Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I guess I'm sort of spoiled because, most of the things that I get to do, people know that you're a good improviser, so they allow you at least one improv take, and for comedy, that's great.
I think when you do comedy, you play by a different set of rules. No one really wants you to be in that good shape. Being in good shape implies a level of vanity that isn't necessarily funny.
At Temple University, and I'm sure this was the way in a lot of film classes, comedy was not an option, and not considered a serious form of expression. You had to make a film about an issue.
Performing music is a way to do comedy, but without the obligation to do a solid hour, hour and half of a standup. I could intersperse it with music, so it became a really good format for me.
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.
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.
With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.
I don't tend to read much comedy, but there's a fake advertisement section at the end of Derren Brown's book 'Pure Effect' which always makes me cry with laughter every time I come across it.
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.
People, I think, are more interested in being offended than getting to the heart of a situation. And to go after comedians to me is so counterproductive, because comedy is kind of a medicine.
I've always tended to write comedy, but I'd hate to just write some kind of sitcom or a lighthearted series of jokes and slapstick. I wanted to talk about some deeper things within the comedy.
A sign now of success with a certain audience when you do a short comedy piece, anywhere, is that it gets on YouTube and gets around. It's always something you're thinking about unconsciously.
There's an argument that maybe [The Grinder] was better suited for streaming or cable. I don't know. I still like to think there's a place for smart, subversive, original comedies on networks.
When you start out in comedy, or probably in a lot of things, you want it to happen fast. You don't want to see yourself having to do this for seven years before you start to get some feedback.
I'm a nightclub comic. That's what I do. I work in the clubs uncensored because my mind is uncensored, and those are the thoughts that I have. I do the kind of comedy that I would enjoy seeing.
Some people do specials, like, when they've only been doing comedy for three years or something. Which is fine! But I'm kind of old fashioned, and I knew that I didn't want to do one too early.
R&b, poetry, I'd like to do everything. But I'm an entertainer and entertaining is not just music. I can do comedy; I'm one of those guys, I can stand up there with a mic. I'm not gonna freeze.
Really, I just love doing comedy. Any form it takes is great, as long as I can keep doing it, you know? If I can do my show and 'The League' while also getting to do other bits, that's awesome.
In most specials, the performer's up - not only not surrounded, but up on a stage - and there's a distance between them and the audience, and I think my comedy doesn't work as well in that way.
If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing. That's generally how we speak to each other: you communicate the information between the lines of insulting sentences.
I actually started in comedy, but then after 'Deadwood' I started concentrating on the dramas more. But then I just got tired for raping and killing and figured, 'It's time to do another comedy.
I want to do a romantic comedy that nobody thought I could do. And then do a comedy with Dan Aykroyd that is totally different from 'The Blues Brothers.' I'm a comic actor, but I'm an actor, too.
I didn't know how to grab your best material and put it together into a comedy set. I would just choose subjects and do it onstage. That's what I learned. I didn't know how to put a set together.
I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while.
Twenty-two years I've been doing this comedy lark, so it's been like a meteoric rise to fame... if the meteor was being dragged by an arthritic donkey across a ploughed field, in northern Poland.
When I was growing up in comedy, there were maybe 10 comics in the whole country. Everyone had a day job. You worked free for years in little clubs, then you got your big break and became a star.
Michael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept. I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.
It used to be that in media, Johnny Carson used to be the most important person when he would invite you over to sit on the couch after your comedy skit. Now it's whatever Howard Stern says goes.
I've never directed before, so I need to make sure that people know that I can. The movie that I've written, 'The Sophisticates,' is a... small ensemble comedy and I hope it's charming and funny.
I'm a hopeless romantic. I love love. My middle name is Love. Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday. I want to have a family and children. I am a sucker for every romantic comedy that comes out.
To me some of the funniest movies would be probably categorized in the dramatic genre, and likewise some of the most dramatic films, or films that have the most dramatic moments, are in comedies.
They are just 100 per cent bear, whereas human beings feel we're not 100 per cent human, that we're always letting ourselves down. We're constantly striving towards something, to some fulfilment.
It was - I'm very didactic in my lyrics, but I've always been drawn to mock my own emotions, and so I write this very lyric-heavy stuff, which suits theater and comedy much more than it suits pop.
The highest of highs is to have a new routine that you're just breaking in and that's working, and that's - you're one step removed doing a situation comedy because you have a live audience there.
I was always self-conscious about the fact that I didn't have as much comedy experience as other people at 'SNL,' and I kept thinking they were going to realize they'd made a mistake by hiring me.
I really don't want to do anything that resembles stand-up comedy. But I will agree to say that I am doing it, and I will hope that people expect it to be that, so I can thwart those expectations.
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.
You've got to realize that when all goes well, and everything is beautiful, you have no comedy. It's when somebody steps on the bride's train, or belches during the ceremony that you've got comedy!
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.
I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy - people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company... so then I had to write comedy.
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.
With comedy, you never know until you put it in front of an audience. You shoot it and a year later you have no idea if it's going to work. And then you get the response. It's great when it's good.
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.
There are two things you can't argue in film: comedy and eroticism. If something doesn't make you laugh, no one can tell you why it's funny, and it's difficult to reason someone out of an erection.
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 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.
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.
With comedy, don't try to be funny. That's really helped me. Just say the lines as you would say them, interact with other characters, and try to make it as real as possible. It will come out funny.
There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.
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.