Quotes About Comedy

I was voted Most Humorous in my senior class in high school, and I was a fan of comedy, my whole life. I never got into the horror genre, and action was fine, but I just loved comedy. Any comedy I could get my hands on, I would. I watched Saturday Night Live religiously. I've just been a fan of comedy, my whole life.

There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.

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.

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.

In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.

I think it's harder to go from comedy to drama than from drama to comedy. Seeing you dramatic all the time, they crave to see you being silly or funny. But, seeing you in comedy all the time, it's hard to see that person go be serious, for some reason.

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.

[on making the transition from the comedy "Mary Tyler Moore" (1970) to its dramatic spin-off series "Lou Grant" (1977)] We were really worried about changing over from a three-camera, half-hour comedy to a one-camera, full-hour drama. The audience wasn't ready for the switch - even CBS billed us in their promos as a comedy. In fact, the whole thing was impossible. But we didn't know that.

I had always drawn, every day as long as I had held a pencil, and just assumed everyone else had too…Art had saved me and helped me fit in…Art was always my saving grace…Comedy didn’t come until much later for me. I’ve always tried to combine the two things, art and comedy, and couldn’t make a choice between the two. It was always my ambition to make comedy with an art-school slant, and art that could be funny instead of po-faced.

I really like people who can do both drama and comedy and not some like middle of the road do both drama and comedy. I'm not talking about some guy who does these bland dramedies all the time. I'm talking about people that have done heavy drama and who have done heavy comedy.

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.

In Canadian comedy, you'll almost never see guns. If you bring a gun into a scene, it's like, 'Whoa! Wow, how are we going to deal with that!' Guns in an American comedy are a given. Violence in America is used in a much more cavalier way.

There seems to be more comedy for comedy's sake

There is no difference between alternative and traditional club comedy. People think there's a difference, but I don't think so. It's like gay men versus straight men. There's no difference. They both like sucking penises. But truth be told, I don't even believe alternative comedy is a real thing anymore. I think at this point, it's just a buzz word to make things seem cool and different and hip.

I think the first rule of comedy is that it has to be funny and I find a lot of the broad comedy which is sent to me, painfully unfunny.

I think the reward for doing comedy is doing the comedy itself. You get to go to work everyday and laugh and make other people laugh and to me there's no greater reward than that.

As a rule, Germans shouldn't do comedy. Their last box office comedy was Nosferatu.

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.

For me comedy and violence has a lot in common. Just as you expect, comedy always lurks behind the most unexpected of circumstances.

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.

When Steampunk meets adventure and adventure meets comedy and comedy meets ingenuity and ingenuity meets charm and charm meets wonder and wonder meets pleasure the result is a Triumph. Dr Grordbort is the future. And the past. Which makes an ideal present.

I enjoy doing physical comedy. I'd love, you know, them to throw me some shtick that way. I'd love to do that, if they need physical comedy, if they'd let me display my wares that way.

I don't personally feel comfortable performing in a comedy club, mainly because as an audience member, I've never enjoyed that experience. It feels a little bit theme-park-ish to me, in that it's a club whose product is comedy. I find that weird. It's like those specialty chocolate stores, where everything is chocolate. It's too specific. I like going somewhere that specializes in variety.

To create a comedy major, I ended up starting a comedy night in the basement of my dorm, and I promoted and produced my final project, which meant I faxed press releases from an old Apple IIC, or whatever it was, to newspapers, not knowing if that would work or if that's how you do things.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

I think comedy's just about being interested in comedy and what makes people laugh and experimenting.

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.

I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.

The girls that I grew up with, and my friends and I, we just never had interests in common. I loved comedy. I loved Saturday Night Live, Gilda Radner, Lucille Ball, and Goldie Hawn movies. I just wanted to laugh. I liked women in comedy, and I liked male comics as I got a little older. My interests just never matched up with other girls'.

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.

I think comedy is so much easier to do on the page than it is in real life. When I'm writing, comedy is an easy way to win over the reader. You're automatically more disposed to keep reading, thinking maybe, "I'll get another laugh or two." I think it's a survival instinct in me. I mean, you don't want to lose these guys within five or ten pages. You want them to keep going. I think to some extent it's a desperate measure that I throw out there, because a novel isn't a complete waste of time if it made you laugh.

We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

MY ACT IS 'NOTHING BUT COMEDY. I TALK SOUTHERN BECAUSE I PICKED IT UP WHEN I MOVED TO THE SOUTH. IM NOT TRYING TO MAKE ANY SOCIAL POLITICAL POINT, NOR AM I TRYING TO MAKE FUN OF REDNECKS. I GREW UP A COUNTRY KID AND WILL ALWAYS BE ONE. I GREW UP WITH PEOPLE THAT SAID CERTAIN THINGS FUNNY AND I PREFORM USING THE SAME LANGUAGE BECAUSE I FIND IT HYSTERICLE. THATS IT. ITS A COMEDY SHOW THAT IS FUNNY AND THATS IT.

What it is is that comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write. Anyone can write, and then you leave it to special effects to make it look good. But comedy, you've got to do some writing.

I was always the Class Clown and over time became very good at it. I started doing comedy on stage at the Dallas Comedy Corner where I honed my skills by watching guys like Garry Shandling, Robin Williams, Jay Lena and more.

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.'

I think comedians get too much credit or too much criticism for the style of comedy they do, and they generally do the style of comedy that works for them. [...] There's no kind of shrewd calculation going into the type of standup we all do. It's like David Cross is supposed to be doing the David Cross' type of standup.

I find I've always been judgmental about comedy (laughs) and it's hard to turn that off, really. But what constant exposure to live comedy does is it makes you give people a second chance.

I'd love to do a comedy. I'm terrified of comedy. I don't think I'm funny, but I guess that's why it's so thrilling.

I took a job in a comedy club - not doing stand-up comedy, because that's my idea of hell, but in the office - and I went traveling.

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.

A comedy isn't about being funny," said Mrs. Baker. "We talked about this before." "A comedy is about character who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. That's how I know." "Suppose you can't see it?" "That's the daring part," said Mrs. Baker.

Usually comedy is only available to us ladies in the romantic comedy. That's why I hate romantic comedies.

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.

I think people don't understand that comedy is an outlet for me. Comedy allows me to get outside of myself, and exercise this thing that is still kind of scary to me.

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.