Quotes About Comedy

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.

The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.

Humour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.

I consider my comedy to be dramatic comedy. I always wanted music underscoring the dramatic monologue. It was always drama with comedy, in my head.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

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.

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.

There's a very interesting article or symposium to be written on just the real difference between comedy filmmaking and non-comedy. Because, you know, when you work in comedy, you depend on audience screenings to tell you about your movie.

I remember like that scene with Pharrell where they're at the music video shoot, we have this on camera actually, Pharrell's confused because we weren't doing the script. We were doing all this improv and then Diddy says to him... Pharrell's like I don't understand what's going on and Diddy goes, "We do a lot of improv". (laughter) I remember being we just made him into a comedy nerd. We somehow turned Sean Combs into a comedy nerd, so.

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

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.

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 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.

Acting in a sitcom or a comedy movie is like a comedy routine with the setups.

Everybody says how hard comedy is, but, when it comes time to honor things, whether it's on a weekly critical basis or whether it's award time, at that time of the year, comedy is the poor, dumb child of dramatic work.

I can't imagine a successful comedy movie without a successful comedy performance at the heart of it.

The fact is that comedy is actually too serious to be taken seriously. It may be that comedy touches such deep emotions that people feel better if they can just dismiss it as trivial. Just take a big belly laugh. I have watched people laughing, and for a moment they look-and are-absolutely helpless. Vulnerability. You can be assaulted while you are laughing.

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.

With comedy, I like to not rehearse and just have fun with it, because I think being spontaneous is the best thing for a comedy, in my opinion.

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.

I really loved working on comedy. Most of my roles have been very dramatic and involved lots of emotional work and crying on cue. I do really enjoy those roles because you really feel accomplished at the end of the day but they are very emotionally draining! Working on a comedy show is just fun and at the end everyone is laughing! But I am open to all roles and genres just being on a set and being a part of the magic is what I love most!

I haven't been offered a lot of comedy. In theater, I've done quite a bit of comedy or dramas that included a lot of funny stuff. But in my TV work, those aren't the roles that I've been offered.

I think if you turn down the volume on the good comedy, you should not even know if it's a comedy or not. It should look like a drama.

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.

Humor is not funny. Humor is something else. Funny is a joke, sometimes silly. Comedy is deep and connected to tragedy; comedy could be deeper than tragedy, in my view.

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 have other tastes besides comedy. I love comedy. I adore it, but I love dramatic movies just as much.

I just like comedy in general. My film work, which has been at times more dramatic, has been satisfying. But I never feel quite as good and as light and blissful as when I'm doing comedy.

Human life is a combination of tragedy and comedy. The shapes and designs that surround us are the music accompanying this tragedy and this 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.

When you start doing comedy, you think to yourself, "I want to be a headliner." And you become a headliner, and you're like, "Oh wait, this isn't what I meant. I meant I want to be a headliner that's famous enough that people come see me specifically." And that's a huge leap, because most of the time most of the audience is there to see comedy in general. They're not there to see you.

I'm a goofball, so I think comedy is one of my stronger points, as an actor. I just never get to do it. But, I'm taking classes at Groundlings, where Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow studied, and it's all improv comedy. It feels good to be able to do that and be funny.

The fact of the matter is, you can't do comedy unless someone is behaving badly. Otherwise, it's not a comedy.

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

People always say 'You do racial comedy.' And I don't, exactly. I do cultural comedy. Because race and culture are two different things. There's black people from America and then there's black people from Africa. Racially, they're the same; culturally, they're extremely different.

I like comedy when its mixed with action, it's just so much fun to do comedy with a bit of action, its fun to watch and also so much fun to do.

When you make comedy, you make it for the people and you try to have as many screenings and as many tests and you do focus groups and you read the cards and you try to give the people what they want in this comedy.

I never really thought comedy was a career option, just something I did for fun. Suddenly I realised I was getting paid which was a bonus. I studied for a diploma with the London College of Music, and teaching was something I thought I might do but comedy intervened.

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.

Most books that come out with a comedy label seem to be, Eric [Wareheim] and I could have written, "This is our story, and this is who we are," and sort of this navel-gazing, narcissistic approach to comedy we're seeing these days.

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.

I stopped doing romantic comedies. I just stopped. They're terrible. They're bad. They're not funny and so they shouldn't be a romantic comedy because most of the time they're not romantic. They shouldn't be called romantic comedy.

We're taking part in a divine comedy and we should realise that the play is always a comedy, in that we're all ultimately ridiculous.

Hopefully people will be reinventing comedy forever and ever. This is just what I do, and it's a type of comedy.

I think comedy has a range, with multiple peaks in different areas. It's like trying to compare Beethoven and the Beatles. Sometimes I hear from people, 'I think you try too hard in your comedy.' And that's what I worry about.

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.

When I started stand-up - and this is in the '90s - there was definitely people hadn't watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy.