Quotes About Comedy

I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.

I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.

I feel like L.A. is more of a showcase, and Chicago is a pure comedy scene where you're doing comedy for comedy. You're doing comedy actually for the audience that's there.

I think comedy is drama, often. It's hard to have comedy over a period of time - commercials are one thing, but over a period of time - comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.

As a woman, she [Penelope Cruz] obviously has changed as she has become an adult. But, as an actress, I actually might say that she has not changed that much. And she has something great, especially in comedy, and she hasn't been exploited as much as she could be in comedy, but particularly in that mix between comedy and drama. She's got a very special quality about her. You can place her in very extreme situations, especially very painful situations, in terms of how her character interprets it. And sometimes, the deeper and more human that pain is, the better she is at it.

I'm very interested in trying to make comedy shows that are a bit bigger, more theatrical, more of a "show." Some people might say I'm trying too hard, but that's a compliment to me. I like to inject a bit of production value and flair to comedy, or at least to my little corner of comedy.

There wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy.

Well, for me, it's the relationship between comedy and life - that's the edge I live on, and maybe it's my protection against looking at the tragedy of it all. It's seeing life in balance. Comedy and tragedy co-exist. You can't have one without the other. I'm of the school that anything can be funny, if seen from a comedic point of view.

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

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

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.

I like comedy but I guess I don't think [my art] is that funny, either. It's too dark and a bit weird in places to be genuinely, uniformly hilarious and function as comedy.

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

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.

In 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.

I like comedy. I would love to do comedy for a long time.

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.

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.

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 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.

Blonde is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy.

I'd done light comedy. In some quarters, About Last Night... is a romantic comedy. So it wasn't like I'd been doing Sophie's Choice my entire career. But for whatever reason, nobody had really given me the room or the ability to be out and out funny. And Lorne [Michaels] and Mike [Myers] and Chris [Farley] and Dana [Carvey], that crop really helped me do that.

I 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.

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.

I cant imagine getting bored with comedy or thinking comedy is beneath us suddenly.

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.

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.

It's hard to learn about comedy from comedians. Comedy is not something that you necessarily learn or can imitate. You're funny or you're not, and you hope what you're doing is funny.

I really wanted to do some serious work. I really wanted to be a part of dramatic films. I wanted to show this talent, whatever that means, that I could be a dramatic actress as well. But the truth is, a) I don't know if I can, and b) I love doing comedy, and I felt almost a little embarrassed that I succumbed to the pressure. Vanity is really what it is. I feel really grateful that I am in comedy, and I love doing it.

I just want to continue to do comedy. Comedy, I'm discovering, is my niche. It's what I'm born to do, so I would love to have my own sitcom one day in the future.

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'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.

Good comedy doesn't have to be a comedy idea.

I guess there are no real strict rules [in comedy], but I just learn to apply my philosophy about comedy which is, it's a serious business and the result needs to be funny, not the process.

I'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.

I'd love to do comedy. I'd probably have to get my laughing fits in check, because generally if I've done comedy, I'm usually the straight character that plays against the very obviously funny character, so that's really hard when the person is really hilarious.

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.

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

[Robert Smigel] is one of the greatest comedy writers in the last 50 years. "TV Funhouse" and Triumph and all those sketches.He's really unique, and he has an amazing comedy mind.

I don't do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.

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.

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 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.

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 love Stewart Lee's 'Comedy Vehicle' on BBC2. The guy is a genius.

I don't think that comedy is going to affect or change anything. I remember back in 2004 people were like, "How does it feel knowing that you're going to be part of the shifting tide in the political system?" And in the end nothing changed, and we weren't part of anything. And we're not happy anywhere. I think we're kind of hoping, obviously, but it didn't really have a great impact on people.

This world is a comedy, not Life.