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.
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