resemble children playing than a comedy performance.

When we started doing sketch comedy - actually in '91 in Chicago - making your own videos, which we did, took forever. It would take like, a year to make one video. It was just so difficult to edit and just do everything you had to do.

Understanding listening is an epiphany moment for every improviser. At least for me it was.

Neil Mahoney was definitely the visionary in taking 'Freak Dance' from stage to screen. He made it more cinematic. He brought the choreography, all the ways to shoot that. I was more the director of actors. I was in front of the camera directing, and he was behind the camera directing.