A lot of people get into stand-up as a back door into acting or something. But I really like writing jokes and telling jokes.
As far as my personality, my friends and family know I’m crazy! I love to have fun; I’m bubbly. People say I’m funny but I don’t know that I’m funny: I don’t try to be funny and tell jokes and stuff like that, but I always got something slick to say.
But the worst feeling as a crowd work practitioner is that not only is crowd work, for me, the most fun thing to do on stage – I always say the less written jokes I tell in a set the more fun I was having–but it’s also a secret weapon.
Good clothes are good clothes, and they don’t need whales and tricks and too many jokes. Sometimes you just need something to wear.
I love films that make you feel something but also deliver that payload behind jokes.
Ceawlin is good at both business and the fun side. We laugh at the same old jokes, and the boys get funnier every day.
Democrats are like a big tortoise that’s on its back and can’t get up; you can’t make jokes about that.
Most of my standup is about stuff that makes me uncomfortable. There are also things I don’t joke about. I don’t do jokes about the people who helped me get sober.
Some comedians tell nice jokes that you can tell to your kids. Some use bad words – they work ‘blue.’ If you don’t want to hear a joke that’s blue, you shouldn’t go to a comedy club where a comedian who makes blue jokes is performing.
I write in reverse: Rather than come up with a narrative and write jokes for that narrative, I write jokes independently of the narrative, then I try to fit them in.
I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.
Comedy is so collaborative. You’re going to come up with better jokes with people you like joking around with. It just makes sense.
I’ve always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can’t tell to an audience. There’s a fine line you have to tread because you don’t know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.
One of the jokes among our family was that whenever Dad went to the movies, he insisted on getting his senior citizen’s discount. It was laughable to view him as a traditional senior citizen; he was one of the most robust people I ever knew. Until, very suddenly, he wasn’t.
When I first started on Twitter, a relative asked, ‘Aren’t you concerned with giving away your jokes?’ I don’t think of it that way. That’s my content, and that’s what I do.
I guess I tell jokes a lot, but I’m not really that sure because sometimes they don’t laugh, and they just stare at me like I said something insulting.
People get really scared when women reclaim words, talk about themselves honestly and also make jokes because it’s a really unstoppable combination.
I started doing my own animated movies when I was in ninth grade; that’s when I got the filmmaking bug. When I was about 16, I started writing jokes for doing stand up, and then I was 19 and started doing stand up.
I sit in places like Costa Coffee in Banstead and write rubbish. I need a deadline. I think about the 44 tour dates and keep imagining standing in front of all these people. Then every day I write 15 jokes minimum.
Neil Hamburger writes such cutting jokes.
For starters, let’s dispense with the cheap jokes about cannibalism. That means cracks about giving an arm and a leg – sorry – for a good book on the subject, or similar tasteless – sorry, again – attempts to make the subject more palatable – last one.
Engineers working in the ‘black world’ of classified military projects are often referred to in military circles as ‘black hats.’ There are a lot of jokes about the difference between ‘white hats’ and their spooky counterparts.
I think the way comedy is represented on screen is it’s either all fart jokes – and it’s just laughter for the sake of laughter – or it’s one of those things where it’s just kind of very preachy, very heavy-handed.
I got into stand-up because I love stand-up. Specifically in stand-up, I love jokes. I love short, structured ideas and a punch line.
Whenever I talk about my culture, I want to shine a light on it. Even though I’m having fun, I want to make sure it’s uplifting. I’m proud of it, and that’s always been the foundation of my jokes.
The thing about all good horror movies is that the fans expect a couple of inside jokes. Maybe I’m supposed to be saying how terrified I was while making it, but it was really fun.
I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.
While ‘The Middle’ is still funny for adults to watch, there aren’t sex jokes. And I’m fine with that. I like the idea that my nieces and nephews can watch it without their parents.
I was in California the first time I heard Michael Jackson wanted to record with me. I was, like, ‘Nah, no way, he’s too big, it can’t be true.’ Then I got a call from Michael’s people at my hotel telling me he was interested. But I still wasn’t believing it – I thought they were setting me up for a TV practical jokes show.
A lot of entertainment, and especially in a half-hour format, can be all jokes, all the time. And some of those jokes can be really, really funny, but what I respond to, as a viewers, is identification or caring about the characters.
I’m one of the people who actually laughs at everyone else’s jokes!
If I were bombing with my jokes in English, I would go back to France. Maybe do that mime thing.
It’s a very short walk to go from making jokes to getting on a soapbox and going on a diatribe.
One can always come up with funny lists and jokes. You know what? I take it back. Not everyone can always come up with funny lists and some jokes. I’m very lucky to have a gift where I can do that pretty ably.
I detest jokes – when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn’t know it’s funny or doesn’t treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it’s a sort of rage against society.
I used to write jokes with friends. We’d pick a topic and then think out loud, brainstorm.
A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff – like Warner Brothers cartoons’ pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war – and then the overall character appeal.
Twitter taught me how to become better at writing jokes because it forces you to chip away at all the extraneous words.
Once you’re in a room like ’30 Rock,’ it’s a creative setting, so you write more even after you go home, just because you’re still in that mode of coming up with jokes. So the job wasn’t sapping standup jokes, but it was sapping stand up time and energy, and I wouldn’t be able to travel as much.
I grew up on EC comic books and ‘Tales From the Crypt,’ which were all loaded with humor, bad jokes, and puns. I can have that kind of fun and make these comic book movies but, at the same time, talk about things I want to talk about – whether it’s consumerism or the Bush administration or war.
Sometimes, comedy and entertainment is not all about telling jokes; sometimes you just have to be you for a few moments.
People probably perceive me as a bit boring because I am a little slow in the humor department, but it’s just hard for me to get jokes when they’re told in English. I am always the last one to get it.
Before, I didn’t do celebrity stuff, ’cause Kathy Griffin did that, but now, if you’re going to make jokes on Twitter, you have to stay current.
The thing that’s frustrating about improv is that even if you have the best show in the world, it’s over when it’s over. You get to build stand-up – I really like that aspect of it. I like writing jokes, and you don’t get to do that in improv.
Times change. The farmer’s daughter now tells jokes about the traveling salesman.
I would write 100 jokes a day. Most of them were terrible. But I just said, ‘I’ll write more than everybody else, and that’s how I’ll get better.’
Once I took to Twitter and shared those jokes, they became a huge hit. My following grew, and some of the posts got thousands of retweets. With so many shares, money from sponsors followed.
Before doing my first open mic, I was sitting in the back watching all these comedians banter back and forth and fire jokes and up each other, and I thought, ‘This is where I wanna be.’
Our family dinner table was my first platform – every dinner was all about sharing stories and jokes and points of view.
Something about not waiting for the laugh of a laugh track allows you to take lines that otherwise might be seen as just direct jokes, and make them seem realistic.
I’m on Twitter a lot of the day because I really like Twitter. It’s great for jokes. But when I’m writing, I can’t do anything else. I can’t even listen to music. I just have to write, and then I can do something else. I can’t multitask.
Male writers don’t want to be judged in the room. They want to be able to scarf an entire bag of potato chips while cracking fart jokes and making lewd comments without fear of feminine disapproval. But we’re your co-workers, not your wives.
