Quotes About Comedy

A Madagascar Hissing Roach chasing Jerry Lewis. That would be a really neat treat.

And regardless of the fact that in this country, certainly in the arts, we treat comedy as a second-class citizen, I've never thought of it that way. I've always thought it to be important. The last time I looked, the Greeks were holding up two masks. I've always thought of it not only as having equal value, but as the craft of it, being funny.

You have a dramatic portion of your television program and you treat it dramatically, and then you have a comedic portion of your program, and you treat it differently. Why do you change who are between the two pieces? You're the same person. Just go.

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.

Stand up comedy is this thing you get to do, so you have to treat it with respect. You can't just be like, 'Alright, I got my hour down, people are coming to see me now. Now, I'm going to lean on the mike stand.' No, you gotta work even harder now. You got to top what you already did. Because they'll find someone else.

My mother was a big influence. She kept pushing me because I was very shy and inhibited. And schoolwork was very difficult for me because I couldn't concentrate. I was failing almost every subject. To this day, I'm not too good at reading a book. But I was the president of my high school comedy group, and they treated me like a king.

When you are not treated seriously, you develop comically. Its sense of oneself is so fractured and fragile that it's like the picked-on kid who has to become funny.

It's so funny: at 'SNL,' Bill Hader always kind of treated me like his little sister and would kind of, like, lovingly bully me.

People don't understand that that's really what it is. They're looking for a magic phone number or something. And to a certain extent, I understand that, because comedy is treated so much as a stepping stone by a lot of people.

I believe that everyone should be treated as an individual. Women should be treated equally in the right to vote, sure. But if I'm paying to see a comedy, then I just want to see who's funniest, with everyone treated equally.

There is some brilliant pop music and some very poor classical music. And why shouldn't comedy be treated as seriously as drama?

Although I do use some of my psychology training in comedy, but it's more like pop psychology, not a course of treatment or anything. To me, it's more like social intelligence.

I started with light hearted comedies and good stories with real-life treatment; then TV went glossy, especially with the K-series.

Farce treats the improbable as probable, the impossible as possible.

I enjoyed the drama of 'One Tree Hill,' and the opportunity to be one of the comedic aspects, initially.

A lot of my comedy is physical, so you don't have to understand English to get that I'm choking to death on cinnamon or falling out of this tree or whatever.

I'm no Jerry Seinfeld. I wasn't raised with some backyard with a creek and trees and all that.

One of my favorite things about 'Star Trek' wasn't just the overt banter but the humor in that show about the relationships between the main characters and their reactions to the situations they would face; there was a lot of comedy in that show without ever breaking its reality.

'Star Trek' tends to take itself a little too seriously. They were either very dramatic shows, or if we did a humorous show, it was always a little like, 'Oh, we're doing humor on 'Star Trek,'' especially on the original series.

As a director on 'The Office,' there's a tremendous weight that comes with directing features. I was being asked to direct a show that had already won an Emmy for Best Comedy. Steve Carell and the cast had already won the Screen Actor's Guild Awards.

This particular film highlights Ben and Owen's strengths which is that they are great comedic actors with tremendous chemistry and they do a really good job.

People complain about Hollywood comedians, but I feel like I selected a tremendous group, ones who aren't fame-obsessed.

I think that all the Mel Brooks' company of actors is just tremendous. It was a crazy group of genius people. All of them taught me what kind of actor I should be and what was funny.

I think that when I was in my 20s, I wanted to go after dramatic roles, and I didn't have a tremendous amount of success with that. I kind of backed my way into comedic parts. When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, 'People need to see what I can do.' And it's so laughable, especially with actors.