Baron Vaughn Quotes

When I’m watching Tom Servo, I don’t feel like I’m in my own body; I’m just reacting and saying what the character in front of me would say.

What I am trying to do is create a space for people to explore what they want to be, as opposed to fit into a label that they have been given.

In New Mexico, my local church did a nativity play, and I was cast as Wise Man #3. Of course, Wise Man #3 had no damn lines. Wise Man #1 had all the lines! I stood there thinking, ‘I could do that role so much better!’ From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be an actor.

Instead of letting anxiety run you, try voicing it. Voice it in your comedy. Voice it in a script. Just voice it, and it’ll help you release it.

When things get stressful and crazy and you think to yourself, ‘When will this get easier?’ it won’t, because that’s what a career feels like.

I don’t mean to make a generalization, but I do at the same time, from what I know about people from the Midwest, it seems like their families would talk about money openly in front of them when they were kids. They’d say stuff like, ‘We’re broke! We’re gonna lose the house!’

In a way, you just can’t predict a perfect movie for ‘MST3K.’

When the audience reacts all together, it’s genius. The audience is its own being in a way. It’s a weird, amorphous beast that is also somehow a golden emperor that is also somehow every adult you’ve ever come across in your life who doesn’t approve of you – all in one place.

I was in the middle of filming Season 3 of ‘Grace and Frankie.’ Then the writing process for ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ was happening at the exact same time. And then the pre-production for ‘Fatherless’ was happening at the exact same time as well.

What makes a good festival, above all, is the audience. It feels disconnected when it’s meant to bring in people from elsewhere and not meant for the people who actually live there.

New York is looked at as the grad school of comedy.

I had a gentleman steal or ‘misplace’ – I guess I should say ‘allegedly’ – a lot of money from me. It didn’t make any sense when it was happening, because I just didn’t understand why I didn’t have any money. I was a perfect mark because I had all of this shame and insecurity about money.

I was really into ska.

The name of my first comedy album was ‘Raised by Cable.’ Coming up and watching all of these weird movies on different channels was such an influence on me and an influence on how I do standup. It informs everything I do.

If you live with a certain amount of dread for your own personal safety every day, that is anxiety.

I think any good standup or actor is part philosopher, part psychologist and sociologist, because you’re constantly recreating behaviors.

It was a long time before I understood what the word ‘specific’ was. I remember being a kid and thinking it was ‘pacific,’ and being like, ‘Can you be more pacific?’ And I believed that for maybe five, six years until someone was like, ‘It’s ‘specific.”

Worry less about having to fit, and focus more on what you want to make – this will always serve you.

Plenty of black people that I know have been on ‘SNL,’ and they haven’t been utilized to the best of their abilities.

I used to watch a lot of Nick at Nite as a kid, and it would play the original ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ‘The Carol Burnett Show,’ and ‘Laugh-In.’

The smaller an audience is, the more self-conscious they are. People are always looking at each other to see who is laughing. Because the thing about laughter is that it exposes who you are.

In this age of the Internet, if you are going to go see someone, you usually look them up first. It can be an advantage and disadvantage. Most of the time, people can Google you and see a couple clips and say, ‘Oh I am going to go.’ They can kind of co-sign off on you.

I’ve always been a comedy nerd, and ‘Partners in Crime’ was probably more influential for me than anything else because it was not only standup, but Robert Townsend had those short films.

Comedians are always narrating the story of the people. Always.

I was always just like, ‘Standups are making it up.’ A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn’t until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

As long as the world keeps spinning, I’ll keep riffing.

Anxiety is your creativity turned into a weapon that you use to beat yourself up. And this is because anxiety is mostly storytelling – repeating poisonous stories that you’ve inherited from others. It feeds on your fear.

One time, I was really close to Steve Martin. I was too afraid to actually go talk to him, but I’ll count that as meeting.

In other places, especially in Boston, it’s like a place where comedy gestates. People come out of there that are fantastic, but you have to come to New York or L.A. to quote unquote ‘make it.’

Every podcast network has a different culture as far as I can tell. How they run things at Nerdist is totally different than how they run things at Earwolf is totally different than All Things Comedy or Maximum Fun or Feral Audio. And it’s different if it’s independent.

One percent of all comics ever reach the level of a Chris Rock or a Jerry Seinfeld. When audiences come to the underground rooms, they have a chance to watch the process that happens along the way – and see the comedians grow.

When it comes to politics, comedians read between the lines and see hypocrisies and half-truths. And we report those things to regular people who go, ‘I noticed that, too!’ or ‘You’re right, that doesn’t make sense!’

We are constantly consuming entertainment; we treat celebrities like role models and royalty. Sometimes destructive behavior gets ignored, or sometimes the pressure breaks them.

I think we have a lot to learn from ancient cultures and different tribes.

If we don’t talk about the things that are happening, why are we talking about anything at all? Does something have to be a year old for me to have an opinion on it or a conversation with people about it?