Top 33 Jonathan Krisel Quotes

There is no ‘recycle too much.’ That’s an oxymoron.

I love awesome mixed drinks.

I went to film school, and I came in when video art was king, weird stuff was king, and there, you don’t have a script as your bible.

The end goal is to make a piece that everybody has ownership over and everybody’s proud of because everybody contributed to it. I think there’s a communist, socialist vibe to ‘Portlandia’ to make it work.

I love the beige, tan, stucco world where the sun bleaches things out to the point that it can look somewhat ugly.

For me, I love and hate Costco. I think it’s ruined America and made America great.

Nobody sets out to be evil. They’re insecure, and they make bad decisions.

My whole thing is, you listen to the actor and help them bring out their best thing.

You see a lot of comedic content that’s not funny, and you can tell that it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s actually not funny.

The Internet is a good way to try some stuff with no big crew and no money being spent. Since there are no stakes to it, you can try to be a little experimental.

I look at a show like ‘Roseanne.’ That’s super influential on me. It’s very funny, very real, with real problems. That was a big influence, and I don’t know if you see that all the time in the network world.

Louie Anderson thinks my thing is the absurdness of reality. That’s what we do on ‘Portlandia’ all the time. I try to bring that absurdness of reality to everything.

With comedy, I’ve always had a pretty good sense of what I like and how to execute it well, but drama has its own rules.

In your twenties, you might want to be radical and change the world, but in your thirties, you might just want to be happy and ground yourself.

I always look at ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ They talked about how they wrote this movie with horses, and then they realized that horses are super-expensive and time-consuming. ‘Why don’t we just change it to coconuts?’ That’s part of my process.

Once the big lights come in, you can feel self-conscious. How can you capture the scene without ruining it and freezing people up? You keep it small and lean.

My dad did show me interesting movies at a young age. I remember he showed me ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ and my mom said, ‘I never want to see this movie in my house again.’

One second here and there will make all the difference between something being funny and not being funny. That’s why I like going, ‘Well, we wrote that six months ago, and it was funny one time we read it, but it’s not funny anymore. So what? Just dump it.’

In Portland, it rains all the time – but who cares? That’s not funny. That’s not universal.

With all the outlets, if you have a strong comedic voice, there’s a venue to do your thing. It’s a bit of a meritocracy, where the best stuff rises to the top.

I saw Sleater Kinney perform back when I was in college.

‘Portlandia’ is 100 percent improvised, and I came into this business not knowing anything.

A huge part of making something work is getting along with people you work with. You want them to succeed; you want them to bring their ideas to life as much as possible.

I love working with nonactors.

When you make a pilot, you’ve never seen the show before; you don’t know what it is.

As the director, you have it in your mind how you want the part done, how you want someone to do it, and so sometimes you just say, ‘Why don’t I do it myself?’ So for a little role, I’ll just do it.

Certain shows, when it’s all comedy, it’s like when you eat something that’s too sweet and it just tastes gross. You need that salted caramel.

There’s a thing in comedy where you take one step into a bad idea, but if you take 10, then it becomes a good idea again.

It’s how you define yourself. It’s not Nirvana or Pearl Jam: it’s, ‘Do you watch ‘Portlandia’ or ‘Amy Schumer’?’ It relates to a specific sense of humor. And, ‘Do you know the hidden gems?’ Like, if you knew the Pixies in the ’80s.

My brand of comedy is taking a serious approach to silliness. Small moments of modern life and human behavior make me laugh. At least that’s where everything starts, and then my other through line would be a dry absurdity that exponentially spirals out of reality.

It’s exciting being in the present. You’re always reading emails, talking about the future, looking at pictures on Facebook of the past. But living in the present? It’s almost a dead medium. I almost want to do a sketch about being in the present.

Portland is utopia. My favorite thing would be it’s earnestness. I am earnest, too.

You can tell a lot about a person by what comedians they like.