Video Bit of the Week: Kyle Cease Talks Feelings

Kyle Cease is determined to sound driven, confident, positive, and stable. The more I hear him talk about his boot camp, the more it sounds like a support group. It's a community that reminds you to avoid "stinking thinking" and tells you to "Keep It Simple Stupid" and warns that "expectations are premeditated resentments." Kinda like a Comics Anonymous meeting.

Some notable quotes from this half-hour piece:

And if you look at Richard Pryor, you look at George Carlin, you look at— They were thinking about making the crowd realize something.

When you realize you get to do this, it naturally shifts you back into excitement. And you're appreciative of that you're doing it. And you're excited about it and you're passionate about it. And you naturally lose fear. You naturally lose…stage fright. It just goes away.

When you're in the future, the crowd is in the future. So they can't laugh at the setup. So you'll be like 'So I'm driving down the street' and right there you're saying 'Hold on—' versus giving the street its own story. What kind of of street was it?

Do you need alcohol to be happy? Do you need smoking to be happy? Then you're saying I'm not complete enough without these things.

You should be talking to the audience the way you talk to one friend in a bar.

Cease focuses on attitude and performance as not just factors in stage success, but the keys to stage success. It's hard to see how Steven Wright's attitude makes a difference. And Dave Attell's notorious insecurity and self-loathing has hardly kept him from dominating his stages.

It looks like Cease is primarily interested in making comics feel good about their work and themselves. I guess that's nice.