Quotes About Comedy

There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.

Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.

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 consider my comedy to be dramatic comedy. I always wanted music underscoring the dramatic monologue. It was always drama with comedy, in my head.

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.

Comedy 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.

Phunny Business is a breezy, vivid, funny, star-studded and delightful valentine to comedy, entrepreneurship and the All-American impulse to make something out of nothing. The story of comedy club owner/inveterate dreamer Raymond Lambert and his heroic quest to create a safe, productive place for black stand-up comedians to hone their craft and find their voices isn't just a great Chicago story and a great comedy story: it's a flat-out great story, lovingly and engagingly told.

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 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.

There's a very interesting article or symposium to be written on just the real difference between comedy filmmaking and non-comedy. Because, you know, when you work in comedy, you depend on audience screenings to tell you about your movie.

I remember like that scene with Pharrell where they're at the music video shoot, we have this on camera actually, Pharrell's confused because we weren't doing the script. We were doing all this improv and then Diddy says to him... Pharrell's like I don't understand what's going on and Diddy goes, "We do a lot of improv". (laughter) I remember being we just made him into a comedy nerd. We somehow turned Sean Combs into a comedy nerd, so.

I see parody as another form of comedy. If you are making a comedy, there are a lot of different ways to do it. I'm not necessarily always aware of my quote-unquote persona when doing things like that. It's more, "What does the character need at the time?" I'm certainly drawn to certain types of material, there's no doubt about that.

A comedy isn’t about being funny...a comedy is about characters who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all.

I was seduced by the nouvelle vague, because it was really reinventing everything. And the Italian cinema that one would see in the theaters in the late '50s, early '60s was Italian comedy, Italian style, which, to me, was like the end of neo-realism. I think cinema all over the world was influenced by it, which was Italy finding its freedom at the end of fascism, the end of the Nazi invasion. It was a kind of incredible energy. Then, late '50s, early '60s, the neo-realism lost its great energy and became comedy.

At first, there was a separation of clubs and sketch comedy. Now there's all kinds of comedy, making us one big happy family.

That is the problem with comedy in India. Spoofing sells. Come up with original comedy about the hilarious nation we are, with funny accents and odd rituals, and we get into trouble.

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.

I definitely prefer working in comedy over drama, but at the same time, when it comes to comedy, I tend to prefer comedies that have a great sense of truth to them and that come from an honest place.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I love my comedy too much to bastardize it with bad romantic comedy.

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.

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.

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.

The 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.

The comedy really comes from how badly you want these characters to succeed and with a comedy that's often hard.

I was sort of trained in drama. I went to theater school. I started on the stage. Comedy is absolutely an essential part of what we do as actors. But I think in the grand scheme of things, comedy was born from tragedy. First there was tragedy and then there were the comedies.

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

The fact of the matter is, you can't do comedy unless someone is behaving badly. Otherwise, it's not a comedy.

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.

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 like comedy, not violence, but violence is making a lot of money. But comedy is what I like.

I never thought I'd be a comedian. But, growing up, I simply loved watching comedy. The '80s was huge for comedy in the US. Eddie Murphy blew me away with his film Delirious.

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.

There’s obviously a lot of tragedy in comedy; I really enjoy the paradox of what a really good comedy is.

I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.

I know it's the comedian's instinct to say, "Do it, man, nothing's off-limits! It's cool, bro!" I don't know if that's the answer for me. "Do I really want to make a joke about a miscarriage when a woman in the audience might have had one?" I don't worship comedy; at the end of the day I don't fall to the altar of comedy unquestioningly.

I feel like with comedy, the crazy things that happen are never serious you know? Like, rubble being poured onto you in drama would be something that's absolutely terrible, but in a comedy it's absolutely terrible but so funny.

I 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.

In every case, I find pre-planning noble, but not always that useful in comedy. You know comedy once you're doing it.

I guess you get pigeon-holed in Hollywood, but I'm ok with that because I've been able to do a lot. I started in the theater, then I went to stand-up comedy, and then when I went into the movies to do comedy and drama and big movies and small movies.

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.

Haven't you noticed that we women daydream infinitely less than you men? We can't anticipate pleasure in our imagination or keep suffering out our lives with some imaginary consolation.Whatever is,is.Imagintion! It's so paltry!Yes,when you've grown older,as I have,you occasionally make do with the poor comedy of the imagination.

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

My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor.

have you ever noticed how a man orders food at a fast-food drive-through window? ... men have an innate desire to be cute while placing their order through the drive-through microphone. It's as if they believe the invisible mike on the plastic menu screen is actually connected to a standup comedy stage somewhere in the recesses of the restaurant.