At some point in the past, it was decided that women in comedy are never supposed to be shown in an unflattering light. But in comedy, you need all of your tools to be funny.
My favorite work is The Full Monty because I got an Oscar for it. But it was really hard work at the time. Sometimes comedy is not a bundle of laughs to actually do.
It takes intelligence to make real comedy, and it takes a reality base to create all that little stuff I like to do that makes you giggle inside.
I don’t know if it’s a romantic comedy but I’m in the beginning of the first of the season of ‘The West Wing.’ We shot it last year. I don’t know. If anyone asks me to be in one, I’ll jump on it.
You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.
Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
I love a lot of comedy actors and actresses like Kristen Wiig and Tina Fey and all those women who are really brilliant and funny.
It doesn’t look great if you cancel the reigning Best Comedy Program, you know, you’re gonna take a hit from a… from sort of a public relations standpoint.
Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.
To be perfectly honest, drama is a lot simpler than comedy.
There’s a lot of comedy in Intermission but it’s got this depth. It’s not comedy for comedy’s sake – it’s informed by something else. I like stuff like that.
I’ve always been a figure skater and ballet dancer. I love physical comedy, and any chance that I get to do that… that is so me.
By the time I got to the point where I was ‘starring’ in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn’t for me. I’m really not an actor. I’m a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody’s precious words work.
‘Wayne’s World’ is my all time favorite comedy. I used to watch it on VHS on repeat with my brother when I was ten years old.
I always loved acting and improv and sketch comedy and theater, which I did at a local youth theater.
I like grown-up comedy, where it’s about character and attitude and life as opposed to obvious gross-out and jokes.
I am a fan of all genres. My big thing is to serve the purpose of the script and what the director wants. If it’s a comedy, I want to be funny; if it’s action, I want to bring the action. If it’s drama, I want to be the catalyst for that drama. That’s the fun part; it never gets boring being an actor.
I like comedy, I love it very much, I love laughing.
There’s a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up – or didn’t – and Jamaican stories.
We are living in the machine age. For the first time in history the comedian has been compelled to supply himself with jokes and comedy material to compete with the machine. Whether he knows it or not, the comedian is on a treadmill to oblivion.
Most comedy is based on getting a laugh at somebody else’s expense. And I find that that’s just a form of bullying in a major way. So I want to be an example that you can be funny and be kind, and make people laugh without hurting somebody else’s feelings.
I believe comedy is the toughest genre to bring alive onscreen, but it’s something that I really enjoy doing as an actor.
Comedy is defiance. It’s a snort of contempt in the face of fear and anxiety. And it’s the laughter that allows hope to creep back on the inhale.
Comedy comes with a bit of sarcasm, wit and edginess.
Every time I’ve done comedy in, like, traditional comedy clubs, there’s always these comedians that do really well with audiences but that the other comedians hate because they’re just, you know, doing kind of cheap stuff like dancing around or doing, like, very kind of base sex humor a lot, and stuff like that.
Comedy isn’t necessarily all dialogue. Think of Buster Keaton: the poker face and all this chaos going on all around him. Sometimes it’s a question of timing, of the proper rhythm.
Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.
The understatement is the English contribution to comedy.
When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.
Comedy. I think that’s something I’d really like to do.
I know the musical world as well as I know the comedy world.
In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons.
As a director, just to be able to jump in to do something that’s different, and to explore comedy and be challenged by that, is great. Some directors never get that opportunity.
I will always love to perform standup comedy.
I think I’m interested in these kinds of character dramas, psychological dramas, domestic dramas, whatever you want to call them – comedy dramas.
I feel like comedy had a boys’-club label when we were starting.
We just sort of thought a Web series would be a cool thing to be able to send to our parents to show them that we were, in fact, actually doing comedy.
Comedy actually works best when you’re living in an OK world, and you are pointing out the hypocrisy in apathy.
Comedy is ugly. It’s honest, it’s raw.
Everything I experience in life, I put through the sausage-maker that is comedy, and then try to make it funny for others. Whether that is healthy or not remains to be seen.
When I left school I was full of angst, like any teenager, and I channeled it all into comedy.
Stand-up comedy is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned.
Physical comedy and musical theatre were never actually in my main focus at school. I was more of a dramatic actor. I always thought I was better at that.
Commercial directing felt like a very natural transition from my comedy, sketch, music video directing experience.
You know what I would really like to do? I’d like to do a half hour drama with comedy in it.
I certainly love doing comedy and feel most comfortable near it.
Stand-up comedy and comedy in general is the ultimate form of free speech, because you get to poke holes in all the pretentious bubbles politicians and pundits and popes and pretenders try to float over our heads.
T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy.
It’s the contemporary woman that movies don’t know what to do with, other than bathe her in a bridal glow in romantic comedies where both the romance and the comedy are artificial sweeteners.
I’ve always read books and loved human behavior since I was ten or twelve years old. Maybe even that’s why I wanted to do comedy.
Yet there are some people – Steve Allen would dissect comedy forever; he’s a really funny guy, but he would love talking about comedy. I’m doing it right now and you all seem bored.
The real reason for comedy is to hide the pain.
‘The Watch’ is first and foremost a comedy, but since I got to shoot the film using elements from the sci-fi genre, I wanted to make sure the alien didn’t look goofy. I got to make a real alien that looks dangerous. That was a big plus for me because I got to do something really fun and cool.
If I can make a teacher’s salary doing comedy, I think that’s better than being a teacher.
I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.
Apparently nobody really read it, it was a cheap movie, it fit their schedule in terms of things so fine, let the guy make that high school comedy. I used to work with Mel Brooks so they figured oh it’s going to be one of those really silly movies and that’s how it got made.
Whether it’s corporate investigations or comedy, there are certain inherent truths to trying to get what you want while trying to be a decent person doing it.
I left Indiana, and I ain’t been back since. I’ve been doing comedy and paying my bills.
Harpo Marx looks like a musical comedy.
I love romantic comedy, but I think you have to have another idea that you’re chasing along with romantic comedy.
The development of the comedy club industry destroyed the uniqueness and intimacy of the profession but it also created jobs for comics and bred some great performers.
I was never really comfortable doing comedy. Though it was good the first couple of years, there were problems, and it became a stifling experience. I was happy it ended.
The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you’re doing one thing. That is, you’re going to make the audience laugh.
As the purpose of comedy is to correct the vices of men, I see no reason why anyone should be exempt.
For me, comedy starts as a spew, a kind of explosion, and then you sculpt it from there, if at all. It comes out of a deeper, darker side. Maybe it comes from anger, because I’m outraged by cruel absurdities, the hypocrisy that exists everywhere, even within yourself, where it’s hardest to see.
