“Dinner is often a very celebratory environment, a very safe place, a time to reflect and let the day go and enjoy good food and good wine. It’s a very peaceful moment during the day. A great dinner can change your day around.”
― Brett Gelman
“The world is pretty messed up.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve definitely had the long stretches of time in my personal life where I’ve felt an intense loneliness and a desperation to feel something real and to have something that truly meant something in my life.”
― Brett Gelman
“Don’t be proud of me. Do something to make yourself proud of yourself.”
― Brett Gelman
“We have to laugh at how hard life can be and how screwed up we can be at times.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m all for free speech, and I don’t need my viewpoint to be the only viewpoint.”
― Brett Gelman
“Every white liberal straight man needs to take action and work at unifying all peoples of our sides and stop making women and people of color and the LGBT community fight it out themselves and just pat them on the back. We have to take active roles in supporting them, defending them, and hiring them.”
― Brett Gelman
“At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I’m acting with.”
― Brett Gelman
“I would say that is the beauty of Adult Swim is that they’re always pushing forward from what they’ve done in the past, and they’re always just trying different styles.”
― Brett Gelman
“Really go out of your way to hire women, people of color, homosexuals, transgendered people – go out of your way to hire them.”
― Brett Gelman
“Talking is not action. Don’t just look at what you say. Look at how you socialize.”
― Brett Gelman
“We live in a country whose government and many of its people support white supremacy and disintegration of basic human rights.”
― Brett Gelman
“I honestly don’t see how anyone can view the GOP and the Right as anything but evil.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m a straight white man – I have options, and I’m not blocked on a consistent basis when I wake up in the morning because of my race, sex, and orientation.”
― Brett Gelman
“Use your imaginations, and use your empathy. If you don’t do that, you’re limiting yourself as an artist, and you’re hurting the world.”
― Brett Gelman
“Even if somebody is maybe a little less qualified, you can bring them in, you can teach them, and it will also make your work better because you’ll have different perspectives. Even if somebody is less talented, they’re coming at it from a completely different perspective, and that helps your work.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m not someone who shies away from darkness being funny. I think that life is very dark at times, and there are things that are very funny about that.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve always been an actor. I’ve always approached all my comedy as an actor.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think that liberal straight white men really need to stop patting themselves on the back for what they think they think and actually take a look at their actions.”
― Brett Gelman
“I get to live a privileged existence.”
― Brett Gelman
“A lot of times, comedic actors are discriminated against. People just assume they can’t do something other than what they do, rather than thinking, ‘Oh, wait – doing what they do normally is really hard.’”
― Brett Gelman
“Jason Woliner and I have been longtime friends and collaborators.”
― Brett Gelman
“There are not many people that I respect more than rappers. I’m a huge fan of hip hop. It’s incredible, one of the most influential things to me. It takes real genius to be able to do well. It’s a very deep art form.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m not a fighter. I don’t like to get beat up.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m Jewish, so it’s like I’m not totally white. I’m, like, gray.”
― Brett Gelman
“Nobody wants to see a woman onscreen who is a wreck. That is pure, unadulterated, systemic misogyny.”
― Brett Gelman
“A crazy action only works if there’s a great reaction.”
― Brett Gelman
“I love Brody Stevens. He’s one of my favorite stand-ups.”
― Brett Gelman
“Loss is a part of life, unfortunately, and you’ve got to just deal with it.”
― Brett Gelman
“I love ‘Seinfeld.’ That was not alternative. You can’t get more in mainstream than that.”
― Brett Gelman
“I have Janicza solely to thank for my growth as an actor because she saw in me something that other people just weren’t seeing, and she knew that I could go beyond the normal, funny ‘make-em-ups’ that I was doing on an improv stage.”
― Brett Gelman
“I like women around. I like female energy. I find it very important.”
― Brett Gelman
“Deeper things, heavier things happen to you as you get older and makes you more open.”
― Brett Gelman
“What doesn’t kill you, if you use it to make yourself stronger, then you will get stronger. But if you let it beat you down, then you will be weaker.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve never gone to a bachelor party, where I didn’t, no matter how much I loved the people there, hate them so much for their disgusting behavior.”
― Brett Gelman
“Gilbert Gottfried, I think, is just the most underappreciated comedian in the world. I think that he doesn’t get enough credit for how funny he is.”
― Brett Gelman
“There’s a certain order to network shows that doesn’t exist so much in cable, which is, you know, if you want to change a line you’ve got to talk to the writer.”
― Brett Gelman
“It’s actually just as cool to be on television as to be in a movie, and nobody’s ashamed of this back and forth.”
― Brett Gelman
“I love Adult Swim. They give you so much artistic freedom.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think that’s something that people don’t realize enough about when they get into comedy – it’s not just about sitting back and observing and saying something funny.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve always been an actor, even when I was doing improv and my own version of stand up.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think it’s good news that cable television is so, so supportive of the Louis C.K.s, the Lena Dunhams, the Matthew Weiners, and the Vince Gilligans. There’s just so many people fearlessly making their stuff, you know?”
― Brett Gelman
“Andrew Gurland is so precise and, again, such an amazing writer, but then he’s also really honest with himself and what he is seeing.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’m an actor, and I want to play flawed characters, and I’m a writer that wants to write flawed characters, trying to let something out and hoping people relate through that or have fun experiencing the story.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think that all the Mel Brooks’ company of actors is just tremendous. It was a crazy group of genius people. All of them taught me what kind of actor I should be and what was funny.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve wanted to be a comedian since I was a kid, and my parents were very supportive of that.”
― Brett Gelman
“I don’t see how I ever could have thought that having an all-white crew for a special about race would be OK.”
― Brett Gelman
“I don’t hate oatmeal raisin, but it is the worst cookie. Profoundly disappointing.”
― Brett Gelman
“As far as making people feel less depressed, that, in and of itself, is a political act.”
― Brett Gelman
“I like to challenge the audience. I want people to feel discomfort.”
― Brett Gelman
“I hate it when I see people texting at a show. And talking to each other. They’re at a performance; they should respect the performer.”
― Brett Gelman
“’Dinner’ is completely scripted. There are some improv elements, but I’m not interested in pranking people. It’s more like a play than standup.”
― Brett Gelman
“Comedy is all about the character. When you’re too focused on the gags, the character suffers, and you don’t get the laugh. Comedy has to come from the character.”
― Brett Gelman
“As someone who is on the more liberal side of things, I personally think this side needs to be a little less open. I know that’s part of what it means to be on the more liberal side of things, but that trait can no longer really be a part of our makeup. The simple reason for this is that the opposing side uses our openness to their full advantage.”
― Brett Gelman
“I saw ‘A Night at the Opera,’ this Marx Brothers film, when I was, like, six years old. I just became obsessed, you know?”
― Brett Gelman
“All of my favorite directors are coming from a singular perspective, and I think that’s been very lacking in film.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think comedy is incredibly discriminated against. It is one of the most enjoyed yet most condescended art forms in the world. It’s the same thing with hip-hop.”
― Brett Gelman
“One of the things I was taught was how you deal with language. It’s important, very important in comedy.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think some people watch ‘Raging Bull,’ or they watch ‘The Piano Teacher,’ and I think they’re more, maybe, able to process an antihero in a dramatic context, where people more want comedy to take care of them. But that’s not really taking care of people. That’s just providing escape, which sometimes is necessary.”
― Brett Gelman
“We spend so much of our lives doing math problems on how to feel good. It’s such a waste of time. You’re going to feel how you feel. It’s hard to just set up a way that you’re going to live your life that is going to be just endlessly happy and healthy. That’s impossible.”
― Brett Gelman
“I like being strange. I like being hyperbolic and surreal.”
― Brett Gelman
“’The Producers’ is my favorite movie, and my favorite performances of all time are Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder, and I feel like I strive to be a combination of those two guys.”
― Brett Gelman
“I’ve definitely seen people get angry or really uncomfortable with stuff I’ve made in the past. And my stand-up, if you could call what I do stand-up, is quite aggressive, too.”
― Brett Gelman
“I love Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke, but if I’m not in the right frame of mind to watch their work, I feel upset after watching it.”
― Brett Gelman
“What a great way to make some money is just fine somebody $300 if their phone rings in the theatre. That’ll make them remember to turn it off.”
― Brett Gelman
“I really am not that hairy on my body. It’s weird.”
― Brett Gelman
“I love taking on roles that other people have written for me just as much as I take on writing – just not as much of a, ‘Oh, that guy.’ I want people to start saying, ‘Oh, Brett Gelman’s new piece is coming out. That’s a Brett Gelman movie. That’s a a Brett Gelman show.’”
― Brett Gelman
“I look upon ‘A Little Bit of Luck’ as a very bizarre, happy, surreal memory.”
― Brett Gelman
“I always at least try to come from some sort of human place no matter how ridiculous the character is. That’s really awesome. That is more the work that I’m leaning towards doing.”
― Brett Gelman
“I think the thing that really started setting my career on the course that it’s on is when I did ‘1000 Cats’ on ‘Funny or Die Presents’ on HBO. That’s what I feel like kind of got me a little bit more into the system.”
― Brett Gelman
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