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Quote by Todd Barry

“I've had shows where you think, "Is this going well? I can't tell," and then you say goodnight and you get this ovation. They're sorta like a theater audience. I've learned that much; that they're not always going to be doing backflips - but I'll never figure it out. Because sometimes you walk up there, and they're so excited, and then other times, it's just... But sometimes an audience is bad, and you can tell them they're bad, and that sort of breaks the ice a bit.”

Quote by Todd Barry

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Todd Barry
Todd Barry

Todd Barry is an American stand-up comedian known for his unique humor style and self-deprecating humor. Born on March 26, 1964, Barry has been active in the comedy scene since the 1990s. He is recognized for his performances in comedy clubs and television shows, including appearances on Comedy Central and Saturday Night Live. more

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“There are certain things that are probably too mean. I don't particularly like fat jokes. Those kind of bother me. But I guess what I was trying to say is, if I said I would never laugh at this, you could probably dig around and find a situation where I did laugh. I try not to be a hypocrite with that one. I find when there's a controversy about someone saying something offensive, I usually take the angle of, "Well, I don't know if that was offensive; it just wasn't funny." I generally don't gasp, "Oh my God!" I think people have been getting raked over the coals lately.”

“I think people have this "It can't hurt to ask" mentality, which is true on some level. I get comics like, "Hey, will you look at these videos of me on MySpace?" I was like, "Well, who's gonna benefit from that? What if I don't like you?" No, I'm gonna write to a stranger and say, "Hi. You like me, and I don't like you. And now I feel bad when I didn't need to feel bad, because you put me on the spot." Or like, "Can I open for you?" Well, I've never seen you work, so no. I certainly made awkward mistakes when I was starting out, and they're just trying to have a career.”

“It was my freshman year. I was living across the hall from a girl named Kasey Klepper, whose brother, Jordan Klepper, used to be a big part of Kalamazoo's improv team. Kasey took me to see one of their shows, and my face melted off. I thought, I need to do this... I auditioned, but didn't make the team. So, I took my first acting class, and it opened my eyes to a whole new world. I'd always been interested in performing on some level, but now, I was going to do it. I tried out again and got onto the team, and from then on, I was sucked into the whole theater scene.”

“Confidence. That's huge as an actor. Confidence can get you a long way. Maybe it's a cultural thing, being Korean, but my first reflex has always been to exude humility - but it doesn't help you in acting. For acting, humility isn't the best thing. It'll weaken your work. So it's a head game for me. "Can I really be confident in knowing my skill set is down? Can I perform like I own this role?"”

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“The late '90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio. We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn't get arrested a year later. I had this feeling at the time that that was not possible anymore, so the idea of becoming the biggest band in the country—it seemed laughable. I felt that having those sort of ambitions was foolish, because there was no way that was going to be possible. If you saw it that way, you were just deluding yourself.”