Quotes About Comedy

All you have in comedy, in general, is just going with your instincts. You can only hope that other people think that what you think is funny is funny. I don't have an answer but I just try to plough straight ahead.

I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it's essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it's a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.

I think more than comedy, probably more than straight drama, I like horror. And horror I think I'm particularly good at. It's a mistake a lot of directors make, especially young directors. They always want to make the kind of movies that they most admire and aren't necessarily sensitive to what they have the best skill set for.

I'm at least getting my foot in the door as far as doing straight dramatic parts, which no one would have ever considered me for in the '80s. I never objected to that because I love doing comedy, and I'm not the kind of actor that insists that unless you're doing a serious dramatic role, you're not acting.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

For me, comedy is a day-to-day report on the human condition. It's what's happening right now. I get maybe 20 minutes of my act straight from the newspaper.

If you watch 'SNL,' any time there's this thing with everyone singing, I'm, like, the one person who just has a straight line of dialogue because I can't sing to save my life.

If you have a character that doesn't have anything wrong with him, there's nothing funny about it. The idea of the straight man is very important. But I'd rather it be somebody else, because it's not as fun.

The straight man has the best part. He gets to be in the show and see it, too.

My definitions of comedy, drama, and straight man are all blurry for me. I don't think of it in those terms.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.

The brilliance of Adam Scott is that he is so damn funny in a straight man role.

One of my favorite comedy performances of all time is Charles Grodin in 'Midnight Run,' and in a lot of things he's done. I think he's hilarious as the straight man, playing it real.

People say: 'Why do you want to play the straight man?' Well, it's because he gets to be in every scene.

A lot of comedies, I think, make the wrong choice of having the straight man being this bland emotional conduit for the audience.

I think we're realizing that gay people are able to do the type of comedy that we just assumed was for straight people over the years. Whatever old boundaries there were, which were very real and still have an effect on us, in the way we socialize, I think that's slowly becoming less important.

When I started doing standup when I was 17, I was talking about being Indian and specifically ethnic jokes. Straightforward stuff that was fairly ignorant that I knew would get the laugh. It wasn't flipping stereotypes; it was using them.

I have to have people around who are of a certain strain of humour. I can't deal with people who have no humour.

When I came into comedy in 2005, I didn't even know there was discrimination against musical comics in the alternative-comedy strain.

When you are in a room and your job is to write jokes 10 hours a day, your mind starts going to strange places.

It is a strange enterprise to make respectable people laugh.

I guess, in a way, I grew up mixed race: half white, half black. That question's always been on my mind: 'What are you? Are you this or that? Are you a white dude or are you a black dude?' In a strange way, music and comedy is kind of the same thing. I'm both. They're just different modes of expression.

What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

You are in a strange world in pantomime, where you are allowed to step out and talk to the audience and do silly gags. Sometimes I feel like a cartoon character.