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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.
Mike BirbigliaThe only thing I knew in the world as a little kid was comedy. And no other kids in my school cared about it at all. There was no one to talk about it with. You know, we're in a geek culture now where comedy is so giant. I'm one of the people that, you know, works on Funny or Die. And there is just a giant culture of comedy nerds. But back then, I was alone, and I had a little confidence about it because I felt like, this is my thing, this is the only thing that only I know about.
Judd ApatowI'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se.
Philippe FalardeauAs a writer, I haven't delved into dramatic writing. As an actor, I could always, even more so than comedy, do drama. When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.
Jonah HillComedy has sort of been my life-long obsession. I literally obsessed over comedy. I really didn't play sports - for me it was just comedy, computers and chess club; those were my big things.
Chris HardwickIts consistency of what comedy can do and what comedy can be.Growing up with that show [The Simpsons] shaped my worldview.
Eric AndreIt's an unknown quantity. It's actually almost a clichรฉ to say it, how hard comedy is. What's that famous quote? "Dying is easy, comedy's hard." I think the broader it gets, if you miss by a millimetre, you've missed completely. It's a very hard thing to do.
Colin FirthThe difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.
Aaron AllstonI 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.
Steve CooganI'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?
Tom ScharplingIn 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.
Michael MandelbaumYou know, sometimes I worry, you know, is comedy and my type of comedy going to get stale? Is it going to be so offensive that it becomes uninteresting or so niche that I don't have an audience anymore? But it keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, where roasting now is a movement. These roasts are on in India, in Mexico.
Jeff RossI love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you're chasing along with romantic comedy.
James L. BrooksI didn't really get into comedy until a couple months before I started doing comedy.
Hannibal BuressI 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!
Chloe NoelleComedy is a live art, and the only way to record a comedy rock album is to do it live. The audience and their laughter is just as much a part of the album sound as our music. No retakes, no room for error.
Vir DasI 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.
Mireille EnosYeah, 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.
Christopher WalkenI wish people would understand that comedy is an art form, and that the same thing that makes a Picasso painting is the same thing that gives Bill Cosby the ability to do an hour of comedy on his kids.
GodfreyI want to go to Australia so bad, do comedy there, and see the people there. It's a great country. I have friends that are Australian that have told me all about it. I want to do comedy there.
Brad WilliamsI don't really know what 'selling out' is exactly. I would sell out if I could, but nobody's buying it. I would love to go mainstream, but my comedy is too edgy. It's always too dirty. It's always too filthy. I'm dying to sell out. But I love doing comedy, I love touring, and I think I would do everything for free.
Margaret ChoI have other tastes besides comedy. I love comedy. I adore it, but I love dramatic movies just as much.
Jonah HillThe kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. Theyโre superficial and I like articulate comedy.
Mary Tyler MooreI 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.'
Nick OffermanThe funny thing about The West Wing is - and I don't know what Aaron Sorkin says about it - but I'm convinced it was a comedy. It's a very intellectual and cerebral comedy, but it was SportsNight in the White House. It had an energy and a vitality and an intelligence and a passion that's rare. And it was extremely difficult to do, because they were so demanding about the dialogue.
Tim MathesonWhen has stand-up comedy been kind to anyone? It goes after anyone who's the target. Comedy attacks, man.
Sam KinisonWith 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.
Jordan PeeleI 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.
Tinsel KoreyIt's a great counter to doing the soap because it's a comedy. It's real physical comedy.
Corbin BernsenI've always been a fan of comedy, and I understood from a young age that what makes most comedy work is the immediacy of first person experience. I'd spent a lot of time from 1995-1998 focusing almost exclusively on poetry, and it's an incredibly difficult form in which to achieve a sustained comic tone unless you're Alexander Pope.
Kevin KeckI 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.
Shia LaBeoufI've always prided myself on being able to perform in the "alt-comedy" zone, but also being able to do comedy for people who aren't media-saturated, and maybe don't have the latest Dan Deacon album. I probably won't be the most popular guy at Zanies in Nashville, and I'll never be the coolest dude at Largo, but I like that I can swim in both those waters.
Christian FinneganUsually comedy is only available to us ladies in the romantic comedy. That's why I hate romantic comedies.
Sandra BullockI 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.
Brian BonsallTo me, Fight Club was a comedy. When [David] Fincher sent me the book and I read it, the first thing I asked him was, "This is a comedy, right?" he said, "Yeah, that's the whole point," and I said, "Okay, I'm in." I certainly wasn't imagining myself as a dramatic actor when I was running around in my underwear in that film.
Edward NortonThere 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.
Colin HanksMy first time on stage was the class "graduation" at the Comedy Store. It was awesome. Everything got huge laughs and I just thought I knew how to do comedy.
Anthony JeselnikI 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.
DeRay DavisI 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.
Sandra BullockI don't think so much about verbal comedy. I always think about visual comedy. I was raised watching silents, and I'm always thinking about how to make cinema, not good talking - although I want good talking. I'm much more interested in framing, composition, and orchestration of bodies in space, and so forth. My goal is always what Chuck Jones wanted his Warner Brothers cartoons to be, which was if you turn down the sound, you could still tell what's going on. I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.
Alexander PayneI had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.
Chris RockWhen 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.
Jim GaffiganI was bad at sports and picked last every day. I couldn't quite figure out what my role was in the social order, so I decided I was interested in comedy. And what was then interesting was, nobody else was interested in it at all. I didn't find one friend who was interested in comedy until I moved to California and met other comedians. And suddenly I knew hundreds of people who knew as much about SCTV as I did. But it took me 20 years to find those people.
Judd Apatow