Quotes About Comedy

You know what male comics can't do? They can't get pregnant. They can't perform pregnant. So my attitude is, just use all those differences.

To single out a particular group and say we can't make a joke about them is almost a form of prejudice and it's kind of patronizing.

I need wrong to get laughs. I need a normal world so that I can be abnormal, and that's my problem. Comedians need prejudice.

There's an absolute prejudice that good movies are dramas and comedies are more dismissable. But I couldn't disagree more.

There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.

Nobody owns comedy. Nobody owns a premise. Nobody owns an idea.

Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

You know I've never worked without a script before, but with Apatow, it's all improvisation. He calls out a premise, and you have to adapt.

'Eight-Legged Freaks' runs out of gas scarily fast - its one-joke premise lends itself more to a short than a feature.

If acting with other people is in your plans, then you need to learn how to work with other people to build a comedic premise.

Letterman is very intimidating because he's so funny, so you have to be really prepared. Also, he's a little squeamish about certain things, so you have to always be on guard to please him.

There is a lot of kissing in 'Boeing-Boeing.' A lot! And not pecks on the cheek or lips - although there's some of that, too - but full-on, farcical lip locks. My poor husband. He definitely wasn't prepared for as much smooching as there is.

I'm constantly preparing. Material hits me; I'm always writing. I go back and listen to my shows and just prepare and put my set together. But the day of, I like to have some downtime. A nice lunch is important for me.

I've always been cast in authority roles; I think because I have that presence... Comedically, I can play against that pretty well. I enjoy playing that arrogant ignorance. That's one of my favorite games to play in comedy.

I think we're going to carry the 'Ice Age's up to 'Ice Age 15,' which means basically they'll be in the present decade.

I don't think it's necessary to do stand-up to be a presenter, but I like it, because it keeps me sharp, especially when something like 'Take Me Out' is 80% is ad-libbed, so that works for me.

I'd done performance art sporadically from about 1976 - very personal street things on my own. Acting seemed like a natural step from that. But I didn't really want to 'be' anything: presenter, comic, actor. I just wanted to perform.

My favorite comedians are just presenting an argument, and they're doing it in a funny way.

I used to dream about presenting a comedy show and also about directing films.

People who have heard of me have heard of me mostly through presenting and asked, 'Why have you gone into comedy?'

I fell into presenting after doing about a decade of parody shows of presenter-based shows, and a lot of it was me parodying a presenter, so when I started doing 'Have I Got News For You', I carried on that persona.

I think the thing that really started setting my career on the course that it's on is when I did '1000 Cats' on 'Funny or Die Presents' on HBO. That's what I feel like kind of got me a little bit more into the system.

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard.

Comedians work great as actors because they're good under pressure. With a lot of actors, you have to make them feel like everything's going really well to get a good performance out of them. But, if you have a comedian on the set, you can tell them, 'Hey, you really are screwing this up,' and then they just get better.