Steve Martin was on Jimmy Fallon Monday night with Edie Brickell to talk music, but he took some time to talk about doing stand up comedy. He recently took the entire comedy by surprise when he opened for Jerry Seinfeld at the Beacon Theater. Martin is a stand up comedy legend, but he hasn’t performed stand up publicly in 35 years.

After sharing a little experiment with the Tonight Show audience about whether a joke worked, Martin talked about one of his favorite things in comedy- comedians opening lines. “They’re really important” he said. He shared two of his favorite comedian opening lines- one from Richard Pryor, and one from Sam Kinison.

He recalled a story about Richard Pryor showing up at the legendary Troubadour at 9:30 for a show that was supposed to start at 8. It was early on in Pryor’s career, he said, and Martin thought the audience was going to be pretty pissed at him, but they weren’t. His opening line, “Hope I’m funny.” Another comedian with a great opening line was Sam Kinison. He said Kinison was at the Comedy Store when he said “You know you saw a lot of comedians tonight. Some of them are really funny, some of them are pretty good. But there’s a difference between them and me. Them you might want to see again sometime.”

And of course he shared one of his own opening lines, “Good evening it’s great to be here. No it’s great to be here. No, it’s great to be here.” Watch the clip, it’s a lot better delivered by Martin.

Earlier Martin made a hell of an entrance- a musical entrance- promoting his brand new Broadway musical show, Bright Star, which opens March 24th. Steve Martin on Broadway? It’s a good time to be in New York!

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