I think comedy is so specific, so hard. I’d audition for comedies and think, ‘I can’t pull this off.’
I identify my humour quotient with that of my father’s. He used to love British comedies. Also, when it comes to fitness, my father was a sportsman and I too was into sports as a child.
A lot of series tend to go on for one series too many, especially with comedies, and I think people say ‘ooh, it’s gone off, that.’
I like more grounded comedy. I enjoy broad comedies also, but I like Shirley MacLaine.
My early days in Broadway were all comedies. I never did a straight play on Broadway.
I always thought ‘chick lit’ meant third-person contemporary funny novels, dealing with issues of the day. I mean, it’s not the ideal term; when I’m asked to describe what I do, I say I write romantic comedies, cause that’s what I feel they are. But I’m quite pragmatic.
But no, I don’t really like romantic comedies, so I don’t really care. I never go see ’em.
Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. ‘M*A*S*H’ is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.
I’m not into comedies that are joke-driven.
I’ve enjoyed the time I’ve had working on films. I’ve enjoyed television movie-of-the-week format. I’ve enjoyed the few comedies that I’ve done, and I’ve enjoyed one-hour television.
Situation comedies are old-fashioned – they stick to formulas. I resent their music which is old fashioned. I resent the use of a laugh track.
‘Leave It To Beaver’ is a fairly famous show in America, but I don’t think it travelled. It was one of those typical ’50s family comedies. I was in the pilot episode as sort of the dark presence: my character was called Eddie Haskill.
There’s a playwright named S.M. Berryman, Sam Berryman, who wrote these kinds of social comedies. They are actually extremely sharp and still quite provocative.
So often, I think, in these relationship comedies, they don’t necessarily reflect the people that I know. They don’t reflect myself.
The projects I have done on television, they’re sitcoms, situational comedies. The problem is, maybe because they go on every day, Monday through Friday, one-hour format, maybe that’s why they’re labeled as a telenovela. But technically speaking, they’re sitcoms because they’re situational comedies.
I like the sentimentality of ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ and all those movies, and there actually is a tradition of Christmas comedies, too.
I’d been a fan of old film comedies like Preston Sturges and Howard Hawks movies – the fast-paced dialogue in movies like ‘His Girl Friday’ and ‘Bringing Up Baby’ and ‘Twentieth Century’ and ‘Sullivan’s Travels.’
Romantic comedies are backbreaking to write because they have to be fresh.
It’s hard for me to even watch comedies I’m in.
I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they’re so universal.
I’m a fan of classic romance films as well as screwball comedies. I think love stories are just compelling narratives.
A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.
We ‘chicks’ have munched our popcorn while romantic comedies became just comedies, and then each female protagonist got recast for Matthew McConaughey or Seth Rogan.
There used to be an art form called the ‘comedy of manners.’ Why aren’t comedies of manners made now in this country? The answer is simple. We no longer have manners to speak of.
My books are comedies; I want to take my readers on a jet-setting romp, make them laugh, make them swoon at the beautiful settings, and maybe even make their mouths water at all the food.
Usually comedy is only available to us ladies in the romantic comedy. That’s why I hate romantic comedies.
Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
If you stop to think, the only films that don’t include at least one punch in -the jaw are musical comedies. And even then some of those villains get brained in the middle of an aria.
I like intelligent comedies.
There are so many romantic comedies made, but very few dramas or love stories. And with a love story, you have to take time to develop three-dimensional characters.
With a lot of comedies, the characters go on a journey, and they come back, and they’re the exact same people.
Actually the hardest films to make are comedies. In normal life, funny things happen by accident; to re-create those by design in a film takes real technique.
The Monkees was a straight sitcom, we used the same plots that were on the other situation comedies at the time. So the music wasn’t threatening, we weren’t threatening.
There are a couple of ideas for features that I would love to do. They happen to be comedies.
My first two novels were very black comedies.
Somehow I got a hold of an address for Vonnegut shortly after making the Marx Brothers film. Vonnegut wrote back, saying that he had seen the Marx brothers film and loved it. That became the foundation of our friendship: old movies and comedies.
I love comedies, and I like sometimes comedies have a tendency to get a bit lazy. ‘The Other Guys’ was not lazy.
A lot of comedies, I think, make the wrong choice of having the straight man being this bland emotional conduit for the audience.
The hardest thing to do and most miserable films are comedies.
I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.
I like doing the mainstream, right-down-the-pike broad comedies as much as I like doing the kind of unorthodox different stuff.
I want to do the romantic comedies. You know, the stuff that Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts or Reese Witherspoon would choose, of course.
I used to sort of consider myself a feminist, an environmentalist, and I still have some of that in me, but I’ve done so many offensive comedies, I’m now worn down to a little nub of… nub of an activist.
In mainstream romantic comedies, I’m usually tearing my hair out. It’s just a devastatingly difficult genre for me.
‘Horrible Bosses’ is just blatant, outright fun. I’ve read some of what the critics have said, and it’s incredible how mean critics can be about comedies… It’s so ridiculous.
I am tired of doing stupid comedies. Though comedy has given me the breakthrough in the industry, I constantly feel the need to grow.
When I became a film-maker, all my favourite films, they weren’t comedies.
There’s a hardening of the culture. Reality TV has lowered the standards of entertainment. You’re left wondering about the legitimacy of relationships. It’s probably harder to entertain the same people with a more classic form of writing, and romantic comedies are a classic genre.
As a professional actor, I don’t have much choice about what I’ve gotten into. I tend to be cast in comedies and I’m fine with that.
The Westerns I like aren’t really comedies. I’m drawn to the scope of them and the land as a central character.
It has nothing to do with the emotional demands of a role; I’ve done comedies that are as draining to me as any drama.
I’d like to do movies. The kind of comedies Jack Lemmon does.
The original ‘Caddyshack’ with Chevy Chase and Bill Murray is one of the best comedies ever made.
I like dark comedies. That’s why I like the Wayans Brothers.
In the beginning, I would find a character I understood. That was my focus. Not now – but you basically get offered the exact same thing you just did. Which I find hilarious. I did ‘The Vow,’ and then I had every love story you can imagine thrown at me. And now I’m getting offers for comedies.
When I was a kid I was much happier watching old movies than kids’ TV, and I ended up watching all the old Ealing comedies.
I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.
My father is best known for his light comedies, and I’m best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.
As an actor I get opportunities to do different kind of films. It’s not that if I have done a few comedies, I’m averse to other roles or genres. It’s just that I go for the films I like and incidentally some of them have been comedies.
I’ve done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon.
I don’t act in sex comedies, and whoever acts in them, I don’t think it’s bad, because cinema, art and theatre are the mirrors of society.
After ‘Melancholia’ and ‘On the Road,’ I wanted to do a comedy. And I did so many comedies when I was younger, but if you’re not consistently in those movies, people don’t always think of you for them.
I get asked all the time if I want to do more dramatic acting, and I really doubt that dramatic actors get asked if they want to do more comedies. I don’t really know why that is.
It’s awesome, because in live-action, most of my comedies have been rated R, so I’m trying to make adults laugh. While animation is a completely different world where you’re trying to make children laugh. So that difference is a blast to do.
My mother was an actress in comedies. My father wrote scenarios. They were not opposed to my being an actor. I really didn’t know what it meant, but I wanted to be one anyway.
