My name is Hannibal Buress.
I do stand-up comedy, I act in movies and television,
I host a podcast called the Handsome Rambler.
And I rap sometimes--not that often, though.
In 2006, I got on the Just for Laughs comedy festival.
Did a Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and from that
I got a job working at Saturday Night Live.
Everything kept growing from that.
There was my biggest one that didn't make it
That's funny, calling it "the biggest one that didn't make it."
But it was my favorite I think
‘cause it was this weird high-concept thing called Fedora Basketball.
I think the way I came up with Fedora Basketball was Jessi Klein was writing on SNL at that time,
and she was like, “You're a man, you do a bunch of different things,
you wear a lot of different hats.”
And I was like, "Hats..."
Hats.
What about hats in the NBA?
Fedora Basketball.
Fedora Basketball, what is Fedora Basketball?
Maybe it's a new league where they wear fedoras the entire time and they have to keep the
fedoras on.
I was super psyched.
I was like, “This is the sketch!”
I write up the sketch and it's insane.
It's an intense game, people getting dunked on.
Fedoras flying off.
Coach calls time out.
“You gotta keep your goddamn fedoras, we're losing our fedoras out there.”
Post-game press conference: "we saw that you lost your fedora."
"What do you think went wrong?"
"Well, you know, they knocked my fedora off."
"But I'm gonna try to keep my fedora on in the future."
And I was really, genuinely hyped about this sketch.
I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world.
I brought it to Seth and he reads, and he comes back with notes.
He said, “Yeah... we can't do that, man.
It's too much, it's too many sets, it's too much production, it's kind of crazy.”
My latest idea is a man on a street show.
It's called “Hey, Come Here.”
It's a basically, I stand in a place with high foot traffic with a microphone and yell at people,
“Hey, come here!” and they come over and we talk, I ask them questions.
"What are your biggest regrets in life?" "What are your biggest fears?"
And they tell me, and I say,
"Alright, go over there.”
And that's “Hey, Come Here!”
Boom. Sold a thousand episodes.
Sometimes you really commit to a bit. If you lock in and people see that you locked in, they get on board with it.
So even if you fail. It may seem intense,
but if you fail doing stand up your first time, you’re probably failing in front of,
max, 30 people, ‘cause that's the max people that should be at an open mic.
If you're getting what you need to get out of it--progress, experience, exercise--then that's that.
There are no barriers to entry.
You can just do it.
Write. It's pen and paper or typing on computer or typing on your phone.
Nothing to write an idea, then flush the idea out!
You meet people and they say, “Oh, I listened to this and it made me do that.”
Oh even I got a message today on Instagram from somebody that said,
“Man, I met you five years ago, six years ago, and your advice helped me and I started my brand.
‘I want to send you some shoes.’”
And I was like, “What was my advice?”
He said, "You said, keep going,"
and I said, “Cool man, size 12.”