In this post, you will find great Comedy Quotes from famous people, such as Moliere, Howie Mandel, Stephen Dorff, Jamie Farr, Joy Behar. You can learn and implement many lessons from these quotes.
In the mid-1970s, there was this huge boom of stand-up comedy throughout North America. I went to see a show at a club called Yuk-Yuks, in Toronto, and I was just fascinated. I ended up coming back for amateur hour on a Monday at midnight and got up there without any thought as to what might come of it.
Comedy is still alive, and there are still funny people. Jews are still overrepresented in comedy and psychiatry and underrepresented in the priesthood. That immigrant Jewish humor is still with us.
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.
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.
I like grown up 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.
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 was open to anything, but comedy was what I really loved.
Good comedy is ageless.
I love doing comedy – I get a laugh out of it, it’s not so serious.
Comedy is created when someone is trying very earnestly to do what he feels is the right thing to do at that moment.
Yeah, well I’ve always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that’s really where my training is. As an actor, that’s my training.
And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn’t work then you’ve got to the whole root of comedy.
Well my biggest dream is to be in a romantic comedy.
No ideology better understands the need for enemies than neoconservatism, and when the cold war dramatically and unexpectedly ended, the way was prepared for the ‘Arab threat‘ to emerge. ‘True Lies,’ the 1994 James Cameron comedy thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, duly served up the Arab villain Salim Abu Aziz.
I think that you can fall into bad habits with comedy… It’s a tightrope to stay true to the character, true to the irony, and allow the irony to happen.
I do films that I like. I have done comedy, romance, everything, and I always like to do it differently from the previous ones.
First and foremost, I just want to write 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 learned everything that I know about comedy and about show business and a lot about life from Carl.
Comedy, at least the way I write comedy, is just drama with jokes.
Humour and high seriousness… Perfect bedfellows, I think. Though I usually phrase it in terms of comedy and darkness. Comedy without darkness rapidly becomes trivial. And darkness without comedy rapidly becomes unbearable.
I think ‘Glee‘ was a freshman comedy, and I think whenever it’s your debut season, you get compared a lot to the other shows, regardless if there’s any sort of overlap in content or tone or anything, just because you came out in the same year.
I want to do drama, light comedy, the whole range.
I have been part of films like Rajamanikyam’ and Seniors,’ which had genuine comedy and I am comfortable with the genre.
I consider a CD or a comedy collection as a record of what I’ve been doing, and I try to wrap it up and start new material.
All improv turns into anger. All comedy improv basically turns into anger, because that’s all people know how to do when they’re improvising. If you notice shows that are improvising are generally people yelling at each other.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before ‘The Simpsons.’ There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
As an actor, you read so many scripts and parts written for Asian-specific characters, and you see a lot of stereotypes and a lot of one-note characters, especially in comedy.
As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That’s what’s funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.
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 am a passionate believer that comedy is a way of tackling some of the most dark and difficult aspects of being a human being.
Right now, I’d like to just continue on a series where I am doing good work with a balance of comedy and drama. That and do occasional features and movies.
I see parody as another form of comedy.
Well, a lot of politics is communicating with people, and obviously comedy has something to do with that. I’ve been a producer and led people. Also, being a comedian, you’re under pressure.
Many comedians and comedy writers have shared the childhood experience of learning to joke to protect themselves from neighborhood bullies when challenge or physical defense were not among the sensible options.
Hopefully there will be a day when all comedy is all robots.
The first rule of comedy should be, you must be very lazy. Whoever works should be immediately removed.
I never analyze stuff with comedy because it’s boring. It makes you stop being funny. Just be who you are and do what you do, and you’re either funny or you’re not.
After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that’s where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
I think romantic comedy, when done right, is my favorite genre. It’s just a genre that’s very human.
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.
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 is only funny when there’s real pain.
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.
There’s a theory with comedy that you shouldn’t do anything that’s too topical in your specials because people won’t be able to watch them in five years. But I look at Trump in the same way I look at Mr. T. I can watch comedy jokes about Mr. T in the ’80s and still understand what they’re talking about.
‘Tin Cup’ was great because I loved the comedy aspect of it, so that was good.
I was very young when ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ came out, but that kind of comedy and the spontaneity of her, I think it really deeply affected me within just the joy of performance.
I’ve always just been attracted to comedy.
The first comedy screenplay that I wrote was Animal House and I always thought I could and should be a director but no one was about to give me that opportunity on Animal House.
Comedy, like sodomy, is an unnatural act.
‘The Dictator‘ – well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.
This hiatus coming up I’m looking at a comedy because I need the balance.
I think comedy has evolved like every art form, and people probably do less standing around and telling jokes, and more things that have to do with reality.
Nihilism in American comedy came along way before ‘The Simpsons.’ There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to ‘Saturday Night Live,’ for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.
Yeah, even a black comedy. Where it’s a little eerie. I’d love to do that. But there are about three really fabulous ones on the air now and I don’t know if I can do any better than that. I’d like to sort of forge new ground.
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.
Between us and the writers, it was comedy hour the whole time. We could hardly get through it.
Comedy is here to bring joy to the world, whether you want to hear the curse words or not.
Molly Shannon, for example, is someone I’ve always really looked up to, because her comedy is so physical and wild and unembarrassed and brave.
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.
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.
I started getting really interested in comedy when I was in middle school.
I enjoy doing comedy that is why I pursue it. I believe that life is hard enough already and full of drama so I find things that are funny to use as material.
The stuff I did in ‘Rescue Me’ was great. It gave me the opportunity to play comedy, and Denis Leary was the first one to take a chance with me. And from that experience, we had a comedy pilot that we did that I was going to play the lead in. And then ‘Person of Interest’ came along. They’re all new experiences.
Comedy is wonderful when you really nail it and you hear people laughing, but it’s not always that easy.
An actor who is good at comedy can also be very good at drama, but not necessarily vice versa.
I would love to make a romantic comedy.
When you do comedy shows, you usually don’t finish until about 11 P.M. Then you have this adrenaline dump, and you get hungry.
Doing comedy is still in my veins; that’s my first love.
I went to NYU drama school, so I was a very serious actress. I used to do monologues with a Southern accent, and I was really into drama and drama school. And then, in my last year of drama school, I did a comedy show, and the show became a big hit on campus.
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
Sometimes I wonder how I got into comedy at all.
I guess funny people are attracted to funny people, and then you get comedy marriages.
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.
A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.
If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what’s funny in the joke.
I love John Irving’s stuff. It’s that marriage of comedy and tragedy. It’s really terrific.
You’re at the top of your game if you do comedy.
There’s comedy even in tragedy. There’s comedy in life. And in ‘Castle‘, we go for that comedy.
Comedy and drama are both challenging to me.
Comedy is great because there’s no overhead.
People used to think of me as a comedy actor.
I was in love with a lot of people, because I was a student of the game of comedy – Carol Burnett, Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Jackie Gleason, Don Rickles, Red Foxx, Moms Mabley – who gets no credit, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, George Kirby. I loved them all, and I used to just take a page out of all of them.
Comedy comes with a bit of sarcasm, wit and edginess.
Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. A talent in one area might also lead to a predisposition in the other.
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.
I was never considered ‘a marketable hero’, and never got promoted to that category. I am not complaining – I found another niche – comedy – which is equally enjoyable and brought me as much comfort as I need.
I do comedy shows. I make fun of myself, first of all.
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.
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn’t even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.
In tragedy every moment is eternity; in comedy, eternity is a moment.
At the end of the day, stand-up comedy is like acting when the audience are the other characters that I’m acting with.
I’d love to do acting, but it’d definitely have to be comedy. I can’t do serious. It’s completely beyond me.
Commercial directing felt like a very natural transition from my comedy, sketch, music video directing experience.
Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don’t know who that’s attributed to. I think it’s Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.
The great thing about ‘The Office’ and it being single-camera and the documentary style is that it’s mostly a comedy, but 10 percent of it is, we get to show the existential angst that exists in the American workplace.
One of my biggest problems with comedy was that I did not understand some of the jokes.
Women and minorities have excelled beautifully in comedy, but very few women are the lead in a drama.
The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it’s so much fun.
I’m not interested in parts where they are looking for a good-looking guy. I want to be a weird little sidekick in a crazy comedy and then play like a dark drama or a thriller.
The nature of comedy is ‘just do it.’ But I think what’s interesting about it is this joke has been around and why. And it’s just saying what’s wrong and how wrong can you be if you say it.
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.
Drama is easy. Comedy’s hard.
You know what I would really like to do? I’d like to do a half hour drama with comedy in it.
I also want to return to doing stand-up. I’ve become frightened of live audiences. This is a really telling sign that I need to go back on the comedy circuit again.
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.
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
Stand-up comedy is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned.
I started out with comedy in college, but had my major in Recreation Administration – which meant I wasn’t going to get a real job – so I started doing a little standup.
I’m doing comedy development at National Lampoon.
Well, I think that there’s a value to comedy in and of itself.
Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what’s serious. I think that’s true. Sometimes things are really funny if you’re absolutely earnest. If you’re really serious, it’s hilarious.
If you look at it, the history of comedy has always been strongest among the nations who have been persecuted the most.
Unless you’re Jack Lemmon or Cary Grant, there are few guys who can do comedy and drama.
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.
We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.
I think it’s great training for any comedian to start on cows. Because with cows, you expect them to be bored and just stare at you blankly. And that’s exactly what you’ll get at a comedy club. If you can toughen up with a cow audience, then you’ll never be worried with a human audience.
I love good comedy. I don’t like bad comedy.
When I tour, it’s like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour. I try to eat at all the weird places, the obscure barbecue joints, burger places. There are a few spots in L.A. that I’m obsessed with – one of them is the Taco Zone taco truck on Alvarado. There are secret off-menu items that are amazing.
I like comedy, I love it very much, I love laughing.
Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago’s mean streets.
Comedy is so subjective. If you trip and fall down, some people will laugh, and some people will say, ‘Oh, physical comedy is so pedestrian.’ Some people look at Three Stooges as lowbrow; some people consider them artists. No one is wrong. It’s just a personal take.
Comedy is very controlling – you are making people laugh.
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.
I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
I think the comedy clubs tend to homogenize the acts a little bit, because they force them to be palatable in way too many environments.
The only honest art form is laughter, comedy. You can’t fake it… try to fake three laughs in an hour – ha ha ha ha ha – they’ll take you away, man. You can’t.
Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did.
Bad movies: they can be tatty classics of crazed ineptitude, like Edward D. Wood’s ‘Glen or Glenda’ and ‘Plan 9 from Outer Space,’ or big-budget misfires like the 1987 ‘Ishtar,’ a would-be comedy that sent Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman on a Hope-Crosby Road to Dystopia.
Comedy’s really about not being afraid to look terrible, look ugly, look silly, make fun of yourself. And that’s something that women are just not socialized to do. But more women are doing it, and more women have examples of women doing it brilliantly.
Voice actors I used to know who were starting out in comedy were guys who did a lot of voices. They were usually comedy actors who developed their comedy by doing tons of impressions and voices that were usually very funny. And I never did any of that, so that’s, I guess, why I don’t consider myself a voice actor.
Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it’s one place you can process them.
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.
To all my soap fans out there, my horror fanatics, comedy lovers, I will tell you this: ‘Death Valley‘ is an action-packed drama, comedic, horror TV series that has a non-stop adventure in each episode. It’s like a huge pot of Texas gumbo. If you like all four of those genres, then you’ll love this show.
Comedy is difficult for an actor. But I think I have a good sense of humor and manage to make people laugh and make them happy.
I do comedy at a lot of colleges, and at the end of those shows, I take time to be a little more real with audiences. I try to inspire them to follow their dreams. When I was that age, it was incredible to hear stuff like that.
I feel like comedy had a boys’-club label when we were starting.
I think my goal was just to do comedy, honestly. It still is. Whatever form that took or takes, it doesn’t matter.
I love my ‘Survivor‘s Remorse‘ cast. They are so funny and crazy, like a big dysfunctional family. It’s so much fun, and I love the issues that we talk about on that show. We deal with nuanced and controversial issues, and we do it in a way that’s funny. It’s comedy.
Voice actors I used to know who were starting out in comedy were guys who did a lot of voices. They were usually comedy actors who developed their comedy by doing tons of impressions and voices that were usually very funny. And I never did any of that, so that’s, I guess, why I don’t consider myself a voice actor.
The word ‘supportive‘ has no place in stand-up comedy. I hate when people are like, ‘Support female comedy.’ That’s not a real genre of comedy. I think if you have true respect for women as three-dimensional creators who are innovative, you wouldn’t group them together like that.
I think it’s because my comedy is in your face, and it comes from a place that’s real.
Comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin. A talent in one area might also lead to a predisposition in the other.
With While You Were Sleeping, it was so much fun and such a Cinderella story, that I didn’t want to do another romantic comedy. I wanted to do the opposite.
There’s an art to comedy.
Comedy is a tool of togetherness. It’s a way of putting your arm around someone, pointing at something, and saying, ‘Isn’t it funny that we do that?’ It’s a way of reaching out.
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 first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren’t laughing, it’s not comedy. It’s as simple as that.
At one point, I was in a place where it didn’t feel like it was going to happen, and I was feeling pretty down on myself. But I stuck to it, and now I have a hit comedy on my hands. You’ve got to keep plugging away at it. If you really believe in yourself, you can definitely make it happen.
‘NRT’ is a comedy film, which has the extreme of emotions with Vijay Sethupathi and Nayanthara as the protagonists.
Although I love this kind of comedy, sometimes I feel trapped by always having to be the most outrageous guy in the room. In particular, I’m working on trying not to be that guy in my private life.
Doing comedy is very challenging, as I am a shy person in real life.
Comedy is all about rhythm and context, and there’s all types of comedies, and it’s about finding that right brand, that consistency in tone.
Something about Floridians, man – they are good to me. I’m glad my comedy translates to them.
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.
To me, comedy is a great occupation because I don’t really worry that much about what other people think of me.
I like physical comedy. And I like the old comedies.
People want their actors to do comedy, too. They don’t want any comedians next to the actor. They want one solo hero and want to see everything in him.
‘Rob & Big’ was a buddy comedy show.
I use myself as a template for my comedy. So first my background as a Muslim man, my being a doctor, I talk about my family quite a lot, my kids. Anything that resonates with me I talk about. The important thing is it should be able to work in a family setting.
I’m kind of obsessed with food. I like to eat. When I tour, it’s like, well, like a food tour as much as a comedy tour.
I really used to like TVMaxwell, which is a classic, amazing, super-underrated comedy channel. And Cyndago was great.
I don’t want to sit and cry for an hour in a movie. I’d rather have an action or a comedy.
I am really happy that even though I am stuck in the comedy genre I have not been typecast. I am still getting to experiment a lot with my characters, which is a boon.
Once you start classifying and trying to identify your own comedy style, you’ve ceased to be funny.
It’s always been said that comedy comes mostly out of the dark side anyway.
I had been laughed at my whole life through school, and I never really thought of it as a vocation. I mean, I started off as a soldier, and then I went into the university thinking I was going to be a journalist, but comedy kind of fell on my head and demanded I pursue it.
For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn’t mean the people have to be mean. I’ve never liked mean-spirited comedy.
I don’t like the bullying, do-one-over style of comedy. It’s so cheap.
I enjoy doing these silly little videos, and a lot of stuff online is stuff I actually created for my live comedy shows.
I think people are always looking for a good comedy.
You can (be a middle-aged comic) if you work very hard at it, because comedy is really hard.
In life, there’s a ying and a yang and a balance. And when you don’t have balance, you have comedy.
What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy.
Sarah Silverman. She’s the reason I do comedy. Her DNC speech was my favorite thing I ever heard. Sitting down with her and laughing would be incredible.
Humility is one of the key aspects of spirituality, and along with comedy, a key component of healing.
I hate comedy. I don’t even like comedy at all.
A lot of people do comedy about India, but they’re not from India. It’s a Kwik-E-Mart perspective. I want to provide a genuine view and maybe one on how we see the West.
Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It’s very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.
In comedy, though, it’s good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.
If you want to laugh, see a comedy. If you want to cry, see a drama, and if you want suspense, see a thriller.
It’s that I wasn’t suited to do the kind of comedy that these people were coming to hear – mainstream comedy.
I value comedy. I value somebody who can be funny.
If I’m really considering doing film from now on then that is the smart thing to do, or you can go either way. You can just do the same character over and over again and make a different comedy like over and over again.
I loved doing ‘Pennies from Heaven.’ Because you have to understand that I’d been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don’t think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
I’ve done comedy most of my career, which I love, but I wanted to expand.
My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic – that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.
I had always fancied a go at the comedy and when it started to go reasonably well and the opportunity arose for me to move into it full time, I just couldn’t turn it down. I just took the risk, and I just wanted to see if it would work and thankfully it did.
Of course, all my films are high on comedy, but I ensure there’s something for the audience to take back home.
But long story short, I didn’t start doing stand-up because I wanted to have a TV show or be an actor or even wanted to write sketch comedy. I got into stand-up because I love stand-up.
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.
I do ‘The Howard Stern,’ make me happy. Also I sold out Comedy Store in the Los Angeles for my roast. This way everybody know I make the people laugh and happy. I love it.
I really understood a lot more about comedy after listening to Bill Hicks, who died at 32 years old. He’s probably the best comedian who ever lived. Although you can’t say that because of Carlin, Cosby and Pryor.
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.
I didn’t know if I was going to go into acting more, or kind of lean into TV writing or comedy.
The plays that I performed in the ’70s are not the same plays that I perform today. However, what they have in common is a solid foundation of a story, and good, healthy comedy.
I believe in the importance of sincerity and emotion and honesty in TV, even when it’s goofy comedy.
A lot of people think I’m difficult to work with. It’s not like I really want to do that much stuff, so it doesn’t really matter. I guess I’m somewhat difficult when it comes to comedy.
Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.
I think comedy is one of the hardest things to do.
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.
I feel sex is a common topic everyone see in content of any television shows be it a fiction or live comedy or a chat show.
I don’t like to be entertaining. I don’t like the feeling of being entertaining. If there was a musical or a comedy that was not just for entertainment but was rooted in something I could relate to on a real level, then I think I would do it.
Writing comedy is a superpower.
Comedy is a tool to be used so that people can relate to each other.
I’d like to do a romantic comedy.
Human life is a combination of tragedy and comedy. The shapes and designs that surround us are the music accompanying this tragedy and this comedy.
The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of ‘The Daily Show,’ which back then was not called ‘The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.’
My background is in musical comedy. I didn’t know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.
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.
Comedy is a group activity, a verbal orgy.
People are funny, and in the most tragic situations, when comedy erupts from nowhere, it can turn on its head within the space of a second or a minute. You’re laughing one minute and you’re crying the next and that’s just life for me, and that is what people are like.
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.
Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It’s much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.
Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don’t believe me when I tell them. That’s how I saw myself, in comedy.
But comedy I’d love to do as much as humanly possible.
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.
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 love doing comedy.
Too often, these comedy guys now only care about getting on and then getting off and getting rich.
But it’s hard for a chick to do comedy. It’s not as open for them.
Stand-up comedy is not a man’s job. It’s an alpha job: To be the only person in a room with a microphone who’s allowed to talk.
I thought comedy would be the hardest thing I could do, and if I could do that, I could do anything.
There was really a snobbery from people in film – they did not want people who had come from television. It was the poor relation of show business, and especially situation comedy.
I’m trying my hand at writing. I’m writing a couple of projects for HBO, a half hour comedy and a miniseries.
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.
I feel that the work that I have done in the comedy arena, is priceless in terms of what I learned, timing, everything that these incredibly talented performers were generous enough in teaching me.
Comedy doesn’t really matter that much; I know that. I treat it like an adult – I don’t treat it like a child or a god, which some people do. This might just be in America, but ‘stand-up comedy’ is something very particular that I don’t particularly relate to.
We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.
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.
I remember going to Bob Preston’s dressing room because I was losing a laugh – as you do in a long run. He said, ‘Give me the script. That’s where you’re going off the road.’ That’s comedy. It’s never the line itself; it’s in the foundation.
Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy.
I’m a comedian, for God’s sake. Viewers shouldn’t trust me. And you know what? They’re hip enough to know they shouldn’t trust me. I’m just doing stand-up comedy.
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.
One’s dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I have worked in comedy for twenty-five years, I can probably speak best about my own profession.
I will always love to perform standup comedy.
I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.
The basis of tragedy is man’s helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man’s helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).
Timing is crucial for comedy.
Comedy is just an unspoken language. Everybody understands it. Funny is funny. When it’s not funny, they’ll let you know.
I got everybody on my side through comedy.
If there is a chance to do so, I want to work with Stephen Chow in a romantic comedy film.
It’s hard to really get that excited about movies. Think about it like this: how many good comedy movies come out a year? Maybe one or two? And then, in those movies, what are the chances that there’s a character that I’m the best fit to play? It’s really small!
I just showed up at the Comedy Store. You keep showing up, and you keep showing up, and eventually, somebody notices.
I think there’s too many gay jokes in comedy and not enough honest explorations of sexuality.
‘The Dice Man’ is an anti-establishment cult novel, and you don’t normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.
In television, women can really run anything. It can be a comedy, it can be a drama, it can be genre, it can be anything. But in films, women are still getting to the top.
My mom watches really obscure stuff on IFC. She’s a real comedy fan. She knows everything that’s going on.
Postmodern comedy doesn’t work well with very old audiences, because it’s making fun of the comedy they enjoy.
I do like any kind of project that has both comedy and drama in it because in life you don’t have one day where everything is funny then the next day everything is dramatic.
I want my audience to be my friends – that is when they will get the best comedy. If they see me as a performer, they won’t get the best show.
There seems to be more comedy for comedy’s sake.
Comedy used to be a vehicle for change. Now, comedy has gotten to this quirky, nonsensical place, which I enjoy. But I do think there is room for discussion-based humor. We can tell those stories in a way that feels edifying.
I consider myself a serious musician. Doing a comedy show does not take away from that in any way.
T.J. Miller and Kumail Nanjiani I met when I was in Chicago, learning how to do comedy.
It’s so hard for me to kind of fall in love with comedy, but if something comes my way… I mean, I loved ‘Weird,’ I thought that was a really fun character.
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor’s life, because it’s so bloody difficult to write.
Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
I had a terrible job letting me do anything that wasn’t comedy.
It’s hard enough to write a good drama, it’s much harder to write a good comedy, and it’s hardest of all to write a drama with comedy. Which is what life is.
Most of my films – if you look at the tone, apart from ‘Shadows,’ which is straight-up comedy – the tone is a mix between comedy and pathos, and I really love that.
I like to see love stories: romantic comedy or romantic drama.
Life is a comedy when watching and a tragedy when experiencing. I try and share anything I have.
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.
‘Wonder Showzen’ is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn’t know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.
I’d like to come back because I really miss doing situation comedy.
I never get offered comedy.
I never consciously got into comedy. It was sort of one of those things where I was a theater student, I was acting, I was doing comedy, I was doing dramatic stuff, so it’s been something that I’ve always done and enjoyed doing and had an instinct to be relatively good at.
My portrayal of Fagin was all to do with my experience in comedy and revue.
In the process of looking for comedy, you have to be deeply honest. And in doing that, you’ll find out here‘s the other side. You’ll be looking under the rock occasionally for the laughter.
There’s a reason Tony Stark makes fun of ‘Thor,’ and mentions ‘Shakespeare‘ in the park in ‘The Avengers.’ It’s great to play high drama and comedy alongside a modern story.
I’m also doing a special for Comedy Central called Autobiography. It’s going to be a spoof of Biography.
Comedy is all about the pause.
The day of the wedding went like these things generally do, full of anxious moments interspersed with black comedy.
Comedy is ugly. It’s honest, it’s raw.
I was never really comfortable doing comedy.
I’ve always hated the term ‘alternative‘; I only use it because when I say it, people know what I’m talking about. I always thought it was weird when guys like myself or Patton Oswalt or Dana Gould, these older guys, were called ‘alternative’ comedy.
Comedy. I think that’s something I’d really like to do.
People see me on the ‘Daily Show’ or ‘About a Boy’. But the reality is that I only got into this business to do standup comedy.
Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.
I’m definitely a romantic comedy dude because I’m a big romantic at heart. I’m a softy, so it’s always nice to watch movies that make you think that love at first sight is actually possible.
I’ve made a lot of crazy comedy videos and said a lot of crazy things. If it’s too offensive, I apologize and move on, but I do comedy.
But sometimes it’s good to dare yourself to do the unthinkable. And rather than stand in front of an audience with no clothes on, I decided to have a go at stand-up comedy.
All of comedy at some level is trial-and-error, whether it’s a stand-up trying out jokes or a comedy show trying stories.
You can’t always go by the book, even in comedy.
I love doing improv. I love comedy. I have always felt this way, even when I was really young.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
I try and write satire that’s well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can’t be completely clear, and that’s what makes it comedy.
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.
I love sketch comedy. My real goal is to do something with Albert Brooks. That would be my fantasy. I stay up night and day thinking up stuff he might find funny.
Comedy can do so much more than make you laugh.
You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.
‘Rubberneck’ has nothing to do with comedy, nor does it follow comedic people.
I loved that about her because I knew it would open the door for a lot of comedy, because I knew that the conflict would come, because not many people live like the way she does.
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.
Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It’s much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.
Well, being a Canadian, I love SCTV, and I think it’s the basis for all good North American comedy, so I compare everything to that.
Comedy is a very, very, very stringent business.
When I started out in comedy, it was common knowledge that it took about 10 years to get good. And that was okay because it took you about 9 years to get on television.
‘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.
I’d really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy.
I am so happy because I want more people to like martial arts movie not just martial arts audience. Even martial arts can be used in comedy, in drama, in horror movies, in different kinds of movies.
My comedy comes from pain. I can’t stand to see someone hurting.
Hypocrisy is great fodder for comedy.
Unfortunately we live in a world where I think women aren’t actively encouraged or at least not empowered to make good work in every creative sphere, particularly in comedy.
All the parts I get offered are character and comedy parts, and I probably wouldn’t get them if I had a different face. So I’m glad I have a comedy face.
I think I’ve only done one horror movie, Psycho III. That was a walk in the park compared to a romantic comedy.
One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don’t realize there’s a lot of craft behind the comedy.
Comedy helped me out in my teenage years. It saw me through puberty and helped me to deal with dating.
I was considered a comedy magician. And – how do I put this without sounding egotistical? – it didn’t take me long to realize that comedy magicians usually couldn’t do comedy or magic.
I studied theater in college, and I really wanted to be an actress and play a lot of different roles. Then I made landing on a television comedy my main focus.
I think that for the most part, when I started doing comedy, it had become very commercialized.
Comedy is surprises, so if you’re intending to make somebody laugh and they don’t laugh, that’s funny.
Yes, they allowed us to play around a lot because, like we said, the director’s such a good comedy director.
Comedy may be big business but it isn’t pretty.
In a comedy it helps enhance things that were already there.
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.’
I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.
I was a big fan of sketch comedy and cartoons growing up.
I’d like to classify my life as a romantic comedy. Unfortunately I feel it’s probably more like a TV reality show.
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.
Directors, like actors, get typecast. And because I’ve had great success with comedy and horror and TV shows, that’s basically what I’m kind of offered.
I hate being mean. I watch those roasts on Comedy Central and they make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
I guess you get pigeon-holed in Hollywood, but I’m ok with that because I’ve been able to do a lot. I started in the theater, then I went to stand-up comedy, and then when I went into the movies to do comedy and drama and big movies and small movies.
I suddenly realized that comedy, for me, was just being honest, and playing it for real. I’ve seen so many wonderful actors who turn into creatures from another planet when they’re told they are supposed to be playing comedy.
If you want to laugh, see a comedy. If you want to cry, see a drama, and if you want suspense, see a thriller.
At one point when I was very young, when I was first starting out, I thought, ‘Well, one day I’ll be able to put all the music away and become a real comedian.’ But then I realized there are amazing musical comedians out there, that musical comedy is probably something I’ll always want to pursue.
When I finished my residency in New Orleans, I went to L.A. where I would work as a doctor during the day, and then at night I would actually go to The Improv and do standup, all the while kind of cultivating my comedy resume.
I basically did comedy there for about a year, and then moved to New York. If I had it to do over again, I would have booked myself on the road for at least a year.
I try not to see myself as anything, as that would be embarrassing. But if I had to label myself, I’d probably say I was an artist due to the fact that I enjoy working within the arts on different platforms, of which comedy is just one.
Stand-up comedy is a raunchy profession.
My style of comedy is very real and bittersweet, and sort of always on the verge of kind of being tragic.
They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, ‘But doesn’t it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn’t it be set in New Guinea?’ And you say, ‘But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.’
Every movie I do, or when I’m on the sketch comedy show, I don’t really get into it until I have an outfit or something funny with my head or face or something.
Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It’s harder.
I believe comedy is the toughest genre to bring alive onscreen, but it’s something that I really enjoy doing as an actor.
I don’t devalue comedy as compared to drama. Not one bit.
When I tell people I’m a comedian they say, ‘Oh, are you funny?’ I say, ‘No, it’s not that kind of comedy.’
Our records, if you have a dark sense of humor, were funny, but our records weren’t about comedy. They were about protests, fantasy, confrontation and all that.
There is a universality to comedy.
The kinds of shows that seem to work now, the comedy shows, are those which require very little attention. They’re superficial and I like articulate comedy.
I tell fans who ask me why I’m not doing comedy anymore that I’m a different person. I’ve grown and I’ve matured. I’ve made a transition to where I really want to be.
By doing the comedy you don’t get heckled by your own wife.
I think you can tell the human condition better through comedy.
My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic – that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.
I was never consciously rebellious but I suppose comedy is a sort of act of rebellion isnt it? Coming from a quite liberal background, it never occurred to me that there was anything to rebel against because you were allowed to say what you wanted to say.
Improvisation is almost like the retarded cousin in the comedy world. We’ve been trying forever to get improvisation on TV. It’s just like stand-up. It’s best when it’s just left alone. It doesn’t translate always on TV. It’s best live.
It’s funny because I think a lot of it is simply… We’ve never considered ourselves satirists, but because we’re on Comedy Central and because we’re South Park on Comedy Central, we can do any topic we want.
I’d love to do comedy.
I have always wanted to do comedy.
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.
You can’t study comedy; it’s within you. It’s a personality. My humor is an attitude.
Physical comedy is my favorite thing in the world to do.
The funny thing is, Dennis Miller got me back into comedy.
This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Firstly, I am not a comedian. I have a sense of doing comedy but I am a character artist. If the character in the film is a comedy than I can portray it. But, I am not a comedian.
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.
