Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
TV family sitcoms have always been about fathers who know best and mothers who are so enchanted with everything they do. I wanted to be the first mom to be a mom on TV. I wanted to sent out a message about how us women really feel.
'Scary Movie' was a different type of comedy than I'm used to. I've mostly done sitcoms, so working with David Zucker, who wrote the film and who directed the last two 'Scary Movie's and 'Airplane' and 'Naked Gun,' was a lot of help.
'The Simpsons' basically - and 'Futurama' - are really smart shows. They're kind of disguised as these goofy animated sitcoms, but the references within the shows, if you're paying attention, are pretty smart and pretty sophisticated.
I can't even look at daily comic strips. And I hate sitcoms because they don't seem like real people to me: they're props that often say horrible things to each other, which I don't find funny. I have to feel like they're real people.
The striking thing about 'New Girl' is that under all the comedy, there's something about the emotions and reactions that feels very real - much more real than other sitcoms. Like - maybe everybody is sort of laid bare in different ways.
When you watch the sitcoms that were the big hits when I was growing up, TV was still just TV. It was allowed to just be TV. There were three channels that were competing for the whole family and you couldn't take your business elsewhere.
I really hate misunderstandings - to a degree that it's hard for me to watch sitcoms, or any kind of funny movie where there's, like, this big mishap, or miscommunication. It gives me such anxiety that I almost can't make it through the movie.
What I love about sketch is that the writing of it is idea-based. It's not story-based. It's like, 'This is a behavior, and we're going to write, in a small sample, the funniest way to heighten this behavior.' Sitcoms or movies are about story.
You can't erase Bill Cosby's contributions. That's the conflict. He's one of the most influential comedians of all time, and 'The Cosby Show' is one of the most influential sitcoms ever. When I watched as a kid, I wanted Cliff to be my dad. Everybody did.
I've tested for I-don't-know-how-many pilots, and I didn't get any of them. I would always try to go off the top and make it as spontaneous as possible, but acting in sitcoms is such a skill set, and I didn't have it. I wish I did back when I was younger.
That's kind of my job in the writer's room. I'm always the guy going, like, 'People wouldn't say that there. They wouldn't say that.' Like, I hate when I watch sitcoms and something crazy happens, and people just kind of go, 'Huh?' and then they just go on.
I was obsessed with New York early on. I was watching sitcoms that were set in or around New York, like 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' I was always very fascinated with the people who were on 'What's My Line?' and I always had an incredible obsession with the city.
People tend to group together their favourite sitcoms and feel that they all took place in one spot named 'the past', but in fact all these sitcoms are spread over a long period of time, and all the terrible sitcoms that were on have been justifiably forgotten.
Television is a powerful medium that has to be used for something better than sitcoms and police shows. On the other hand, if you don't recognize the forces that play on what people watch and what they don't then you're a fool and you should be in a different business.
So often in sitcoms, it's like, 'Oh, that husband of mine. He just screwed up again.' They just have to tolerate each other. It's not the most fun to play from my perspective. But by the same token, you can't be like, 'We're just like Romeo and Juliet, always in love.'
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and spending time doing nothing.
When I first started directing, I could have chosen a more lucrative path, with sitcoms and things like that. But I knew enough after the experiences I had in front of the camera that I was not going to do that, because I was just going to work on my own things or work with people I respected.
I realised I had spent the majority of my adult life doing two characters - Maude from 1972-'79 and Dorothy from 1985-'92 - and I really didn't know what I wanted to do after 'Golden Girls.' I knew what I didn't want to do - any more sitcoms, or wait for the next great role that might never come.
When I was growing up, I never saw couples fight on the family sitcoms I loved to watch. Subsequently, when tough times arose in my own relationship, I wasn't prepared and felt so isolated and alone. Marital issues weren't a part of the narrative that television told me was a 'working relationship.'
The projects I have done on television, they're sitcoms, situational comedies. The problem is, maybe because they go on every day, Monday through Friday, one-hour format, maybe that's why they're labeled as a telenovela. But technically speaking, they're sitcoms because they're situational comedies.
Sitcoms are designed for normal people who just want to turn on their TV and get a laugh. It's not high-brow, you don't have to work so hard, and it's meant to be a relatable genre. That's why I love it so much - my fans are from 8 years old to 80 years old, because everybody can relate to what's funny.
Televisa is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world, and the steps we have taken, which extend the tenure of our exclusive access to Televisa's premium Spanish-language telenovelas, sports, sitcoms, reality series, news programs and feature films, put Univision in a stronger competitive position.
OK, so we all know that 'Borat' is humiliatingly, career-endingly unfunny (one trick too many for one-trick pony Sacha Double-Barelled) - but can anyone explain why the 'character' isn't roundly condemned for being as unacceptably racist as the one-dimensional stereotypes from 70s sitcoms such as 'Mind Your Language?'
When my friends and I grew up, we had 'Full House,' 'Growing Pains' and 'Roseanne.' These sitcoms were about something, about real people in a sense. They sort of super-sized real life where things aren't necessarily exactly how you go through them in daily life, but you can relate to something, and you can pull something out of it.
I think the corporate world is pretty starved for personality. The reason you have comic strips like 'Dilbert' and sitcoms like 'The Office' is that people just can't be genuine human beings in a corporate environment. So if you can really be your own self, even if it's a little bit different, I think people are really drawn to that.
When I was a little girl, the only real form of entertainment I was exposed to was theater, being raised in St. Louis, and I still love theater, and I think sitcoms are similar to that, in there's a live audience, and you know, I definitely like the comedy of it, too. I like to make people laugh, and I definitely think laughter is healing.
