Popular quotes about Comedy! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 73
Women comedy is different than men comedy. Guy comedy is very aggressive, it's about insulting each other, name-calling, and kind of busting each other's chops, and that's not what women's comedy is.
Paul FeigComedy 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.
Mel BrooksI have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like its crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like its laughing. Nowadays, we would say, How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.
Gilbert GottfriedI 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.
Mike BirbigliaHumour and high seriousness... Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.
Mark HaddonI find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So any time I get a chance to do a little comedy, that's also a nice change for me. Most of the time people think of me as a dramatic actress and singer. And there's a challenge there because comedy is hard. What do they say? "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."
Audra McDonaldI've stopped doing things that aren't clear comedy gigs - to do something that's not "comedy night," it's a difficult thing. People have to be given permission to laugh. You need to know it's comedy; otherwise you might just think I'm a man talking out loud.
Simon AmstellThere's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.
Nathan FillionI never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
Amanda BynesThere wasn't a big tradition of comedy at Dartmouth. More than that, there wasn't really anything artsy going on in Hanover, or even in New Hampshire. The cool thing about the school is that there's nothing for people to watch, so if you were to do a play or a sketch or an improv troupe, it was always packed. There's nowhere else for anyone to go. But there was no comedy.
Mindy KalingThe secret to comedy is not playing the comedy, but actually playing the situation, playing the drama of it.
Nathan FillionMy background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.
Christopher WalkenThe interesting trick of comedy, in a lot of ways, is to have both the comedy and the grounding of the real thing. You get a real sense of a human being.
Natasha LyonneW. Kamau Bell is in the vanguard of a new era of American comedy for an unsettling, troubling, and strangely hopeful time. Firmly in the fearless tradition of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, & Chris Rock. Comedy as common sense purged of the absurd hypocrisy that is Our America.
Vernon ReidI'm not at all funny. I can do dark comedy pretty well, but straight-up comedy, I don't know. I'm much darker. I've been like that since I was 3 years old
Rooney MaraI've never heard of a comedy that hasn't had reshoots, especially for the ending of a movie in a comedy.
Bradley CooperEvery time I've done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there's always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they're just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.
Aziz AnsariWe are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James ThurberMY ACT IS 'NOTHING BUT COMEDY. I TALK SOUTHERN BECAUSE I PICKED IT UP WHEN I MOVED TO THE SOUTH. IM NOT TRYING TO MAKE ANY SOCIAL POLITICAL POINT, NOR AM I TRYING TO MAKE FUN OF REDNECKS. I GREW UP A COUNTRY KID AND WILL ALWAYS BE ONE. I GREW UP WITH PEOPLE THAT SAID CERTAIN THINGS FUNNY AND I PREFORM USING THE SAME LANGUAGE BECAUSE I FIND IT HYSTERICLE. THATS IT. ITS A COMEDY SHOW THAT IS FUNNY AND THATS IT.
Larry the Cable GuyInternationally 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.
Paul FeigI did skit comedy online for many years, beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing, which was the comedy.
Nadia GiosiaI just want to continue to do comedy. Comedy, I'm discovering, is my niche. It's what I'm born to do, so I would love to have my own sitcom one day in the future.
Brandy NorwoodAfter college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that's where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
Tina FeyI don't necessarily know much about comedy, I don't spend a lot of time watching it. Mainly because all my life for about 50 years I've had comedy.
Eric IdleI'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.
Al PacinoI 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.
Chris RockI think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.
Steven MoffatEven though I have fond feelings for comedy clubs, I enjoy the focus you get in a theater. Comedy clubs are a different animal. People are being served nachos and there's a blender going off in the background.
Brian ReganI love physical comedy. Comedy that comes from an emotional place is amazing too and lets me develop in a new way as an actor.
Eden SherI'm a goofball, so I think comedy is one of my stronger points, as an actor. I just never get to do it. But, I'm taking classes at Groundlings, where Will Ferrell and Lisa Kudrow studied, and it's all improv comedy. It feels good to be able to do that and be funny.
Tinsel KoreyI'd love to do comedy. I'd probably have to get my laughing fits in check, because generally if I've done comedy, I'm usually the straight character that plays against the very obviously funny character, so that's really hard when the person is really hilarious.
Nathalie EmmanuelI never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it's been something that I've always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
Aasif Mandvi[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.
Neal BrennanI think the world of comedy is a relatively small community, and especially for women in comedy, there just aren't that many people involved.
Ari GraynorI'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.
David CopperfieldA lot of people who do drama say comedy is the hardest thing, but, not wanting to sound like a bighead, comedy is easy for me, as I've always been fairly funny.
Nick FrostThe 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.
Roger CormanThere 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.
Colin HanksIt's just if one person says anything it becomes click bait and then they start talking about the comedy climate which is hilarious, so no. You know what it is? People are adults and they know they're at a comedy show but every once in a while somebody isn't an adult and then for some reason, you know, it's lazy reporting. They're trying to create this thing that isn't happening. It's not like people go in there and are just sitting with laptops open getting ready to blog about every stupid joke.
Bill BurrNobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.
Lily TomlinAll the parts I get offered are character and comedy parts, and I probably wouldn't get them if I had a different face. So I'm glad I have a comedy face.
Mackenzie CrookI 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.
Aisha TylerI think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.
Steve CooganThere are a couple of things I want to impart to ladies who want to be in comedy: One, you donโt have to be weird or be quirky to get your job done. And two, comedy skill is not sexually transmittable. You do not have to sleep with a comedian to learn what youโre doing. Male comedians will not like that advice, but it is the truth.
Tina Fey