Quotes About Comedy

I started in high school, and in college, I studied radio, TV, and film. The plan was to be a filmmaker, and it was always comedy.

My comedy doesn't come from any calculations and studies.

In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment?

'The Dice Man' is an anti-establishment cult novel, and you don't normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.

We still have that same burn, to get that same kind of laughs. So whether the studio wants us to or not, we're going to do it. The money is just a byproduct of coming out with good stuff. Our whole thing is building that rapport with the audience.

Big studio comedies are such a headache.

There wasn't an episode of 'Will & Grace' that didn't begin with my voice saying, 'Will & Grace' is taped before a live studio audience.

On Letterman and Leno, it always bothers me when they go outside the studio and it's daytime.

Even the shows or movies that we know are not going to change the world, I love this. I love 'em. I'm a movie fan. I'm a nerd of any kind. I love a big studio comedy as much as I love the teeniest tiniest of indie. I'm not a snob in that way. I really do like a big, big studio comedy.

I like working. I wish I could say I made a deliberate choice to comedy, but it's just what came my way. It's what the studios wanted to make. Some of my friends were doing it, like Will Ferrell and Adam McKay, and they offered me 'Talladega Nights.' It's just nice work if you can get it. It's a joyful day at work, making your friends laugh.

When I was filming 'Premium Rush' in N.Y.C., I flew to L.A. to have a few general meetings. I sat down with Peter Cramer at Universal Studios and spoke about my life and career, and being that I'm such a goof, we spoke about how I really wanted to do a comedy next.

Jim Carrey and my dad were best friends. He would always be in my house and stuff like that.

There's a lot of people who don't want anything from me but to laugh and have a good time. You see them at the show and they like - they dress up to come see your show and stuff. And they pack these auditoriums and it's a lot of fun, man. It's like, this is how I started, and it's still fun for me.

I do comedy at a lot of colleges, and at the end of those shows, I take time to be a little more real with audiences. I try to inspire them to follow their dreams. When I was that age, it was incredible to hear stuff like that.

Misery is the stuff of comedy, if one can just live long enough to get over it.

I never do impressions, but I probably should. People like that stuff.

That's where humour lives for me. In the body. The Steve Martin kind of stuff or Jim Carrey, that's what I like. I've always felt that's what I would like to do.

The stuff that's going on is just so over-the-top, with the banking crisis and destroying the Gulf of Mexico, and the outrage hasn't quite caught up with the people yet. But when it does, I think you're going to see really virulent anti-authoritarian kind of comedy coming out.

I do a lot of gay-friendly stuff in my show, and men, women, they all love it. I practice non-judgment in my daily life and hope other people do the same thing.

You know, if you look all my stuff... If you go back to 'Saturday Night Live,' my stuff always has music, even a bunch of my comedy stuff - like in 'Shrek,' the donkey is always singing. Music is always there.

When you're a standup comic, you get up and you try stuff, and you're always kind of seeing how far you can push things.

Dumb & Dumber' is one of my and Glock's favorite movies. We do stuff in real life that's just like they do in that movie.

Juvenile stuff has always made me laugh. It's what I know.

It's easy to be silly in real life, but making stuff up onstage, that seemed hard. Better to be the funny person off-the-cuff in the room than to risk being unfunny onstage.