Quotes About Comedy

Interestingly it's when you come to the comedy, that's where a lot of the discussion is. It's like ten people sitting around talking about what is funny. "Is that funny? Is that funnier than that? Is this slightly funnier than this?" I guess that's what it's like when you're making a comedy movie as well, you just have to sit around talking seriously about the nature of comedy.

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.

Comedy is hard to do, and I don't know why it doesn't have its own category in awards. I don't understand why people think it's harder to do drama than it is to do comedy. It doesn't get respect. It's hard. It's really hard. It would be more gratifying to get something for a comedy, because it doesn't happen much or at all.

There seems to be more comedy for comedy's sake

If you call me a comedian I will be very grateful. I will thank you profoundly. No, I love doing comedy. It's fun once in a while to do a serious part but I really enjoy doing comedy because I love to laugh.

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.

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 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.

Doing comedy for film is always a challenge because you are in the hands of the editor after the fact. I am hoping I can do some more soon, I enjoy doing comedy.

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.

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 hope I don't just do the exact same thing my whole life. I also feel like it's really hard to make comedy. It's almost impossible for comedy filmmakers and directors to stay relevant as they get older.

Most of the jokes that I wrote were funny and there always seems to be an aspect of comedy in my long-form work. I think that's how life is. I think even the more dramatic moments of one's life are often punctuated by very funny comments or situations. I like to say, "Keep your comedy serious and your drama funny, and you'll be pretty true to life."

25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.

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.

The comedy I like the best is comedy I can't do, stuff that doesn't touch my arena.

I don't want to make a style. Not tragedy, not comedy. Life is a mixing of all kind of things: comedy and tragedy going together.

Your anger can be 49 percent and your comedy 51 percent, and you're okay. If the anger is 51 percent, the comedy is gone.

I think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.

Comedy - and I say this with humility - comedy needs me.

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.

I get to do physical comedy! When do women get to do physical comedy? Very rarely.

The population increasing, some of it could be in countries we haven't thought of making art in. I've never entertained making comedy in China. Like what world is that? I don't know how they would perceive art or sketch comedy. It's not a matter of intellect; it's a matter of language.

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.

That's the beauty of our show. Comedy or politics. We're sort of a mix. A space age polymer of both. A synthetic comedy-like material.

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 think comedy has a range, with multiple peaks in different areas. It's like trying to compare Beethoven and the Beatles. Sometimes I hear from people, 'I think you try too hard in your comedy.' And that's what I worry about.

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.

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

It's a comedy thriller, brilliantly written and it's full of twists and turns at every page. When I was reading it I was desperate to get to the end to find out what happens, it really hooks you.

This world is a comedy, not Life.

When death comes too near, comedy and tragedy fall silent.

When we graduated [ from Cambridge], we were grabbed right into television. I was grabbed straight into the practice of writing comedy. It was all writing and performing. You wrote something in order for you to perform it.

I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.

I'd like to play a mixture of Lucille Ball meets Murphy Brown meets Glenn Close on 'Damages,' to keep a little bit of the darkness in there. I like dark comedy a lot.

When someone's an actor and you're an actor, you meet them and you feel like you know them. We're in the same business, and we all speak the same comedy language.

Comedy is king. It has to be.

I got locked into a tradition [at Cambridge] of doing comedy.

Whatever the best scripts are and you just want to play roles that you can really sink your teeth into. That's always the goal no matter if it's a good guy or a bad guy, or a comedy, or a drama. It doesn't matter, you just want something that's substantial you can sink your teeth into and that you haven't done before, something that's really going to challenge you.

When you only hang out with performers, you start to feel like movies and TV and comedy is everything. Especially being in LA, where it feels like you walk into a coffee shop and you see 15 laptops with screenplays being written.

The male is always the pawn in a romantic comedy. Come together, break up, go chase her, get her, roll credits. That's what happens in all of them.

I'm very hip-oriented. I focus on hips in my comedy - probably more than any other hipster comic who is out there hipping today. My hips, other hips. I work with my hips a great deal. That is what I do. But not in a gay way.

I ended up [doing video] meeting Gillian [Grassie] at the same time that we were getting together a book. We ended up working on it, and she recognized that I had a flair for certain things, and we've worked through it together so that the writing could be really good. It was the perfect partnership, just finding my literary voice and figuring out how comedy translates to the written word.

It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously.

As long as there's Big Momma, we're going to bring you comedy.

I wouldn't feel satisfied being on set every day doing a romantic comedy - I'd be bored to death.