I think, as I’ve gone on, I’ve got a sense that there are some laughs I want, and some laughs I don’t want.
I did standup while still working for Johnny Carson in the mid-’60s, thus gaining the advantage of at least getting laughs from him about how I hadn’t the night before.
The easiest time to be funny is during a fairly serious situation. That way, you can break the ice. It’s crazy, but even at funerals, people will get huge laughs.
It’s so good to get up in the morning and see a donkey – they’re just unbelievably beautiful and funny. My donkey Hector laughs when I walk towards him; he knows mortality when he sees it.
For every stand-up comedian, Just for Laughs is our Super Bowl. Every comic in the world goes to Just for Laughs in Montreal. And they presented me with the Stand-Up Comedian of the Year award for 2018. This is my Oscar; this is my Emmy. That’s my baby now.
Essentially, retweets are like laughs.
We are all here for a spell, get all the good laughs you can.
My two big date deal breakers are someone with no sense of humor and someone who chews badly. I will never be with someone who never laughs or someone who chews disgustingly, so if either of those things are detected on a date – it’s a total deal breaker.
I have so much history with Just For Laughs. My career took off there.
A barrel of laughs should be enough, but it’s not. A good review is official and endures. A bad one is like a tub of Flora. It spreads easily and lasts for the whole festival.
I can relate to anything. I once played Macbeth. I got a lot of laughs, so I quit.
For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs – like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that’s it.
I just consider myself a piece of the puzzle and I’m lucky enough to be asked or invited to the party, if you will. I hope I can bring some laughs and grimaces to the fans.
Not many women will go out on a limb to make themselves really unattractive and unfeminine so you can get the laughs, but it’s a great thing to do in my book.
A page a day means I need to focus on a gag a day, and that’s great for laughs but bad for plot, and I’m primarily a plot guy.
The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
Really hard laughs, they’ve gotta make you live longer or something.
My 93-year-old grandma is a beautiful example of healthy living. She laughs a lot and always says, ‘Just be yourself!’ She also eats dessert every single day.
What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.
I must learn to love the fool in me – the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries.
Every time I make a plan, God laughs at me.
When I was a kid, like four or five years old, I was obsessed with the ‘Batman’ TV show in the ’60s. And I took it totally seriously. At that age, I took it completely seriously. I didn’t get the fact that it was kind of played for laughs. I didn’t understand why my mom was rolling her eyes or chuckling.
Life is not always laughs and giggles.
George W. Bush has dutifully, if not intentionally, provided Americans with laughs for nearly a decade. He has also made them cry, sometimes for the same reason.
There’s something really wonderful about making people laugh, and if you can find the laughs within a dramatic piece, it’s also very rewarding.
There are a lot of pretty actresses in Hollywood who try to act tough, and the audience laughs.
A woman who laughs is a woman conquered.
I don’t believe in comedy as a TV genre – I think there’s drama that is funny. Because beyond the laughs, there has to be cost, and there has to be heart.
Sure, the comedians who swear or use scatological humor can get laughs, but they’re uncomfortable laughs.
So many comedians, if you asked them, ‘What’s your priority in standup?’ it’s probably gonna be to make people laugh or to entertain them. That is just way down on my priority list, if on my list at all. I’m into breaking records. If I can do a set and break a record and get no laughs, I’m happy.
Shortkut… ‘ has a very nice, strong story. It is not one of those nonsensical comedies where characters attempt buffoonery to get laughs. It is a small film with a big heart.
I prefer to have one gigantic laugh preceded by several smaller laughs rather than a bunch of medium laughs all along.
I performed after 9/11 for relief workers down by Ground Zero. There were these men just coming back, and they were voraciously hungry. They were heroes, pulling rubble, and I was a new comic trying to go blue just so I could get some laughs.
I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it’s a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.
A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.
I don’t like any one race or look or type of guy. My tastes as far as looks go are very diverse. I like guys with scruffy beards and leather jackets, but I also like a clean-cut ‘GQ’-type guy, so my tastes are very ranged among somebody who laughs at my dumb jokes, too. I have plenty of them.
I just try to deliver the laughs every time I get the opportunity.
If I could sew comedy and philosophy together, then I’ve done a good job. The primary goal is always going to be laughs and the secondary goal is always going to be saying something without it being a lecture.
I am persuaded that every time a man smiles – but much more so when he laughs – it adds something to this fragment of life.
When I was 17-and-a-half I volunteered for the Wrens. I auditioned for a play and we took it round the Southern Command area and I really enjoyed it. I got laughs and that was when the bug got me.
Have a little fun. A few laughs.
Showing fear is like having comedic timing because I think actors have a tendency to go way over the top with it, and that sort of loses steam for what’s going on. The audience sees right through that and laughs at you, so it is something that I’m aware of.
When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.
I’m a pretty good ventriloquist, but it’s the entertainment value and the laughs that keep people sitting there and wanting more.
I can’t say it was always ice cream and rainbows in our house. We would yell and we would fight and I was a terrible child, and it was, but, on the other hand, laughs. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
Audiences of critical thinkers are my favorite kinds of audiences. There are jokes I tell in the show that don’t get laughs unless I am in front of an audience of critical thinkers. Put me in front of a crowd of science teachers or astronauts! The guileless aren’t our audience – it’s the critical thinkers we love.
When you’re a comedic actor and you’re used to just getting laughs, it’s kind of scary to go serious, even for a second.
For me, the great joy is to watch an audience watching what I’ve made. To hear not a peep from the audience at the right moment, and then to hear the laughs and the cheers.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be serious, like Daniel Day-Lewis. No one really dreams of being a comic actor, do they? Now I realise how stupid that is – and it’s because comic acting isn’t taken seriously enough. It’s a discipline. You know instantly – either you’re funny and getting the laughs, or you’re not.
In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.
I did gigs alongside Oxford students and I thought being working class I’d feel inferior. But the thing is you don’t feel inferior if you’re getting more laughs than the other bloke on the bill.
As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs.
Life is about travel, and beauty in life, the love we find, the joy we have the laughs we have together. That’s what I’m dedicating the rest of my life to.
Originally, with all the shows, we went looking for belly laughs.
It’s probably a generalisation to say this, but occasionally I’ll see a bloke who laughs only after he’s checked his girlfriend did. I tend to imagine that’s a rocky relationship, to be fair.
To say that a humorist exaggerates to get big laughs, I don’t see how that’s big news.
I laugh every day. There are days when my laughs are pretty hollow. Dust comes out of your mouth, and your bones make a funny sound. But I’m laughing.
I don’t care who’s No. 1 on the call sheet or how big my trailer is. I care about the work. I don’t care who gets the laughs. I just care that the laugh comes.
A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it’s also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.
