I hate the bad rap that people give my parents. Because they are just parents, really, at the end of the day trying to stand up for their daughter and themselves.
If you write a bunch of different characters with a bunch of different opinions, you end up with these long scenes of everyone standing around talking.
I gravitated toward stand-up because there's no overhead. I mean, literally, there's no overhead: Often, you're outdoors performing in front of groups of people.
I want to be more physical and theatrical within the stand-up. There might be dance moments, and people better watch out - I will gallop.
I'll always stand by the first 'Batman'. Even for its imperfections, people will never know how hard that movie was to do. A lot of that still holds up.
Live performance really terrifies me. I haven't done it, really, in years. I think that's why I retired from my brief career in stand-up.
I had no experience with broadcasting basketball games, so I took a tape recorder and went to a playground where there was a summer league, and I stood up in the top of the stands and I called the game.
Stand-up is my foundation. That's where it started at. And I love it because it's personal. It's mine. It's all me. It's my experience in life.
But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'
I've been very lucky. There are guys I know who are really terrific in this business of stand-up who have not gotten the recognition they deserve. And it's nice, if you've put in the time, to achieve that recognition.
Stand-up don't get no respect - it's the hardest thing to do in show business. You don't have no band and there's no music.
The thing about stand-up was, I was doing all this sketch and YouTube stuff where I was not being censored and I got to do my own thing, and it was really cool.
It is up to us to change laws on the books like 'Stand Your Ground' laws and push elected officials to enact regulations that hold police officers to the same standards as the rest of society. This is why we vote.
If you are going to make a change, make it big and bold. Walk up to the biggest guy on the block, stand in his face and get it started. Then go around, brigade by brigade, making it make sense.
I've been doing stand-up just about every night since I started in 1989. It's my home base. But I'm into doing comedy in all mediums, platforms and situations.
People, I guess, generally come to see me do stand-up with a working knowledge of my broad sense of humor on 'The Daily Show'... I don't think anyone would mistake me as an actual anchor.
America may be slow to rise to a challenge. But our history has shown that once we make up our minds to really do something, nothing can stand in our way.
Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.
Universities think people come up with great ideas by closing the door. The academic tenure process, where you have to publish to journals which are very narrow, stands in the way of great research.
Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles.
All the truly great stand-ups say, 'I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work.' To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.
