Quotes About Comedy

I’m trying to be the Jay-Z of comedy one day. I don’t know if there’s any comedy moguls out there, but I would love to be the first comedy mogul.

I'm writing a political comedy that takes place in Canada in Quebec. It's funny. Saying political comedy is a little redundant but it's a first. I've never done any comedy per se.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

I feel more comfortable in drama. Comedy's is a high-wire act. I find it stressful. It's a precision science, in a way. And when you're filming, the thing comedy depends on becomes a much more difficult commodity. The thing you depend on is spontaneity.

Even the shows or movies that we know are not going to change the world, I love this. I love 'em. I'm a movie fan. I'm a nerd of any kind. I love a big studio comedy as much as I love the teeniest tiniest of indie. I'm not a snob in that way. I really do like a big, big studio comedy.

There's always advantages and disadvantages to doing any role. And there's a great sense of achievement, testosterone, fun, being able to live out your masculinity when you play an action role, or an action-adventure, or a real tough-guy role. Really, if you're doing a comedy, you can sit back and relax. And it's good to know that at the end of the day, you don't have to run off for another two hours and go to the gym, or go spend the rest of the night swordplaying with stunt guys. Then I think, "Oh my God, I love 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.

We always wanted to make a comedy that was a little bit more than that, which had tragic elements to it... that people engaged with - an intelligent comedy essentially.

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

I'm a huge romantic comedy fan and have been in this business for 17 years and I think for all 17 I'd hoped and dreamed and wished to some day be in a romantic comedy myself.

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

The timing of comedy is so difficult. You've got to leave room for a laugh, you don't want to kill the laugh, but on film, you can't just suddenly stop for a laugh and then carry on. So, I think it's a real art form, comedy on film.

When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.

The fact is that comedy is actually too serious to be taken seriously. It may be that comedy touches such deep emotions that people feel better if they can just dismiss it as trivial. Just take a big belly laugh. I have watched people laughing, and for a moment they look-and are-absolutely helpless. Vulnerability. You can be assaulted while you are laughing.

With comedy, I like to not rehearse and just have fun with it, because I think being spontaneous is the best thing for a comedy, in my opinion.

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.

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

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.

In all honesty, we don't know what's in the hearts of other men. All I know is that I respect comedy and I know comedy. I would never, ever, ever take somebody else's joke.

I want to do more comedy... I've done a couple TV shows that had some comedy going on.

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 don't really know what 'selling out' is exactly. I would sell out if I could, but nobody's buying it. I would love to go mainstream, but my comedy is too edgy. It's always too dirty. It's always too filthy. I'm dying to sell out. But I love doing comedy, I love touring, and I think I would do everything for free.

When someone who is known as a comedic actor goes to drama, it often doesn't work out, because they really just chose wrong, I think - or maybe they're just not good actors. For me it's important making that transition seamless, and not a huge shock and jumping into cold water. It doesn't feel like I'm trying to shock you or anything. I'm just saying, "I'm a different actor than you thought I was. Don't put me in a box. I'm not just some kid running around screaming curse words." I have other tastes besides comedy. I love comedy, but I love dramatic movies just as much.

A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

I don't think my comedy is that political. It's more social. But whatever. When you make comedy and you do stand-up, you work alone. Movies have to go under so much scrutiny. A stand-up special is a vision, and a movie is a consensus in a lot of ways.

Comedy is actually very hard. It's hard to choose those moments and know when you can really push it, and know when you should be bringing it back and making it more subtle, and knowing as time goes on, as you do take after take and the crowd around you stops laughing. Whenever you do comedy, you realize you're up against - you're performing next to people who you would think are so unbelievably good at it, that that's a bit of a pressure. But at the same time, it's just fun. It's fun to be able to let out that side of you.

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

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.

Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.

[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 certainly do believe that a lot of comedy comes from awkwardness and embarrassment - pointing out the ways things are uncomfortable. Definitely the stuff that interests me. I don't necessarily think that comedy comes from a dark place, like you have to be a strung-out heroin addict. But I don't think it comes from happiness, that's for sure. It comes from frustration and suppressed rage, and wishing the world were different.

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.

I was not one of those people who wanted to be a comedian when I was growing up. I liked comedy, but didn't know it was something you could do for a living. I actually wanted to be an attorney. I did do things on the side like improv and sketch comedy, but law was my focus. I was a very bookish, academic kid. When I got out of college, I was really unhappy. I had a great job that I should have loved, yet I was miserable. I slowly realized that was because I wasn't performing. So I just tried stand-up and fell in love with it after one performance.

When I started stand-up - and this is in the '90s - there was definitely people hadn't watched decades of Comedy Central, where people are really much more educated on stand-up comedy.

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?

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.

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.

I don't really know of the Jewish tradition of comedy, only the Jewish tradition of not keeping your mouth shut. Complaining about all that is hard, unfair or ridiculous in life-having strong feelings, and not being able to suppress them. That, to me, is Jewish.

Certainly situation comedy is harder than people who are good at it make it look, but it's fun to do something different.

The comedy gods are smiling on me tonight, because I have been saying, for the longest time, that president Bush must set a timetable for removing his head from his ass...and, by god, today they went in and looked for it... They didn't find it. So now we don't know where it is, but at least for once in my life, I get to see the words "Bush", "operation", and "success" in the same sentence.

Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It's harder.

In my life, I didn't get into comedy to be - I had no business model. All I wanted to do was, basically, finish becoming myself. And you stand in front of people and be seen and heard in this format. I thought it was the most practical format for me to express whatever it was I was going through. Whatever my ideas were in my evolving philosophy about life. I obviously don't sell out theaters. I'm not a household name. I'm not incredibly consistent in terms of doing the same act over and over again, and I'm definitely working out a lot of my existential issues onstage.

Comedy is king. It has to be.

I did sketch comedy for years. Ive always enjoyed it.

I always try to attack the most honest issues I can in my comedy.

After the first few readings in comedy venues I did begin to write for laughs. There's something so gratifying about stimulating laughter.

I think it's actually a misperception that I am a comedic actress. I do more drama than comedy but very little of it has been seen. When you are in big funny movies and they do well and your little part in it kind of explodes people perceive you as a comedian.