NY Post Q&As for 2008 New York Comedy Festival

Friend and fellow funny reporter winner Mandy Stadtmiller interviewed Sarah Silverman, Tracy Morgan, Joel McHale and Louis CK in advance of this week’s New York Comedy Festival for the New York Post (an official fest media partner). In print, we only got a taste from each of the comics. Online, we get the full Q&As. And after the jump, I’ll share my favorite tidbits from each interview.

From Stadtmiller’s Q&A with Sarah Silverman, about her recent trek to the U.K.:

England was bizarre – I had the time of my life and the live show was a
blast – the crowd was fantastic and I fell in love with them. Then I
woke up the next morning and every reviewer said I got booed off the
stage and bombed. I honestly thought I was being punked. BELIEVE ME I
know when I bomb – I’ve bombed a billion times in my life. It was
literally the opposite. Weird. Then of course Perez picked it up and
all my friends in the states emailed me going, "f–k London, they suck"
— but it wasn’t true. I wish I DID bomb there, at least all this press
wouldn’t be so frustrating. Defamer posted a video someone took with
their phone from my encore (I went back out and just shot the s–t for
a bit. It was really fun – something that can only happen live, you
know?) and you can see that I’m doing well. I never thought I’d be
happy someone videotaped it and posted it on youtube! One thing I did
learn was that on the ticket it said doors opened at 6:30 – which is
when the theater had me arrive for sound check, which is lame. Also, I
just found out the show was slated in the ads to be 2 hours long, and
my show is one hour. I feel terribly that the crowd was misled – that
is lame. As for my material, it’s half and half. Half old half new. I’m
not a machine — I’m working on my show 15 hours a day for 8 months of
the year. So please, don’t come if you want to see all new material!!

From Stadtmiller’s Q&A with Tracy Morgan, on his comedic alter-ego:

Some people see me as a genius, some people see me as an idiot savant.
It’s all in how you looking at it. To me, funny is funny. You can focus
on the material all you want to. But funny is funny. At the end of the
day, funny is funny. You don’t have to say a word, and be very funny.
Some people look funny, some people act funny, some people just say
funny things. I choose to say funny things in a funny way. So I’m using
all of my whole instrument when I’m on stage. My looks, my shape,
everything. Whatever it takes to make you laugh. I love you like the
fat kid love cake. To make you laugh, I’ll do whatever it takes. I love
you like the fat kid love cake. And when I get on stage, I’m just
trying to get my audience love. And the first thing that I want to
do–I want them to identify and relate. So, I’m staying real with it.
‘Cause if they don’t identify and relate to you they going to look at
you like you from Mars!

From Stadtmiller’s Q&A with Joel McHale, on his current job spoofing reality TV on The Soup:

How much do I feel like a whore? Well It’s a good thing you asked.
That’s what I’m going as for Halloween. A french whore. It’s weird
because we want to say that some cultural phenomenon, a lot of pop
cultural phenomenon is horrible and we always said that 90 percent of
TV is bad and 10 percent has never been better and then, I don’t get
nervous but I hope we are not contributing to the culture of gossip
that our society loves which I think all societies ultimately love
there’s just more ways with technology that you can now get it. And I
don’t want to be part of the problem, I want to be part of the solution
saying, "Why are we paying attention to this?" But you have to bring up
the stories to knock them down. But sometimes I feel like, man, are we
perpetuating the problem? That’s why we try to let the coverage be our,
we try to cover the coverage.

From Stadtmiller’s Q&A with Louis CK, on what he finds thrilling about stand-up these days:

I love–the biggest thrill for me is taking an audience to places
they’re not used to going and making them really laugh there. I like to
surprise people with what they’re laughing at. That’s a nice feeling.
Is to find new territory. I mean everybody knows that bananas are
funny. And dogs walking on their hind legs are funny. But to take
people to an area that they think of as a place that’s fearful and
upsetting to them and show them that there’s funny thoughts there.
That’s really fun. And to hear people in the audience laughing and
saying, "Oh my God," that’s great.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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