Joan Rivers is 80 and she's fantastic. She lives in mortal fear of not filling that 1,500-seat room.

I realized early I can manipulate the ceiling in the middle class. The allure becomes how far I can make the ceiling rise.

All that waiting around for a glimmer of stage time, just getting angry every week... It was just an oppressive, horrible, horrible place to be. I went to work feeling nauseous.

I remember I used to go to The Laugh Factory and just goof off onstage, and then I'd see Dane Cook. He did a bit about his Mom making the bed in the summertime when he was a kid. He just said "Vroom!" and threw the sheet up in the air and the sheet would just stay over the bed for like a minute and a half. All he had were his arms out, but I could see the sheet. And he didn't do anything. He just kept it there. And I went, "I have to write more."

There is a ceiling to it and there's a stigma. Billy Crystal as brilliant as he is, he's never going to be thought of as a contemporary like Alan Arkin.

I'm oddly not competitive. What I love about show business is there is a home for everyone.

This is NOT a pretty good business. You cannot be pretty good and be a national headliner. That becomes the allure.