Quotes About Comedy

'Analyze This' is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn't be good. For me, it starts with the writing. I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director's work, in a sense.

I was always a fan of the old-style comics. I loved vaudeville. I loved Milton Berle, Dick Shawn, Phyllis Diller, Don Rickles, Charlie Callas, all those guys. Hilarious. I love the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope movies, and Abbott & Costello. My television influences were 'Monty Python's Flying Circus,' 'Benny Hill,' and 'Hee Haw.'

I was very interested in vaudeville. It was the only sort of discipline that was a five-minute act on stage, which is what I really enjoyed and saw myself doing. And I bought books on it.

Milton took vaudeville, which, if you look up 'vaudeville' in the dictionary, right alongside of it, it says 'Milton Berle' - and he made it just a tremendous party.

George Burns was a Vaudeville performer I particularly loved.

For me, my preference for comedy is grounding it in the psychology of the character, and not just kind of making faces. Even when it's a crazy character, grounded comedy resonates more with people because it doesn't look like you're watching someone do vaudeville. No offense to vaudeville.

I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way.

I do some very high energy comedy, vaudeville, music hall stuff, and people who've seen my work on camera, on TV and movies, would not really know that.

In Edna, I created a satiric portrait of my hometown of Melbourne, a large provincial English city paradoxically in far Southeast Asia. She's a theatrical figure, related to vaudeville in some respects. She inhabits a world in which there are comparatively few female exponents of comedy.

My father died when I was 11. He was a vaudeville comedian. He worked in one movie, 'Ladies of the Chorus,' as Marilyn Monroe's father.

If you look at vaudeville in theaters vamping between acts, it was always jokes written and banter in the moment.

I'm a fan of old vaudeville theaters.

I have about 1,000 hours of myself on tape in a vault in Los Angeles. But I also have a photographic memory about my jokes, because they're really about me; they're my stories.

I try to only eat animals that are vegan. I'm probably the opposite of a vegan.

My comedy career aside, I am a father of three, a husband, a son, a brother and a vegan.

We were going to do 'Reno 911!: New York, New York, Las Vegas,' which was like a 'Die Hard' set not in New York, but in the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. We were really excited about being locked into the one casino and doing a bad action movie.

I love 'What Happens in Vegas,' 'You've Got Mail.'

I came to Vegas because I wanted to, not because I thought it could help my career. I didn't even know they had comedy clubs here.

I started a big part of my career in Vegas.

Every few months I'll pop into a comedy club or go to Vegas.

You know, I'm playing the Mirage in Vegas, the main room... About 5 percent of all comics end up as the main headliner on the Vegas Strip, so that's a big deal for me. Getting to do my stand-up the way I have this summer is really what I've dreamed of since I was about 10 years old.

When I played the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, I got to bring Wiley, my 85-pound black lab. He's responsible for my favorite New Year's memory of all: At the end of the show, he ran onstage and then out across all the tables in the showroom, sending champagne glasses and gamblers flying.

I like Las Vegas because it kind of gives me a chance to gauge my material in front of a very diverse group of people. There are a lot of different people in the audience, and you can kind of get a barometer for how your material plays throughout the country.

Second City Las Vegas is very different from Second City in Chicago on the main stage, where they do improv sets. That's how they kind of hone material, kind of work up to new material.