Quotes About Improvisation

It's hard not to be the straight man when Zach Galifianakis is there. He's such a delightfully bizarre creature. Everything he does is so surprising. He's such a live wire. It's just so exciting to watch.

With a smaller setting, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility within a given moment, but not necessarily the velocity you have with a big band.

'MacGyver' of course, that's probably my favorite show of all time because it was a guy who was so, so smart and could use his wits, and his technical know-how could get him out of any situation.

My goal was becoming the next David Copperfield. I learned how to be a performer by emulating him as a kid - his formula of just talking to people onstage, being free to improvise, being charming and witty with a crowd, together with great, beautiful magic.

A lot of comics fly by the seat of their pants, and they pride themselves on being witty, quick, and off-the-cuff. That's not my show. I wrote a show, and I want to do the show I wrote. I'm not interested in what the audience has to say.

I've found in the past that if we planned the show a night before, once we slept and woke up, we weren't in that mood anymore. Because I really think doing a live show means you should be exploring your live feelings, and planning is not good.

I don't have a real plan when I do an interview. I have some themes that I want to hit. But I don't have a set list of questions that I knock off.

Jazz is the last refuge of the untalented. Jazz musicians enjoy themselves more than anyone listening to them does.

Names and theoretical things don't occur to me. If they do, I'm not doing my real playing mode.

I'm not a big theory person. So when I get asked questions that demand serious statements, I just make it up.

I'm an untrained musician. Untrained musicians don't really have any music theory, they don't have a lot of rules. We break the rules, but it's mostly because we don't know what the rules are. It's easy for us to go to certain places, so I'm not surprised that a lot of people were amused by my songwriting style.

I've never been much for theory and scales.

In a certain sense, aspects of my solo playing were developed in order to test the theory about how long particular elements could be, as parts of so-called free improvisations.

Any talk of 'craft' makes me laugh. My music looks outward; it does not gaze upon itself in admiration. Artisanal is for cheesemakers. I don't know anything about music theory. Every time I approach my guitar, it's like the first time. There's no craft in that.

I thought of Second City as just the greatest therapeutic job anybody could ever dream of having.

I kind of see it as my personal therapy to get on stage and do characters.

I have a few filmmaker friends who are known for shooting super-fast, and they say that you don't have the time to over-think things and how that helps things out creatively.

They say it's good but I didn't know what I was doing until I got into the suit and they put the moustache on me, and somehow, when I got all the drag on, it came out. It was the most amazing thing. I'm truly extraordinary.

When I do the roles, when I'm in the room and auditioning, I'll ask the director if they're cool with me adding stuff, or just improvising while we're doing it. And I would say, like, 90 percent of the time, they say, 'Absolutely.'

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

Mmmm... the comedy that matters is the comedy you pull out of thin air. It's a bit like when something funny has happened and you try to explain it to someone else and end up saying, 'You had to be there.'

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

I think making a movie or a record, the best things happen by accident - and those end up being the magic. Every time I've followed my gut it's been better than when I've tried to do what I was supposed to do.

That's why I love theatre, because things happen in the moment. I think you work without being conscious that you're working.