Quotes About Comedy

Comedy doesn't come easy for me. I've only done 2 movies that are really comedy-style films and I have to work at them. And they're just as scary in a way. I hate labeling all these things; comedy, love stories, dark drama, whatever.

For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and I loved those people.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

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.

[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 love doing comedy and I love watching comedy... Im more inclined to go watch a Seth Rogen film than a serious Oscar drama.

I wasn't even a big comedy nerd. A lot of the comedians I know - a lot of my friends are comedians - they knew a lot about comedy growing up.

We always wanted to make a comedy that was a little bit more than that, which had tragic elements to it... that people engaged with - an intelligent comedy essentially.

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.

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

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.

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.

Comedy can reach many more people than, say, a serious lecture on the topic. And comedy might just be the access point to reach people who want to be entertained and also learn something.

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.

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.

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.

Comedy's my first love. I love that so much. You play comedy in drama, too. The difference between genres doesn't really change the method of acting.

I did skit comedy online for many years, beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing, which was the comedy.

I knew I just loved comedy, and I think it was my parents who initially brought up the notion of me trying to do stand-up. I think I actually tried writing jokes just at home, just kind of sitting around. But it seemed like a very real way to step into the world of comedy.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

I don't want to make a style. Not tragedy, not comedy. Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.

Comedy - and I say this with humility - comedy needs me.

Yes, I would say my comedy is grunge, evidenced by the fact my jokes have put an end to big-hair glam comedy.

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

It's very hard to watch comedy for me, when I'm doing a comedy show, because I either watch a show and I love it, and I'm jealous, or I watch a show and I see all the problems with it, and I'm angry that I watched it.

I think the world of comedy is a relatively small community, and especially for women in comedy, there just aren't that many people involved.

I think of a lot of comedy being watched alone, for some reason. It's surprising to me that people are getting together to watch stand-up 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 kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They're superficial and I like articulate comedy. I don't know how to do the other, so I won't consider television until the audience's taste changes.

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 the role of comedy in your life should supersede anything and everything negative. Just by virtue of the fact that you have to be funny, you can't afford to focus on the negative. As a comedian, your challenge is to turn negative stuff into positive energy. You should be able to hear anything that sounds bad, that people normally wouldn't laugh at, and make it feel funny to you. No one should be able to deter you, once you have your mind set on comedy. Your survival as a comedian should be as natural as breathing. I need to breathe and I consider my career my air.

I laugh a lot in horror films. If I'm scared in a horror film, I try to think about what's scaring me... particularly, if it's a bad movie, but something they're doing still works. It's the same way I look at comedy. I've always had an intellectual view of comedy, and what makes people laugh, and how does it work.

With comedy, you get an immediate response. I'm the whole kit and the kaboodle. I am the whole thing and can steer the whole situation how I want to. With film, you are basically in one area. Comedy is straight to it and the film is heavily shaped the camera and editing, so it's different.

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.

Life is funny. Life isn’t categorized into comedy, drama, action, is it?So I don’t know why they try to categorize everything. It drives me crazy-why it would have to be just a romantic comedy or…I want to have a little integrity, a little story, you know

I love a lot of comedy movies. I think I fell in love with comedy when I was younger. My brother and I would always sit down and watch some of the classics. Bottle Rocket is one of my favorite comedies.

It's a comedy thriller, brilliantly written and it's full of twists and turns at every page. When I was reading it I was desperate to get to the end to find out what happens, it really hooks you.

Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small, whatever you can get away with.

I've always just been attracted to comedy.

Certainly situation comedy is harder than people who are good at it make it look, but it's fun to do something different.

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.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.

Comedy, sometimes if you think about it too much then it becomes a bit boring. If you start thinking about striking the right balance sometimes it takes the spontaneity out of it.

That's what I love about sketch comedy: a sketch is five minutes, then it goes dark, and there's the potential for something else.

All this world's noise appears to me a dull, ill-acted comedy!

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.