The One Person We Can Thank For Joey's Famous Catchphrase On Full House

While two of the actors on "Full House" — Dave Coulier and Bob Saget — were stand-up comedians, only one of them played a comedian on the show as well. Coulier's Joey Gladstone was a struggling comedian whose act closely resembled the actor's own. In an interview Coulier did with BuzzFeed, the comedian explained that "Full House" writers came to see him perform. They then included some elements from his stand-up in the fictional character's stand-up. 

Since "Full House" was such a family-oriented show, it helped that Coulier was also a clean comic — something he said in the same BuzzFeed interview that he did on purpose because it gave him a wider range of opportunities. "Because back in the day, 'The Tonight Show' was the only showcase nationally for comedians on television, and if you wanted to get on 'The Tonight Show,' you had to work clean. You had to be able to perform in front of a national audience on network television," Coulier said. "So I just didn't want to veer away from that. I didn't want to edit myself. I wanted jokes to ring true for that national audience."

That didn't open all the doors that Coulier wanted. In a 2022 interview with Jim Norton and Sam Roberts, Coulier revealed that he almost got a job working on "Saturday Night Live" when he was younger. However, he lost the job at the very last minute because then-NBC president Brandon Tartikoff thought Coulier was too similar in comedic style to Dana Carvey. The squeaky-clean comic instead landed on the squeaky-clean sitcom, which was probably better suited to his talents anyway.

One of Joey's most famous taglines on "Full House" was "Cut. It. Out," which the writers took from Coulier's stand-up. But where did Coulier get it?

In the same BuzzFeed interview, Dave Coulier revealed that he borrowed the catchphrase "Cut. It. Out," from a childhood friend, Mark Cendrowski, with whom he briefly worked in a comedy duo. "We've been friends since we were 8 years old, and we used to shoot little 8-mm film comedies with a camera his dad had given us," he explained. Cendrowski still insists, jokingly, that Coulier owes him money for the line. Coulier also mentioned that, before "Full House," he used the phrase on the Nickelodeon series "Out of Control," which he hosted.

And Coulier is running with the catchphrase. In 2020, Coulier announced via Twitter the opening of his online store, CutItOutWear.com. The store features different types of clothing, including T-shirts, tank tops, CIO masks, and caps, all branded with the phrase "Cut it Out!" The bottom of each logo reads, "Since 1984," indicating that Coulier used it before the premiere of "Full House" in 1987. So, wherever the catchphrase may have originated, it's now irrevocably tied to Coulier.