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 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 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.

I've always thought that comedy was just another dramatic expression. I try to measure the amount of truth in a work rather than just looking at the generic distinction between comedy and drama. There's a lot of bullshit drama that leaves you totally cold. And there's a lot of wasted comedy time too. But when you get something honest, it doesn't matter what label you give it.

British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

In the U.K. I'm probably better known as a comedy writer - or certainly that's my background is in writing comedy.

I wasn't even a big comedy nerd. A lot of the comedians I know - a lot of my friends are comedians - they knew a lot about comedy growing up.

I like all kinds of comedy. I like comedy that doesn't talk about real beliefs or serious thoughts, but then I also like the stuff that does. I think it just depends. It's a completely personal choice.

As a rule, Germans shouldn't do comedy. Their last box office comedy was Nosferatu.

Comedy is a funny thing, and it's really not like any other art form in that it's very specialized and varied in it's content, but generic in it's title. You would never go to a club just to see "Live music," you would go to a jazz club to see jazz, a blues club to see blues, etc. But when you go to see "standup comedy," if you don't know the performers material, you really don't have any idea what you're gonna get.

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

Being onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you're doing a movie, it's such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it's so hard, too, 'cause with a comedy, there's no vocal reaction, there's no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.

Everybody says how hard comedy is, but, when it comes time to honor things, whether it's on a weekly critical basis or whether it's award time, at that time of the year, comedy is the poor, dumb child of dramatic work.

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.

To create a comedy major, I ended up starting a comedy night in the basement of my dorm, and I promoted and produced my final project, which meant I faxed press releases from an old Apple IIC, or whatever it was, to newspapers, not knowing if that would work or if that's how you do things.

I think comedy's just about being interested in comedy and what makes people laugh and experimenting.

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.

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form. Anger and comedy are really connected. If I'm angry about something I will try to think about something funny about it to lighten the load of the anger and cope with the anger.

I didn't really get into comedy until a couple months before I started doing comedy.

Comedy 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.

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 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 felt audiences are happier to take comedy people who play darker people because there's a link between the psychosis of comedy and the psychosis of being a twisted character.

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."

Internationally and in foreign markets, movies starring women don't make as much money as movies starring men. And then you can blame filmmakers, especially in comedy, which is my bread and butter, because it's become a bit of a boys' club over the years. With the boys in charge you get these takes on women which are either the girlfriend or the mean wife or the girl who appears in a romantic comedy. You're just getting either men's fantasies about women or what they think is the reality about women instead of men just having a healthy attitude about women.

The king of comedy is dead. Richard Pryor was the king of comedy. The rest of them are the king of copycats.

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.

The Lampoon was definitely quite formative. You know there's a crazy like kind of network of comedy writers from The Lampoon that are, that kind of you know like Seinfeld and The Simpsons and a lot of shows kind of had a lot of kind of Lampoon writers and so that was very formative. I mean, to me I got interested in comedy writing at an early like reading like Dave Barry.

I think that you take the path of least resistance. And for a lot of people comedy is that path. I mean, even against mainstream, it's easier to sell a comedy than a drama.

I just like comedy in general. My film work, which has been at times more dramatic, has been satisfying. But I never feel quite as good and as light and blissful as when I'm doing 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.

I gravitate towards dark comedy, because I'm a huge fan of dark comedy. I always think the most painful thing that you can laugh at is the best.

My childhood was lonely. Both my parents were away a lot, working, and the maid basically raised me. And I think that's where a lot of my comedy comes from. Not only was the maid very funny and witty, but when my mother came home I'd use humour to try and get her attention. If I made mommy laugh, then maybe everything would be all right. I think that's where it [my comedy] all started.

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 think comedians get too much credit or too much criticism for the style of comedy they do, and they generally do the style of comedy that works for them. [...] There's no kind of shrewd calculation going into the type of standup we all do. It's like David Cross is supposed to be doing the David Cross' type of standup.

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.

Good comedy makes you laugh, and bad comedy makes people you hate laugh.

I've always taken a lot of cues from comedy minds. The guy that discovered me in the very beginning was Joseph Cates. Joe and Gil Cates were the Cates brothers. Gil produced the Oscars for many years. Joe produced a lot of comedy specials, Steve Martin specials, and he discovered me, this 18-year-old kid.

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

I like broad comedy. If I had an idea tomorrow for a film that was all slapstick and broad comedy, and it was an idea that interested me, I would not hesitate to do it because I enjoy watching these kinds of film.

I'd love to do a comedy. I'd love to do a two-hander like the old Leathal Weapon movies. I love those, like an action comedy with the straight man and the funny man. I'd love to do one of those. Just got to find one, find a funny man that wants to do one with me.

It always interested me that 'Goodness Gracious Me' and 'The Kumars,' when shown around the world, were referred to as British comedy. It was only here that they were referred to as Asian comedy, even though I always felt it was very British in its humour and structure.

What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.

I read a lot. I spend of lot time thinking. It actually looks like I'm doing nothing, but... hanging out with clever and interesting people is a must if you're writing comedy, like hanging out with a good bass player when you're a drummer.

In the world of comedy, having a partner is not the most unusual thing.

Comedy is a very lucrative business now, but when everyone first went into it, it didn't make sense from a financial standpoint.

People don't understand that that's really what it is. They're looking for a magic phone number or something. And to a certain extent, I understand that, because comedy is treated so much as a stepping stone by a lot of people.