Quotes About Comedy

Eric Clapton always wanted to come out onstage with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder.

Sometimes I - with comedy, it's like someone liking you in high school. They either do, or they don't. And when they don't, they don't. And that's it. There are no appeals. You show up, and you're like, 'Hi! I'm -' and you stumble, and they're like, 'It's over.'

In 'There's Something About Mary' and 'Dumb & Dumber,' I ended up improvising quite a bit of my scenes, and later I didn't even remember what I'd said because I just winged it. When I went and saw the movie, I was as stunned as everyone else was.

I saw 'Annie Hall' with a group of people working in comedy and television. We were all stunned. Stunned. It was like watching a spaceship land. That something that funny could also be that beautiful.

When I was very young, Michael Crawford was a real hero because I saw this guy who could do everything - make people laugh, act, do stunts.

I look stupid without a mustache.

Even actresses that you really admire, like Reese Witherspoon, you think, 'Another romantic comedy?' You see her in something like 'Walk the Line' and think, 'God, you're so great!' And then you think, 'Why is she doing these stupid romantic comedies?' But of course, it's for money and status.

I've never met a funny person who wasn't smart. I've met a lot of dramatic people who were stupid. But I've never met a funny person who wasn't smart.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be serious, like Daniel Day-Lewis. No one really dreams of being a comic actor, do they? Now I realise how stupid that is - and it's because comic acting isn't taken seriously enough. It's a discipline. You know instantly - either you're funny and getting the laughs, or you're not.

If there's anything I hate more than a stupid action comedy, it's an incompetent stupid action comedy. It's not so bad it's good. It's so bad it's nothing else but bad.

A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.

The funny thing about history is that we imagine that people didn't laugh in the old days, but of course they did, at stupid things.

I like really stupid comedies.

If a comic laughs at their own jokes, I don't like it. They shouldn't find it funny; they should seriously believe in this stupid thing they're saying.

There's not one thing that inspires me the most. Me and my friends joke around with each other and hang out so much that whatever makes us laugh really hard makes it into 'Workaholics.' But the characters that I think are funny are guys that are confidently stupid.

Funnily enough, 'Shooting Stars,' that stupid little panel show, is the most influential thing we've done.

People are always going to say stupid things, and you're always going to be able to make jokes about that, but it should be the last thing you add in, because it's the easiest thing.

Comedy is only as stupid as you are smart.

If you're doing a family movie, you don't want it to be stupid. Farting chihuahuas is not my idea of entertainment for kids or adults. So you try to make a movie that adults can see on one level, and kids can see on another.

I think that a big part of comedy is being made fun of, and it is looking silly or looking stupid.

I would love to do a really stupid character on 'The Office'. I'm so an 'Office' fan.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

You've got to be stupid to heckle me - I am very equipped to win.

A lot of improvisers mistakenly assume stand-up is awful, because there are a lot of stand-ups in the world that did not appeal to me. It was so easy to make a blanket statement when I was improvising only: 'Stand-up's terrible.' It's so ignorant and stupid to do that. But it's easy to do that. So that's where I came from.