Quotes About Comedy

The problem with a lot of comedy clubs is not that they are a comedy club; it's just the cheesy way they're presenting themselves. That's why a lot of people have a problem with them. If you're a relatively unknown comedian, you can play at a comedy club, you might play to hundreds of people every night. But if you try to make a concert event out of it, and try to play a rock club or something, where you might play to 10 people or no people. And the flipside of that is, that's also a great thing, to play to people who are your fans. Some people are too hard on the comedy clubs.

Interestingly it's when you come to the comedy, that's where a lot of the discussion is. It's like ten people sitting around talking about what is funny. "Is that funny? Is that funnier than that? Is this slightly funnier than this?" I guess that's what it's like when you're making a comedy movie as well, you just have to sit around talking seriously about the nature of comedy.

On a practical level, I'm uncomfortable at comedy clubs because there are so many shitty dude comics who have made my life miserable. If I go to a comedy club and I look around, I don't know which of the dudes lining the wall told me that I was too fat to get raped. It makes me nauseous. But that was a couple years ago, and meanwhile, comedy has changed a lot.

I think art is beautiful. It's decoration and adornment. But art is also a really important vessel for social change, and social change begins with thought. And so if you can find humor in something and take a moment to rethink it, you can take a step back and look at your values from a different angle. I think that's a really important way of carrying on with life. I think the best art for me is funny and the best comedy for me is art. Some of my favorite artists are comedians. Comedy is art, and art can be comedy, and the intersection is vital - at least for my own work.

Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.

Endings of television shows are sometimes such depressing things. I think shows that have more of a narrative and are about what's going to happen next, those need to wrap up as a complete story. But it's weird when a goofy comedy show needs to end, and we knew it was going to be the end, and sometimes it's just better if a comedy show ends and goes away and they never had a series finale.

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.

A lot of stand-up specials for cable are meant to glorify the comedian. They put you in a really beautiful theater, and sometimes they even blow a little smoke in there to make it misty and sweet. They make the guy look like he's a big rock star. But comedy's not really glamorous. It doesn't enhance comedy for it to look good.

The interesting trick of comedy, in a lot of ways, is to have both the comedy and the grounding of the real thing. You get a real sense of a human being.

Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.

Katey Sagal, you are an incredible actress. You worked on ‘Married with Children,’ the show that changed comedy, ‘Sons of Anarchy,’ the show that took comedy to a whole new level and ‘8 Simple Rules,’ the show that killed John Ritter.

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 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.

In my experience, it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing, as well as a funny one, on comedy shows.

That is the problem with comedy in India. Spoofing sells. Come up with original comedy about the hilarious nation we are, with funny accents and odd rituals, and we get into trouble.

Doing comedy for film is always a challenge because you are in the hands of the editor after the fact. I am hoping I can do some more soon, I enjoy doing comedy.

I'm no good at anything but comedy, which I think I'm good at. I'm absolutely no good at networking; I'm terrible at acting; I'm terrible at dealing with executives; I'm terrible at collaborating. And I say whatever I want to say. But I think I'm good enough at comedy that I can survive. And I don't really have an ambition for money.

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.

Most of the jokes that I wrote were funny and there always seems to be an aspect of comedy in my long-form work. I think that's how life is. I think even the more dramatic moments of one's life are often punctuated by very funny comments or situations. I like to say, "Keep your comedy serious and your drama funny, and you'll be pretty true to life."

I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.

I worked mostly in television drama for my first few years. I just kept guesting on NYPD Blues and CSI-like stuff, so when I started getting work in comedy, a lot of people in the business would say, 'Oh - I didn't know you did comedy.'

Good comedy doesn't have to be a comedy idea.

The comedy really comes from how badly you want these characters to succeed and with a comedy that's often hard.

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

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

I also love doing comedy. I just moved to L.A. last July. Before that, Vancouver is all about sci-fi, so I didn't get any comedy, whatsoever. But in L.A., people are like, "You don't look quirky enough," and I'm like, "I'm quirky. I'm the definition of quirky. How do you want me to look quirky." They have these little boxes that they put everyone in, so now I have to try to break the mold and get them to see me as being quirky.

I'm not playing a comedy. I want to be playing the truth of the moment, and then have the comedy come out.

I don't do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.

The work I'm doing on the screen differs from that of anyone else. My comedy is of a peculiar nature...no writers have been developed along the lines of my type of comedy and this is why I sometimes have differences with writers, supervisors and directors alike.

If you try to go for a laugh, it's death to the comedy. Personally, that's how I approach comedy. But I'm no expert.

Music and comedy are so linked. The rhythm of comedy is con­nected to the rhythm of music. They’re both about creating tension and knowing when to let it go. I’m always surprised when somebody funny is not musical.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

There are people that have only seen me in dramatic stuff and they go, "Oh, I didn't know you could do comedy," and then there are comedy people that go, "Oh, I didn't know you could do drama." I want to try to do both.

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

You know, comedy's hard. With drama, you have a responsibility to the emotional truth, but with comedy, you have emotional truth and you have technique on top of it.

Comedy today is not what it was years ago. It's always changing, in particular to female comics. No longer are certain subjects considered to be a male preserve. Women can talk about sexuality and their bodily functions and it can be very, very entertaining. It's changed the impact of comedy acting.

I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.

It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.

I'd like to help other comedians and when I get a little older I'd like to open up a nice comedy club that is straight classy, with a straight restaurant and a chef. The whole thing, red carpet, and treating people nice, for people to come back and have a good time. That's the kind of comedy club I want to open up.

Haven't you noticed that we women daydream infinitely less than you men? We can't anticipate pleasure in our imagination or keep suffering out our lives with some imaginary consolation.Whatever is,is.Imagintion! It's so paltry!Yes,when you've grown older,as I have,you occasionally make do with the poor comedy of the imagination.

If you had to relive your life exactly as it was – same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy – would you want to? Was it worth it?

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

I just thought it could make a really cool movie. It's not that it's just a buddy comedy but it's all about two guys hating each other and towards the end they're good friends. I liked that these two guys were best friends from the very beginning, and they're crazy.

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

I wasn't a great improviser when I started there; I'm not really up on current events. I would always just mug, just try to get my laughs from making faces. So I decided to do a character who should never have become a comic - somebody you would see at the Comedy Store and go, "This person is never going to make it."

I love doing sitcoms. I love doing comedy. I love the whole shooting match.

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

I loved musicals, love them still. But also, I'm really inspired by comedy music.