Focus Features

A stand-up comic attempting to parlay his onstage charisma from comedy club to silver screen is about as easy a transition as a baseball player trying out for the NFL. Certain innate skills will translate, but success is in no way guaranteed. That's what makes masters of both forms - stand-up comedians with long and varied film careers - most rare. At the far end of that spectrum is Woody Allen, who got his start performing jokes in Greenwich Village before moving to the big screen. As a  filmmaker, Allen's relationship with United Artists afforded him unprecedented artistic freedom and, over a forty-year career, he has established himself as an auteur of the medium. On the other end is a plethora of comics with one-off flops and distressing miscastings that bely, often, the quality of their stand-up. And right in the middle is a host of filmographies that follow a sine curve of quality (think Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind versus his role in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls or Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop versus The Adventures of Pluto Nash).

Here, in honor of stand-up comedian Demetri Martin's role in his first feature film Taking Woodstock, we invited four of his fellow alternative comedians to put together five of their favorite film roles as performed by stand-up comics.