Creative comedy is like growing geraniums in a mine field.
The ability to workshop in stand-up comedy is incomparable to any art form, in my opinion.
When the comedy community turned on me, I had a lot of reflecting to do.
I was drafted and went to Korea where I had an opportunity to create a production team that did dramatic and comedy shows. I had also done a little disc jockeying.
Especially with a comedy, you’ve got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It’s not like drama where you’re trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You’re trying to figure out what’s the funniest way to do something.
I saw ‘Annie Hall’ with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.
People have all these preconceptions about me. Whereas if you look at the roles, Henry Hill was the nicest guy in ‘Goodfellas!’ I was a nice guy too in the comedy ‘Heartbreakers.’ And I was a really sweet father to Johnny Depp in ‘Blow!’
The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.
Theo does comedy now, and he’s traveling around the country doing comedy, and I actually just saw him, he’s from Louisiana, and I just saw him when I went home to visit my family in Louisiana. I saw his comedy show and he was brilliant.
And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn’t work then you’ve got to the whole root of comedy.
Comedy is learning to be funny, and you learn to be funny in small rooms with young audiences.
While awaiting sentencing, I decided to give stand-up comedy a shot. The judge had suggested I get my act together, and I took him seriously.
I can’t tell if I want to be a rapper who’s funny because I kind of enjoy just doing really stupid songs about nothing. But I want to have a career that’s long-lasting, and I don’t think people want to listen to a straight-up comedy rapper all the time.
Saturday Night Live is such a comedy boot camp in a way, because you get to work with so many different people who come in to host the show and you get thrown into so many situations and learn how to think on your feet, so filmmaking actually feels slow, in a good way.
There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
Too much comedy today is vulgar, not clever. I say that as a comedian and as a consumer.
Doing comedy for film is always a challenge because you are in the hands of the editor after the fact. I am hoping I can do some more soon, I enjoy doing comedy.
Aditi is a comedy superstar over in India. She’s only one of three female English-speaking comedians in India.
For a comedy to work, magic has to happen.
Even in the depths of dreadful situations, there’s usually something rather comic, or something you can laugh about afterwards, at least. So, I do look for the comedy in those things.
If you want to laugh, see a comedy. If you want to cry, see a drama, and if you want suspense, see a thriller.
I never want to be called the funniest Indian female comedian that exists. I feel like I can go head-to-head with the best white, male comedy writers that are out there. Why would I want to self-categorize myself into a smaller group than I’m able to compete in?
With our hectic lives, a dose of comedy is a must.
First off, I don’t do self-deprecation comedy based on being fat. I would always talk about it honestly. Secondly, I don’t care how much I weigh.
I was definitely not the kid that just wanted to be famous for no reason whatsoever and then happened to find comedy. Fame and all that stuff have always been slightly terrifying to me, and it makes me very anxious.
But I just think I was lucky enough to figure out early on that I wanted to do comedy, so that’s what I put all my effort into.
Why do we laugh at such terrible things? Because comedy is often the sarcastic realization of inescapable tragedy.
To the extent that there is anything properly identifiable as dignity in our society today, our present writers of comedy would be inclined to treat it as a proper object of ridicule.
I’ve an idea for doing a Situation Comedy myself but its always difficult to get people to listen to you because they like to put their own ideas forward.
Above all, in comedy, and again and again since classical times, passages can be found in which the level of representation is interrupted by references to the spectators or to the fictive nature of the play.
‘Breaking In’ is a very different office comedy and a caper comedy. Aside from ‘Chuck,’ there is no half-hour comedy that does stuff like that.
You know, stand-up comedy is where I pretty much started out.
My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.
I know, when I was in film school, some of my films were silly, but a lot of them were more dramatic. I don’t think I intentionally set out to do comedy stuff. I guess that’s a consequence of coming up working with David O. Russell and skewing toward those sensibilities.
Life is neither comedy or tragedy, life is what you make of it.
I feel like, at times, I’ve been seen as the dirty stepchild of Australian comedy. I think there’s a few people out there that are pissed off that I made it big overseas.
Blonde is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy.
Humor is very interesting to me. My films are not comedies, but there’s comedy in them from time to time, absurdities, just like in real life.
I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music – it’s like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.
Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.
I started selling out comedy clubs before I got to town with no advertising. I was selling out theaters just on the rumor that I was going to be there.
By making the gay character funny and sweet but above all normal, you make a far better, longer lasting statement than you would if you had an entirely gay comedy.
I love Benny Hill. He one of my favourites of aaall time. Like, the way Benny did it, he was just amazing. Just seeing how he put songs together and comedy and the timing and the sketches. He was way ahead of his time.
If you want good sketches, go pick up Sid Caesar. The best of Your Show of Shows. That’s the greatest sketch comedy you’ll ever see on television.
I don’t just want to be a cute girl in a comedy or the actress who just does the same thing over and over again. I want to play roles that are distinct. I want to have a more varied career like actresses Viola Davis or Angela Bassett – those are the people that I grew up watching and admiring.
‘Rubberneck’ has nothing to do with comedy, nor does it follow comedic people.
It’s hard to write a comedy sketch.
When you are honest in your comedy, you have to acknowledge the world that you’re in. Through a comedic voice, you’re talking about what needs to be talked about, whether it’s race relations or politics or anything that’s happening on a global or an American scale.
I had enough therapy to know when I broke it down, it became clearer to me: Yes, comedy was kind of a cleansing thing for me to do.
It seems like when I first started, people got into comedy because they wanted to be good comedians.
All I mean is, I’m not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it’s not very loud. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the movie.
Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
‘NRT’ is a comedy film, which has the extreme of emotions with Vijay Sethupathi and Nayanthara as the protagonists.
My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.
People look at me and go, ‘He’s only successful because he’s got a bunch of 16-year-old girls at his back who don’t understand comedy.’ Well, they do. In any case, no one hates me more than I do; no one’s more self-conscious about that than I am.
I’ve always just been attracted to comedy.
It’s a lot of work and I also feel like I’ve done it. I miss comedy. And I also think that, from purely a logistical standpoint, that the day-to-day schedule on a comedy allows you to have a life, much more of a life, than on a drama.
My mom and dad are both in stand-up comedy, so that’s where I started, that’s where I got everything. My roots are holding the mic.
People who do comedy are always underrated because they make it look so easy.
Comedy is a reflection. We create nothing. We set no styles, no standards. We’re reflections. It’s a distorted mirror in the fun house. We watch society. As society behaves, then we have the ability to make fun of it.
With comedy, I think it’s so important, especially in TV, to know and trust what the writers are writing and just have it down.
There was so long from when we did the pilot and then when the show was eventually picked up by Comedy Central – and, in fact, we had to shoot the pilot twice.
I was a precocious only child, and then I went through a fat, awkward stage for several years, so I learned to fall back on my humor and personality when I was growing up. It’s how you survive, so I think it was more of a natural progression for me, developing into comedy.
