Name: My First Time on Stage w/ Gabriel Iglesias | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2022-10-18T18:00:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'My First Time on Stage w/ Gabriel Iglesias | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'My First Time on Stage w/ Gabriel Iglesias | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-10-18. Transcript available.

do you remember when that started when you were a kid like when you first saw
your potential to
razzle dazzle and shine i was 10 years old school talent show really yeah were
you the host please
tell me the host with like a thin little cane and like a candy stretch no um i
was actually gonna go
out on stage and do a um a routine with a friend of mine we were gonna do like
a saturday night
live sketch and when the curtain opened up he got scared and he ran out no and
so the lady that was
putting on the audition she goes well your friend left you is there anything
you know how to do by
yourself i said well i can do voices she goes what do you mean and i just
started doing like
impressions of cartoon characters and stuff and they just started looking at
each other
and i was like okay and they're like okay you're on saturday i'm like what no
just like that so
i wound up going out on stage and someone someone says the best way to break
the ice is with a joke
i said well i don't know any jokes and someone gave told me a joke and i said
it and i was 10 years old
i said why did the chicken cross the road and then i said to check out the
chicks
you know i've never heard that one it's uh well it's you know for a 10 year old
that was pretty
groundbreaking if you're 46 it sounds a little creepy but to check out but you
know what to check out the
chicks and so i opened up with that and then i just started doing these
impressions and stuff and
it just it went over well do you remember your i have so many questions do you
remember your first
impression oh god i was doing like uh peewee herman ronald reagan yogi yogi
bear uh so you had a
bunch yeah i was even doing bill cosby crazy right of course um i used to kill
at church with bill cosby
i was just it was just a few and i wasn't even saying nothing funny it was just
the fact that i was
doing the voices and of course coming out of this kid out of this adorable kid
i mean you've got so much
charisma everybody's rooting for you the moment you walk on stage and then you
do voice like great of
course now but i imagine even then pretty good voices the other question i was
going to ask was
do you remember how that felt did that did that start to heal something man
that was an incredible
feeling because i didn't i wasn't sure what the reaction was supposed to be i
just remember i was
like a big fan of eddie murphy and i saw his comedy specials and i was like oh
that's cool i like
that he goes up there he he's telling stories he's doing voices and it's just
it seemed like that i
want yeah and he's fearless absolutely fearless and so um when i started doing
stand-up you know when i
actually call myself a stand-up all i was doing was impressions and characters
i wasn't really talking
about myself and so that took a few years for me to get comfortable enough to
share real experiences and
stories and all i did was i just put the the sound effects and the characters
and the you know the
impressions on top of that and so it turned all of my regular stories into like
whoa right you know
what i mean secret sauce so exactly so instead of saying oh i ran to this girl
and she was crazy it's
more so like yeah i ran to this girl and she's like oh my god and then you know
like whoa i bring the
room up right right energy and the sounds and then the back and forth do you
like pablo because i i
pablo actually uh i remember watching pablo early on i got to open one one time
yeah yeah
definitely he is one of those bong bong yeah yeah yeah do something with the
knife that's what i
always say yeah here you go do something with the knife here you go hold my
baby hold my baby
it's actually john mulaney and i still say do something with the night
something with each other
it's from what is it what show it's uh jerry springer that they encourage
violence in the
crowd yes do something with the knife giving the audience knives pablo actually
uh is one of those
guys that you know i don't think he gets enough credit yeah he opened up a lot
of doors in europe
like i the reason i started to play europe so much is because pablo had gone
there and he paved the way
there was promoters out there and they're like we saw pablo francisco and we
wanted to bring him out
here to europe we know he'd do good and then apparently he was just selling out
left and right
and so they're like well you know this guy can do it well maybe we can bring
other people and so
pablo was the first one that laid that groundwork so once i went out there it's
like yeah this is
the pablo run i'm like well let's do the pablo run yeah and also scandinavian
days yeah that oh my
not not the same voice you did but that's sort of like he wants to do he's very
character driven yeah
yeah yeah yeah absolutely one of the first guys that i saw his thing about um lincoln
park i forget
it we don't have to do pablo bits all day but like i my my wife and i will just
throw it on to
watch it where he's like they talk in two voices it's like i don't know what to
do here i am like they
have two modes it kills me every single time so tell me about from being 10 in
a uh talent show
then the feeling that you got so you kind of got hooked i got hooked when i was
10. and then and then
the next time i got a chance to go up on in front of people was when i was in
high school and i was on
the speech team and so every day i'd get up in front of the class and just tell
random stories
about whatever but i was getting credit for for being in front of the class
yeah and so that's
where i got my my chops and just my my you know being comfortable in front of
people anytime every
day in front of class i wanted you to perform that was always such a happy
thing for guys i hated
writing i hated reading and writing and just uh i just wanted to go up there
and talk yeah and even
now like i don't nothing is ever on paper nothing is ever written out nothing's
ever typed out nothing's
ever text it's just it's all up here right i might have bullet points for
things just so i
remember but i cannot sit and write stuff out and try to perform it like that
it has to come from
here for the first time and then if it goes well i remember and then i reapply
it i i completely
agree they say one side of your brain dictates and the other side communicates
so if you're
reciting something it's the other side than the communicating and i see you
when you're doing
your stand-up you're communicating the bit you're there you're talking to them
you'll adapt yeah it
doesn't feel like it's a recite you know okay here we go yeah you're not just
telling a joke that you
wrote that's like crafted obviously it's crafted but you know what i mean like
with an exacto knife
like you trim away the the dot on there and you know what there's some people
that can do it i i just i
never had that ability and it's not that i can't read or write it's just that
it's it's work for me
and if it's work i don't want to do it what it has to be fun before you had
that outlet and again
please know that you're in in good company here i was a really anxious kid and
and to this day if my
wife and i go to dinner and i can't tune out the people around us i can't just
enjoy it she'll be like
you need to do a set and like i remember it's hard to remember but like junior
high high school what it
felt like before guys like us found a steady outlet was it how did that
manifest anxiety i had it like
health problems digestive problems like i needed to find a way to express
myself um you know i i only
had a couple of friends back in high school and fortunately they're still my
friends you know and
really yeah oh wow yeah um two and i got two so you know it worked out i chose
wisely um he has chosen i
wisely i spent most of my time around my mom and my two friends so i mean it
was i didn't really have
moments or times where i felt like oh what do i need i mean i had a nintendo i
had a stereo i had tv
cable and then my two friends and so i i felt like i was always you know i was
always okay don't get me
wrong i had a i was always talking about comedy around them they all they they
all both knew like
oh he's always talking about this like this is something real yeah but you felt
like you were okay
it's funny a kid with two friends and a mom and a nintendo yeah right like that's
a kid that thinks
he's okay and you don't know you don't know if you don't know that's what i
mean like looking back
it's like oh do you feel like comedy was helping pull you out of something for
me it did it did yeah it
did but i mean you know again if if you don't know that you're not having the
best time or it's
you know what's on the other side of the wall then you know how can you stress
over it
yeah