I always approach comedy roles pretending they aren’t funny.
I definitely relate so much to a lot of women in comedy, but I don’t love segregating the genders. I’m just as influenced by male comedians as I am female comedians.
I love a good laugh as well, I think that’s so important in life, which is probably why I’ve dabbled in comedy writing as well as horror. I think if you can make someone laugh or smile it’s the most special thing in the world.
When I first started out in the industry, I was 12 or whatever, and I wanted to be on something so bad, and I didn’t know what I was going to be on. At the time, I was in school, and I was working on drama and theatrical stuff, so I never thought that I’d end up going to comedy.
That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don’t play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.
When has stand-up comedy been kind to anyone? It goes after anyone who’s the target. Comedy attacks, man.
Jimmy Kimmel has proven to be a preeminent voice in comedy, with 15 seasons of ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ under his belt and successfully tackling the herculean task of hosting both the Emmys and the Oscars in the same season.
You know, comedy’s hard. With drama, you have a responsibility to the emotional truth, but with comedy, you have emotional truth and you have technique on top of it.
A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal.
I don’t do comedy so much although I would like to do a comedy.
I’ve always liked and appreciated storytellers like Garry Shandling and Bill Cosby – more long-form comedy. So starting in San Francisco, watching all these great comics – Patton Oswalt, Dave Chappelle – you get to see them a bunch, and you go, ‘Wow, this is where I need to be.’
Man, Amy Ryan. I have geeked out so hard for her – to her face! There aren’t a lot of people that can cross those lines of drama and comedy so seamlessly as Amy Ryan.
What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy.
I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.
Music is very similar to comedy: It’s all about texture, timing, context, vocabulary, performance. When someone’s onstage doing a solo, essentially it’s the same thing as what a comedian does. They’re in the moment. They’re listening.
I paint; I draw and paint – I’ve been doing that since I was in third grade, drawing realistically and then changing to abstract art. That was my first creative thing before guitar or comedy.
Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.
I’ve known Harvey for over 40 years and I worked with him on the Burnett show for 11 years. I guess you could say we’re about as close as you can get to being a comedy team.
I was open to anything, but comedy was what I really loved.
If I were given a choice between two films and one was dark and explored depraved, troubled or sick aspects of our culture, I would always opt for that over the next romantic comedy.
As soon as I go into a dark subject, like discussing the people I’ve loved and lost, I off-road into absurdist comedy perversion. It’s both a means of protection and a kind of denial, a blessing and a curse. Wait, it’s not a blessing at all. I guess it would be a bad habit and a curse.
I always feel that comedy, at its best, tackles issues that are controversial, polarizing, volatile, and sheds light onto those issues and the people involved.
It’s not easy to direct in another language, especially comedy.
Is it spoken word? Kinda, but that’s a weird area. Is it comedy? Well, it’s funny but no, it’s not comedy.
I have no real enemies in comedy, but there are a couple of people who I’d laugh about if I heard that their legs had fallen off.
Some comedians will tour and do these classic bits all the time. But now with YouTube and Comedy Central, people see your stuff, and they don’t want to hear you do that again.
Half the shows on Comedy Central are just multi-cam blue sets, and they kind of look like game shows from the ’90s. It’s like, ‘Why do such a bland corporate aesthetic when the sky’s the limit with what you can do?’
The only way to stay sharp is to do live shows. There is no part-time comedy.
A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don’t know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that’s all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly.
We have no blasphemy laws these days but with that freedom comes the responsibility which should always attend the exercise of free speech: truth, courtesy and an awareness of impact. It is the last of these which is so neglected by so much modern comedy.
I find painting a much slower process than comedy, where you can go a mile a minute verbally and hope to God that some of the people out there understand you. I don’t paint every day. I’m not that motivated.
The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I’ve got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I’d love to be doing all that again.
When I read the script, I liked the script very much and I thought it was a marvelous part for her, because I think it is a change of pace. I mean, we know how wonderful she is in romantic comedy.
To listen to your own silence is the key to comedy.
Someone I’ve always admired is Catherine O’Hara… I think she’s one of the best actresses in the country, not only comedy. I just think she’s just a step aside from everybody, she’s just wonderful.
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.
I get all of my comedy from CNN.
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time writing, acting, and making films. Because I’m doing all this extra writing, acting, and creating short comedy skits with my friends in improv shows, I feel like that’s really filled out my confidence on the mic.
When I moved to New York, I didn’t know how much improv and comedy would play into my life. I thought I was going to do theater and Broadway and stuff.
I think comedy is a good way to help people change their minds. I think that if you’re laughing and getting a message across, it’s a lot easier than when somebody is screaming in your face.
The male is always the pawn in a romantic comedy. Come together, break up, go chase her, get her, roll credits. That’s what happens in all of them.
Don’t get me wrong, there are sometimes if I go and see a really funny comedy, that I wished I had smoked a joint. I’ll be honest with you. That’s the truth.
‘The Dice Man’ is an anti-establishment cult novel, and you don’t normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.
I’d love to write more observational comedy but the stuff people seem to respond to is the most personal so it’s snowballed from there.
If there’s anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it’s an incompetent stupid action comedy. It’s not so bad it’s good. It’s so bad it’s nothing else but bad.
I did skit comedy online for many years, beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing, which was the comedy.
What is comedy? Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke.
I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you’re starting out in comedy, it’s the audience that tells you what’s funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.
Comedy is incredibly hard. You have to be loose. You have to be not afraid to fail.
I think a lot of comedy is about making fun of people at the expense of somebody.
If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs.
Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It’s the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.
Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you’re putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can’t second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.
Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all.
You get into comedy because you are insecure, and you communicate with the world through comedy to sort of alleviate the tension of those insecurities and to find a way to make people like you other than the way you look or how good you are at sports. I don’t think that really goes away.
The original Dean Martin Comedy Hour handed me some hysterical sketches. I’ve got highlights on tons of these variety shows, given to me by their great writers. I’d love to be doing all that again.
I don’t want to sit and cry for an hour in a movie. I’d rather have an action or a comedy.
