Quotes About Comedy

Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.

I'd like to do more dramatic roles but I would never give up comedy to do it. I've seen a lot of actors that do a complete 180 degrees and say: "I'm done with comedy, I want to be taken seriously." I take my comedy very seriously and I want to be taken seriously because of my comedy. I think it's more fun for me. I enjoy laughing and attempting to make people laugh. So I'd like to do more drama but I'd never do the 180 thing.

We have little bits of comedy throughout our films but this is like a full-on comedy. I had great time. It was fun to do a comedy and see a lot of the people I worked with on our previous films and meet some new actors. It was a good experience for me.

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.

As a writer, I haven't delved into dramatic writing. As an actor, I could always, even more so than comedy, do drama. When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

There's a lot of comedy in Intermission but it's got this depth. It's not comedy for comedy's sake - it's informed by something else. I like stuff like that

Comedy is the result of what's happening, not what people are doing. Because if people are doing comedy. It's embarrassing. The individual elements have to be straight-faced, serious, realistic with a firm basis. What makes it comedy is a somewhat shifted way to put it together.

I mostly, for someone who makes a lot of their living in comedy - and even for someone who doesn't make their living in comedy - I don't watch a lot of comedy.

Comedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.

More than just romantic comedy, I like romances: drama romance, romance comedy, comedy romance. I also go to the movies to escape. There are times when you go to learn, when you go to be moved, you go to be transported, and there are really times when you go to escape. And I personally escape more happily into a romance than I do violent movies.

I love broad comedy. It has its place. If I were to do that, I'd love to do physical comedy.

Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.

Good comedy helps people know they're not alone. Great comedy provides an answer.

If you call me a comedian I will be very grateful. I will thank you profoundly. No, I love doing comedy. It's fun once in a while to do a serious part but I really enjoy doing comedy because I love to laugh.

A comedy isn’t about being funny...a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.

Comedy is like a very cokey, druggy sugar. You get hits of comedy, and it's very, "More, give me more of that stuff," because serotonin is being released in the brain. So it's basically, everyone becomes serotonin junkies, and we are serotonin dealers. And that's what being a comedian is about.

The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.

You know, sometimes I worry, you know, is comedy and my type of comedy going to get stale? Is it going to be so offensive that it becomes uninteresting or so niche that I don't have an audience anymore? But it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, where roasting now is a movement. These roasts are on in India, in Mexico.

I remember reading in a comedy book very long ago when I first started, a person said there's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.

In the stand-up comedy top, there's room for everyone - if you're good, there's room for everyone. You'll put on your own show - no one casts you. You cast your own show as a stand-up comedian. When you get good at stand-up comedy you book a theater and if people show up, people show up. If people don't show up, people don't show up. You don't have a director or a casting agent or anybody saying if you're good enough - the audience will decide.

I think there's a difference between making comedy and reporting comedy. When you're a joke teller you can easily fall into the second, you can show up and just say the jokes.

Most of the time, my favorite drama has comedy in it as well. I think most good dramas have comedy in there. And all of the dramatic actors I look up to are also very funny.

That's one of the things about comedy that annoys me the most from a comedian perspective. Comedy has gotten so segregated. Now it's like if you don't agree with somebody, you probably aren't going to like their jokes. I think comedians are starting to write for their audience and not towards the country.

I want to go to Australia so bad, do comedy there, and see the people there. It's a great country. I have friends that are Australian that have told me all about it. I want to do comedy there.

The comedy community is fairly supportive of human beings in general. There are some things you can teach with comedy that people can't learn by being hit over the head with facts. I think, as comedians, we're trying to change the world. It's slow, but sure.

25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.

Internationally and in foreign markets, movies starring women don't make as much money as movies starring men. And then you can blame filmmakers, especially in comedy, which is my bread and butter, because it's become a bit of a boys' club over the years. With the boys in charge you get these takes on women which are either the girlfriend or the mean wife or the girl who appears in a romantic comedy. You're just getting either men's fantasies about women or what they think is the reality about women instead of men just having a healthy attitude about women.

You aim comedy up. If comedy is aimed down, you're a jerk. You laugh at the powerful as a way of bringing them down to your level or bring yourself up to theirs. Donald Trump doesn't actually laugh. I've never seen him do anything other than smirking. He doesn't have a sense of humour. He's just mean.

I was kind of in an experimental phase with The Disposable Rappers. This is boring to me, because it's true, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I visited my sister in college and saw an improv troupe, and that was a genuine moment for me. It was an actual "Aha!" moment. After I saw that, I said, "I want to do comedy." So The Disposable Rappers started doing improv in addition to rapping, and when I went to college, I very specifically went saying "I want to join a comedy group."

People are amazed that I do comedy. I always did comedy.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They’re superficial and I like articulate comedy.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.

Even though I have fond feelings for comedy clubs, I enjoy the focus you get in a theater. Comedy clubs are a different animal. People are being served nachos and there's a blender going off in the background.

I love physical comedy. Comedy that comes from an emotional place is amazing too and lets me develop in a new way as an actor.

When has stand-up comedy been kind to anyone? It goes after anyone who's the target. Comedy attacks, man.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

To me, being brave is an element that is so important with stand-up comedy. It's not essential. There are many comics who were just funny, and that's fine, too. But that's never been what I was trying to do in comedy. I was always trying to do something that involved not pandering to the audience.

All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it's a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories.

I was doing stand up comedy when I was 11, that's how I got started; not because I wanted to do comedy, but because we were broke, living in Echo Park in Downtown Los Angeles, from 1986, I saw the Rodney King riots; my parents didn't really work. But I wanted a new backpack, that's how I got into this business - I wanted a new backpack.

The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy. I don't know how to do the other, so I won't consider television until the audience's taste changes.

I like comedy a lot. I love comedy. It's so much fun, but it's hard, too.

I do a lot of comedy and I like that. I am happy doing funny films. I am often the straight person in a comedy, which is great as long as there are talented people to work with.

I laugh a lot in horror films. If I'm scared in a horror film, I try to think about what's scaring me... particularly, if it's a bad movie, but something they're doing still works. It's the same way I look at comedy. I've always had an intellectual view of comedy, and what makes people laugh, and how does it work.

Comedy, not screaming at someone, can make someone lift their legs higher. There is a way to do a push-up and a sit-up, and it doesn't have to be so complicated. Everyone is putting a difficult twist to it and making you do way too much.

If you ask me right now, you've seen the last of Mind of Mencia. I don't want to be a one-trick pony. I would rather walk away and do more movies, comedy and even some dramatic roles.

Comedy is a group activity, a verbal orgy.

I feel like we can prove in real time the old trope that comedy is tragedy plus time.