Paul Provenza Quotations

Social media allows comics to bypass the gatekeepers and connect directly with people who will want to come see them.

Career is a mindset. The wrong mindset. Career is linear. Especially when you are trapped in the TV or film world. The next thing you do has always got to be bigger, or it is perceived as a failure.

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

George Carlin maintained that anything and everything is funny given the right context. This context also includes your own history with a given group. What I can get away with and where I can go is not a problem with my audience because they know me.

When I was a young comic just starting out, I was very cautious, as I didn't want to alienate people. George Carlin's bravery became a benchmark. I became perfectly fine with alienating some people in the audience. That just comes with the territory.

We're familiar with the notion of musicians reinterpreting the same song over and over, but we don't ever hear that with comedians,

I was surprised how deeply that affected us. Every comedian will say Johnny was just the biggest influence on their life.

He has a rich history with this joke. This joke was his favorite joke in the world,

We met at the free clinic. She's there three times a week.

He was a huge champion of the idea and a big cheerleader for the movie, and this is where it gets heartbreaking, ... We were supposed to bring it over to his house and screen it for him right after Sundance, and he died while we were at Sundance.

Johnny can't gain his composure, Ed McMahon is doing his characteristic bull moose guffaw, the band -- the instruments are banging into one another -- the audience is in tears, and every time Johnny would try to gain his composure, he would look at Buddy and it would start all over again.

We didn't shoot it like a real movie, ... We never set up lights, we didn't do anything elaborate with sound, we never did makeup or anything like that, because every time something like that happens, it's another layer of artifice.

We don't judge anybody if they're offended, we're just having a good time,

There are a lot of movies out there for you, but there is room on the shelf for something that's free and liberating as well, ... If you don't like dirty jokes, if you don't like rough language, I highly recommend the penguin movie because they dress really nicely.

There are many people who say it was Johnny's favorite ever.

Everybody did an amazing job of letting their hair down and being fearless,

As we set about to edit, I watched 150 hours of footage over and over for a period of months. I had to figure out what hanging out with these artists doing this joke meant. In that process some ideas began to emerge: craft and art, freedom and creativity, boundaries and taboos, etc. So we used comics' performances that illustrated those ideas. We wanted to show rather than tell.

The joke is the comedy equivalent of jazz. It's raunchy, it's free of constraints, yet has a simple 'melody' to hold on to. It's about where you take it, not where it's going. If that is not a workable definition of art, I don't know what is.

If you can handle some raw language, come on in, and have a great time with us. To each his own.

If you've ever been offended by any particular word, you'll probably hear it 100 times in this movie.

I don't know if the audience wants to hear it,

Gary is awesome, he's amazing, ... The music in the movie alludes to jazz, bebop and pop but has an improvisational feel and he did an amazing job with just a few minutes.

I actually go to church. I know it's hard for you to believe. It's only because you know that Jesus on the cross? I love his smooth hairless body.

I know jazz is completely un-American. But the reason why America doesn't like it is because it's not funny. We [americans] have made jazz funny.

There is no democrats or republicans, right or left, red state or blue state. We are all one. And we are all unified against Mexicans.

If I had the flag that Betsy Ross worked so hard on, I wouldn't destroy it. I'd put it up on EBay because it's gotta be worth some serious coin. And that is the American way.

As a comedian, I'm like one of those on-the-scene reporters. I will actually go and try to find disasters so I can write jokes as the disasters unfold.

I actually had to leave the country for infractions to fall off my record.

Some performers are brilliant comedians, some are genius musicians, and some just make you happy to be alive. THE BOBS are all of that - and then some.

Children in a third world country. That's how we spread democracy.

How many impressionist painters painted the same damned thing? How many actors have played the same part in renditions of a play or dancers do the same dances,

We didn't choose the joke because it's filthy! We chose it because of the structure!

We look at the ancient Greeks with their gods on a mountain top throwing lightning bolts and say, 'Those ancient Greeks. They were so silly. So primitive and naive. Not like our religions. We have burning bushes talking to people and guys walking on water. We're ...sophisticated.'

This is a look at a particular world of artists, and when it comes to words, well, that's our currency. In terms of mindset, we'll entertain almost any idea. We're trying to be creative. There's nothing about any given word that's better or worse than other given word. A word is a word.

The film also speaks to a worldview: comedians have a bond like no other. The thing that makes an individual feel odd and outcast in the real world is what makes them special and important among comedians. If the rest of the world championed and encouraged individuality we'd all stop being so self-loathing and fearful of each other, and all get along a hell of a lot better. And I bet we'd all laugh more, too.