Quotes About Comedy

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.

I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression. I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There's a lot of bullshit drama that leaves you totally cold. And there's a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn't matter what label you give it.

I'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se.

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.

Phunny Business is a breezy, vivid, funny, star-studded and delightful valentine to comedy, entrepreneurship and the All-American impulse to make something out of nothing. The story of comedy club owner/inveterate dreamer Raymond Lambert and his heroic quest to create a safe, productive place for black stand-up comedians to hone their craft and find their voices isn't just a great Chicago story and a great comedy story: it's a flat-out great story, lovingly and engagingly told.

When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.

I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy's is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science, in a way. And when you're filming, the thing comedy depends on becomes a much more difficult commodity. The thing you depend on is spontaneity.

Its consistency of what comedy can do and what comedy can be.Growing up with that show [The Simpsons] shaped my worldview.

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

I tend to find comedy in dark places. I also tend to find comedy in taking on the status quo - which has always been something I find important.

Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.

Everybody is different. Some comedy is more musical like Steven Wright. His is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. So it's different. I wanted to do it like George Carlin. Now I do it like me.

My parents passed away when I was a teenager, so I had to learn different survival techniques, I think, in comedy. You know, using comedy as a pressure release, as a release valve in life really kept my sanity.

Do it [stand-up comedy] because it feels like the right thing to do. Do it because you don't want to do anything else. There is something in you that does not want you to do anything else other than comedy.

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 and drama are different sides of the same coin. And the thing about comedy and drama is about likability. It's about character first. It's about story. And for me, it's about empathy, and I think the realer someone is, the further you can go either way with them.

Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.

Some comics are in it for what they can get out of it. Others are in it for a love of comedy. I think those that are in it for a genuine love of comedy find each other within the circuit and become friends.

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.

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

I'm Here All Weak might be the strangest comedy album I have ever heard. But I've listened twice, which is more than I listen to 90 percent of all comedy albums, so I think I love it?

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.

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.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

I didn't really get into comedy until a couple months before I started doing comedy.

Every time I think about writing, comedy doesn't interest me in the slightest. I can play comedy, but I don't think in terms of comic dialogue.

Comedy is a live art, and the only way to record a comedy rock album is to do it live. The audience and their laughter is just as much a part of the album sound as our music. No retakes, no room for error.

I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.

I actually started in comedy, but then after 'Deadwood' I started concentrating on the dramas more. But then I just got tired for raping and killing and figured, 'It's time to do another comedy.

Phyllis Diller came through a mine field of male comedians when she arrived on the comedy scene and she defused them all. She won her place in the Hall of Comedy as the First Lady. I will miss her.

I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I don't think my comedy is that political. It's more social. But whatever. When you make comedy and you do stand-up, you work alone. Movies have to go under so much scrutiny. A stand-up special is a vision, and a movie is a consensus in a lot of ways.

George Lopez has to get a physical comedy checkup every year to make sure his bulging eyes don't get out of control... Good news George... you are humor free! There's no sign of comedy anywhere in your blood stream.

Doing [a relationship comedy] with Sam [L. Jackson] was exciting. I've done a lot of comedies with a lot of comedy people. My peers. I've never worked with anybody of the kind of dramatic caliber of movie actor that Sam is. It was a little bit intimidating for the first day. Or two... Or the first week. Other than that, it was a joy.

The funny thing about The West Wing is - and I don't know what Aaron Sorkin says about it - but I'm convinced it was a comedy. It's a very intellectual and cerebral comedy, but it was SportsNight in the White House. It had an energy and a vitality and an intelligence and a passion that's rare. And it was extremely difficult to do, because they were so demanding about the dialogue.

Comedy doesn't really have any meaning without sadness. The most meaningful comedy comes from some really serious pathos.

The only difference between comedy and drama is that, in comedy, I'm going to utilize the tool of creating laughter to deflect discomfort and, in drama, I won't use a tool, but we're going to actually deal with the discomfort and see what comes out of it.

I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I've seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they're told they are supposed to be playing comedy.

Good comedy makes you laugh, and bad comedy makes people you hate laugh.

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.

Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.

The population increasing, some of it could be in countries we haven't thought of making art in. I've never entertained making comedy in China. Like what world is that? I don't know how they would perceive art or sketch comedy. It's not a matter of intellect; it's a matter of language.

I like comedy, not violence, but violence is making a lot of money. But comedy is what I like.

I think sadness and anger are really fertile ground for comedy. No one is really interested in a happy person doing comedy.

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 know it's the comedian's instinct to say, "Do it, man, nothing's off-limits! It's cool, bro!" I don't know if that's the answer for me. "Do I really want to make a joke about a miscarriage when a woman in the audience might have had one?" I don't worship comedy; at the end of the day I don't fall to the altar of comedy unquestioningly.

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 think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.