Pete Holmes on how to do a Hannibal Buress impression

Not long after I saw erstwhile Chicago standup comic/improviser Pete Holmes perform at UP Comedy Club during the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival this past summer, I mentioned (via email) to another Chicago-bred comic — Hannibal Buress — how much I’d enjoyed Holmes’ ridiculous Buress impression.

Replied Buress, “I hate that impression.”

And Holmes knows it. But that doesn’t stop him from doing it. Or teaching others how to do it.

In a recent video tutorial produced by laughspin.com he broke it down step-by-step. The process includes closed eyes, raised hands, varying one’s tone and this:

“[Y]ou need to ask yourself a question about something pretty ordinary, and then you have to answer to yourself as yourself saying that the opposite is true.”

Watch and learn. Then compare and contrast.

Holmes video from laughspin.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5gJLujeCKk