Quotes About Comedy

I'd like to do more dramatic roles but I would never give up comedy to do it. I've seen a lot of actors that do a complete 180 degrees and say: "I'm done with comedy, I want to be taken seriously." I take my comedy very seriously and I want to be taken seriously because of my comedy. I think it's more fun for me. I enjoy laughing and attempting to make people laugh. So I'd like to do more drama but I'd never do the 180 thing.

I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind 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.

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.

And writing comedy and it really taught me how to kind of like craft jokes, it sounds like weird but really focus on crafting jokes and trying to make the writing really sharp. At the same time I did improv comedy in college, and that helped with understanding the performance aspect of comedy, you know, because it's different when you improv something vs. when you write it and they're both kind of part of my process now.

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 love straight-face comedy or relatively subtle comedy. And then I turn around and I find myself doing very broad comedy but it's all fun and you have to keep your sense of humor and not take yourself seriously.

I think comedy is a bit more international than people credit. I happily watch lots of American shows and American comedy films. If I did a list of the top 10 comedy films in Britain, there's no sense that it would probably be different than yours.

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.

Even the shows or movies that we know are not going to change the world, I love this. I love 'em. I'm a movie fan. I'm a nerd of any kind. I love a big studio comedy as much as I love the teeniest tiniest of indie. I'm not a snob in that way. I really do like a big, big studio comedy.

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

I care about politics, but I have a tough time making comedy out of it. I was so happy to have a chance to be on The Daily Show, and I think Jon Stewart's so funny... but mostly in my own comedy, I care about less relevant things.

I like all kinds of comedy. I like comedy that doesn't talk about real beliefs or serious thoughts, but then I also like the stuff that does. I think it just depends. It's a completely personal choice.

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 love doing comedy. I did comedy for seven years on 'The King of Queens.

I'm not at all funny. I can do dark comedy pretty well, but straight-up comedy, I don't know. I'm much darker. I've been like that since I was 3 years old

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

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.

That's what I think works the best, and what I think makes the best comedy - something that's completely committed and more approached as an acting exercise, as opposed to being worried about whether to be funny or not. The comedy comes from the context.

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'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?

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.

An actor must communicate his author's given message--comedy, tragedy, serio- comedy; then comes his unique moment, as he is confronted by the looked-for, yet at times unexpected, reaction of the audience. This split second is his; he is in command of his medium; the effect vanishes into thin air; but that moment has a power all its own and, like power in any form, is stimulating and alluring.

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.

I've always been a big fan of comedy and sketch comedy, and I like to laugh, but you can't just be funny. You do have to work at it, and you have to try to know what your role is and when you can insert humor, or when it's best not to.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

Just by nature, I think in comedy. I think in sketches and what have you. In every drama or action movie I've been in, I have to make a concerted effort not to turn it into a comedy. Every shot, before action is called and after cut is called, I'm usually in some goofy head space. It feels natural to me.

My favorite comedy is comedy where nothing is achieved and there is no point.

Postmodern comedy doesn't work well with very old audiences, because it's making fun of the comedy they enjoy.

Homophobia is a tough one. In some places it's actually very OK to be homophobic. Comedy clubs in general are very unsafe spaces for LGBT, for women, for Asian people. So my goal in comedy has sort of been to make this a safe space for people who were like me.

There's a certain rhythm to comedy that is almost like you're dancing and you just go on autopilot, so to speak. There's something just beautifully enjoyable about comedy in that respect. It's a joy to be able to do that. Drama, you get to go to depths that you haven't gone to before.

I can do comedy but it's a certain type. I'm not a physical comedy guy. I'm not Will Ferrell - there's just this crazy and get naked and run through the thing screaming. That's just not my style; my style is drama or - I'm not slapstick.

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 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.

Comedy clubs were something that came to pass in the '80s, but toward the end of that, in the early '90s, people started doing comedy again in alternative spaces.

I am more comfortable doing comedy, and I want to perform comedy. When you can really make someone laugh, that's a healing experience. It's like music. A lot of music is really healing.

This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life. I like Louis C.K.'s stuff or Bill Burr's stuff. I feel like there's comedy where someone will think of something that they think will work comedically, and then they reverse engineer that point of view so they can say that funny thing. The comedians I like, it could be an allusion, but it feels like their point of view comes first and then the jokes are a reflection of what they actually believe, or are frightened of, or are curious about, or are interested in.

I gravitate towards dark comedy, because I'm a huge fan of dark comedy. I always think the most painful thing that you can laugh at is the best.

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.

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.

With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.

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

I was doing stand up comedy when I was 11, that's how I got started; not because I wanted to do comedy, but because we were broke, living in Echo Park in Downtown Los Angeles, from 1986, I saw the Rodney King riots; my parents didn't really work. But I wanted a new backpack, that's how I got into this business - I wanted a new backpack.

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?

Basically, I was always very interested in comedy, but I was much more sort of academic. And then, after college, loaded with my art history degree, I decided to go work at Comedy Central as a temp.

I dont think I could compare myself to Macaulay Culkin, because were pretty much two different kinds of actors. Hes done a lot of comedy. He does mostly just comedy like Uncle Buck and Home Alone and Home Alone 2. And Ive done a lot of different stuff, like sad movies, like the movie about the kid with AIDS.

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy. To label any subject unsuitable for comedy is to admit defeat.

I certainly do believe that a lot of comedy comes from awkwardness and embarrassment - pointing out the ways things are uncomfortable. Definitely the stuff that interests me. I don't necessarily think that comedy comes from a dark place, like you have to be a strung-out heroin addict. But I don't think it comes from happiness, that's for sure. It comes from frustration and suppressed rage, and wishing the world were different.