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.

It's very hard to find a good comedy. I prefer doing comedy far over anything else because I think they're actually more profound. But finding a good one and a great ensemble is very difficult to do and I'm delighted that in these particular times there is so much interest in comedy and that comedy is having so much success.

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.

There are two types of actors. There's the actors who can acknowledge that they could never do standup comedy. Then there's the pretentious ones, who believe that acting is harder than standup comedy. I definitely don't think it is. I also think making a comedy is substantially harder than making a drama.

I was thinking about comedy and how comedy in many ways opens us up to ideas and really being influenced by Richard Pryor and sort of the way he would use comedy to really speak about larger social issues.

To me, real comedy comes out of behavior. It's the choices you make as an actor. It's never about, "I want to do a comedy script." I can't think of it that way. And besides, some of those movies, those comedy movies, I can't even watch them.

The crooks downtown figured out that comedy is like a hammer. It can put up a barn and it can knock down a wall. So they bought it outright and marketed it as Comedy Central.

I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.

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

My parents passed away when I was a teenager, so I had to learn different survival techniques, I think, in comedy. You know, using comedy as a pressure release, as a release valve in life really kept my sanity.

It's an unknown quantity. It's actually almost a cliché 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.

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.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, seems to be an honest or well intended halfness; a non performance of that which is pretended to be performed, at the same time that one is giving loud pledges of performance. The balking of the intellect, is comedy and it announces itself in the pleasant spasms we call laughter.

Human comedy is more profound than tragedy. In tragedy we die and it is very sad. In comedy we avoid death, and it is even sadder.

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.

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.

What I've kind of learned about comedy is that when comedy gets too expensive it might not be funny. Sometimes it's good to keep the conditions where you're pressed for time and it's just about getting the work done, as opposed to how much things are we eating on the set.

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

I don't have that kind of Southern experience, of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy. I come more from the guilt-ridden, neurotic type of [ - ] I have more in common with the Jewish brand of comedy.

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 know a lot of girls in the comedy world who are kind of like me. I don't know where the slutty girls hang out, but it's not the comedy world as far as I know.

Like, I'm trying to make a statement that clean comedy is somehow better or loftier than dirty comedy, and I don't feel that way at all. I just think it's different. It's different. There's rock music, there's jazz music, there's reggae music: All of those forms are different.

Doing [a relationship comedy] with Sam [L. Jackson] was exciting. I've done a lot of comedies with a lot of comedy people. My peers. I've never worked with anybody of the kind of dramatic caliber of movie actor that Sam is. It was a little bit intimidating for the first day. Or two... Or the first week. Other than that, it was a joy.

Comedy doesn't really have any meaning without sadness. The most meaningful comedy comes from some really serious pathos.

If there's one regret I have of my time in comedy it's that I really I was so obsessed with improv for so many years and I exclusively did improv for the first 6 years or 7 years. I was doing comedy and then I started doing solo work and stand up, a bit of writing, making videos, and really going into it on that end.

I started in comedy when I first started as an actor on stage and doing improvisational theater and stuff like that. So a lot of people who know me know that sort of side of me. But I got the roles that I got as an young actor kind of steered me in a different direction, which were, at times, darker characters. And so comedy was not something that came easy for people to think of my in those terms.

What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.

It's completely unsexy [Yello, "Oh Yeah" 1985]. It does capture that weird '80s materialism and "We're gonna get it on now" vibe. But it's a very juvenile approach. It also became a weird signal for comedy, in the sense that when you heard the song, it meant comedy was happening on screen. I feel like this song was probably done in a couple of minutes in a studio.

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.

When you make comedy, you make it for the people and you try to have as many screenings and as many tests and you do focus groups and you read the cards and you try to give the people what they want in this comedy.

I think sadness and anger are really fertile ground for comedy. No one is really interested in a happy person doing comedy.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

There 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.

It really was a unique experience to me to have a television show, Comedy Bang! Bang!, that I really cared about so much, and to know that it was the end, and know that that was the ending of it. We had a wrap party, and we thanked everybody. You don't get that a lot, especially in comedy.

I watch drama. I don't watch a lot of comedy. Watching comedy is like work.

I'd like to help other comedians and when I get a little older I'd like to open up a nice comedy club that is straight classy, with a straight restaurant and a chef. The whole thing, red carpet, and treating people nice, for people to come back and have a good time. That's the kind of comedy club I want to open up.

I can't watch other people doing comedy. As soon as somebody starts being funny I have to turn off because it upsets me. I get comedy indigestion. I just hate anybody else being funny. That's my job.

Comedy can be fun no matter what you're playing small or big comedy part. It always has the potential to be a blast.

If you had to relive your life exactly as it was – same successes and failures, same happiness, same miseries, same mixture of comedy and tragedy – would you want to? Was it worth it?

If you look at any successful skit comedy show, ever, there is that format of introducing you to the player in the beginning, and then going on to see those sketches.

Comedy is a blood sport. It flays the truth and spurts twisted logic. In America, people become comics because we don't have bullfighting.

In Australia, I'm built up as this comedy hero, which was never my intention.

I enjoy doing comedy for the fact that you go to work and you laugh. That's a good combination.

I never was shy, but as far as telling jokes, I'm the worst. I like physical comedy; it's where I feel comfortable.