Lovitz on fear, standup

by Brian McKim & Traci Skene on October 4th, 2007

The Orange County Register asks Jon Lovitz what took him so long to get into standup comedy.

Fear, honestly. I would get on stage, my heart would pound in my chest, and I never got how guys could go up there and do it for an hour. It seemed like such an unreachable task– even just five minutes up there is long, especially when one joke takes about only 45 seconds and you have to keep going and everyone is staring at you to make them laugh and there’s just nothing but you. You can’t do fancy editing tricks or cut away and no one can phone in; it becomes you alone to make ’em laugh.