Quotes About Comedy

Women comedy is different than men comedy. Guy comedy is very aggressive, it's about insulting each other, name-calling, and kind of busting each other's chops, and that's not what women's comedy is.

Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

I was thinking about comedy and how comedy in many ways opens us up to ideas and really being influenced by Richard Pryor and sort of the way he would use comedy to really speak about larger social issues.

I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.

I was in a band and it wasn't working out the way I wanted. Then somehow, little by little, I started doing a couple comedy things. All of a sudden I was being asked to do more and more comedy things. There was this message from the world saying, "Maybe you should go this direction."

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

Being onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you're doing a movie, it's such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it's so hard, too, 'cause with a comedy, there's no vocal reaction, there's no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.

I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.

Let's do some comedy. I always like to add some comedy to my show. Those who've seen me before might know that.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Comedians have varying levels of training. It can range from classically trained actors (like Robin Williams) to people who took comedy classes to folks who just started doing it. That's the beauty of comedy: it's close to a pure meritocracy.

Postmodern comedy doesn't work well with very old audiences, because it's making fun of the comedy they enjoy.

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

In terms of a comedy plan I don't really have a list of what I want accomplish. I'm just riding the wave! I think I will always come back to stand-up and comedy in all its forms. I just don't think it will ever be the one sole thing I do.

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.

Homophobia is a tough one. In some places it's actually very OK to be homophobic. Comedy clubs in general are very unsafe spaces for LGBT, for women, for Asian people. So my goal in comedy has sort of been to make this a safe space for people who were like me.

I'm a comedy geek so anything comedy related, whether that's standup shows, improv shows, I'm all over that. That's my favorite way to be entertained always.

After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.

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

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.

Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, he offered me a lot of comedy series but I told him I'd already been the best comedy series around, "The Odd Couple," and so when he saw that I did Quincy he called my agent and said, Jack turns me down? All my good series and he ends up playing an undertaker." And this was the HEAD of ABC series.

Basically, I was always very interested in comedy, but I was much more sort of academic. And then, after college, loaded with my art history degree, I decided to go work at Comedy Central as a temp.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

I was open to anything. That doesn't mean I would do anything, it just means I was open to anything. I've met for dramas, single camera comedy, multi-camera comedy. I take each script as an individual project.

I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.

I feel like with comedy, the crazy things that happen are never serious you know? Like, rubble being poured onto you in drama would be something that's absolutely terrible, but in a comedy it's absolutely terrible but so funny.

Nobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.

My first time on stage was the class "graduation" at the Comedy Store. It was awesome. Everything got huge laughs and I just thought I knew how to do comedy.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

I always get a little bit pissed off when stand-up comedy is not recognised as being as good a craft as being an actor. We give Oscars to people and it's like, 'Aw, this person is the greatest person on earth', but being an actor is pretty easy in comparison to stand-up comedy. It's no surprise that several stand-up comics have gone on to become great actors. I don't know any great actors that have gone on to become great stand-up comics.

It's hard enough to write a good drama, it's much harder to write a good comedy, and it's hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.

There are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you don’t have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what you’re doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.

Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.

I love Stewart Lee's 'Comedy Vehicle' on BBC2. The guy is a genius.

have you ever noticed how a man orders food at a fast-food drive-through window? ... men have an innate desire to be cute while placing their order through the drive-through microphone. It's as if they believe the invisible mike on the plastic menu screen is actually connected to a standup comedy stage somewhere in the recesses of the restaurant.

I don't think that comedy is going to affect or change anything. I remember back in 2004 people were like, "How does it feel knowing that you're going to be part of the shifting tide in the political system?" And in the end nothing changed, and we weren't part of anything. And we're not happy anywhere. I think we're kind of hoping, obviously, but it didn't really have a great impact on people.

The majority of my background is multi-camera format, which is very broad and a very arch perception of reality. Whereas single camera tends to be more truthful and a little more intimate of a medium. Friends was an education in intelligent comedic banter; in intelligent vernacular. It was an education in scene study. It was an education in group dynamic. I came out of there with a masters degree in comedy.

I don't want to sit and cry for an hour in a movie. I'd rather have an action or a comedy.

I think that people who do enjoy my stand-up comedy and the people who get it and the people who are taken in by it, they see that I'm a guy that has love of the game.

I'm trying my hand at writing. I'm writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries.

I did sketch comedy for years. Ive always enjoyed it.

I played an artist in a comedy called 'Rooster.' It was a zany film by Glen Larson, a friend who produced several successful television series including 'Magnum PI.

Comedy is created when someone is trying very earnestly to do what he feels is the right thing to do at that moment.

About 25 years ago, I was in an apartment, and next door, they put on the radio, so I struck the wall with my fist, but they did not put the radio down. I took a tool and banged until I made a hole through the wall. It was like a comedy movie.

In his life, [Dalton] Trumbo uses wit and comedy to fight these very high-stakes battles.

I developed several comedy phone calls.