Quotes About Comedy

I've got a varied taste in films. I love a good horror movie - the first few 'Saw' films for example - but I also like comedies.

I didn't know that I could do a talk show. I didn't know that we could bring variety to daytime. I didn't know that people wanted to see singing, and dancing and comedy in the morning.

Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death.

I would call it a comedy variety show. We have some people just doing straight standup. We usually try to have one musical act of sort. So its just people being funny in different ways, not just sketch, not just standup, not just characters, all of those things.

For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it.

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years.

Obviously neither 'American Idol' nor 'Dancing With the Stars' is a variety show in the classic sense, but the way they incorporate elements of drama, comedy and suspense is moderately ingenious.

Years ago, there was a variety theatre in every British town, and people paid to go down and see it. Comedy was the main part of the theatre, and comedians earned a living by being funny. Now you have comedy in television instead. Comedians now have to be funny within a play.

All of my favorite comedy has always been of the grounded variety. Even 'MacGruber.' I think that MacGruber is a really grounded character.

Women are under-represented in TV comedy for a variety of reasons, the hackneyed 'fear that women aren't funny' being one of them.

Standups have all the talk shows, but you never see a sketch group on a talk show. Even on so-called variety shows, if you do see a sketch group or character, it's written specifically for that variety show and usually written around the host of the show or a celebrity.

When we were doing 'Viva Variety,' we knew, 'Boy, this really cracks us up, but this is not for everybody. This is a little weird.'

Comics were always the lowest rung on the ladder, front of cloth at the Royal Variety Performance. What that means is you're only there so Take That can set up behind the curtains.

I think the future belongs to the comedic polymath. It belongs to the person who can generate the most good material in the biggest variety of ways, whether it's sketches or stand-up or songs or tweets or television or films.

Well, I'm old enough to remember Carol Burnett, and I would love a variety show type of thing.

As for insecurity, I have none because I know nobody has offered variety in comedy like I have.

Comedy has got me all these opportunities and I enjoy doing a variety of things. I can't really believe I've got the chance to have my own radio show.

The great thing about stand up is you get to do other things. You get to do your stand up tours but you also get to do 'Have I Got News For You.' You get to do a sitcom, but you also get to do the 'Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice.' I'm easily bored, so I like the variety.

I watch a variety of shows. I love 'Veep,' 'Parks and Recreation,' 'Girls,' 'Mad Men,' 'Game of Thrones' and fun shows like 'Empire.'

'Community' is a comedy show, and one of the characters happens to be a Christian. I do think they have been very careful to make sure everyone is the butt of the joke for various reasons.

Heckles always vary. I mean, some people are just drunk, and it's nonsense, or, you know, some people just want to just repeat something I've said or add their own two cents about an opinion, but because of the nature of what I do and who I am, like, I also get the racist stuff, which is hard.

I vary from issue to issue and Im not party political at all. I think its important in comedy not to come from any set angle or it would be too predictable.

My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.

My story is comic because I've spent vast amounts of effort trying to become a Hollywood screenwriter and made no direct effort on making my son a movie actor.