Jack Nicholson Quotes

Judd Apatow, Conan O'Brien ... taking what you think is funny, and then adding another layer to it. That's kind of my sensibility. Those are the guys that make me laugh.

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

Writing humour certainly involves pain. A sitcom is 6 months of writing pain!

Drama is easier to do because you just have to have the emotion and not get caught acting, but comedy is much harder.

I'd been writing sketches since high school, but 'Friends of the People' really taught me about structure - how to wait out a joke, how to stick with it for a while. It also made me more confident onstage as a performer.

I don't know how to write jokes from the point of view of a six-foot-two guy. So, I'll always talk about it, but I just don't want it to be the absolute focus of all of my act.

In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.

I approach everything the same. I try to make it as real as possible, whether you gotta make people laugh or make people cry, it's always the same approach for me. But if I start doing pratfalls, somebody please pull the plug on me.

I have a very high respect for professional comedians. What they do astonishes me. You have to be really smart and absorb everything, repackage it, bring it back to the person, and make them laugh at themselves. I can make people laugh during my talks because they didn't come to have me make them laugh. It's added value. So my job is way easier than that of a professional comic.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

I would love to do comedy. I'm actually really animated and goofy. I talk with my hands so intensely.

Over the past 50 years Bob Hope employed 88 joke writers who supplied him with more than one million gags, and he still couldn't make me laugh.

I'd love for someone to ask me about comedic technique and choices.

Comedy is more difficult. You can look at scenes when you're doing a drama like, “Maybe it works,” but in comedy, when you're doing it, either it works or it doesn't. You have to keep doing it until it does, and the requirement is more.

To me, real comedy comes out of behavior. It's the choices you make as an actor. It's never about, "I want to do a comedy script." I can't think of it that way. And besides, some of those movies, those comedy movies, I can't even watch them.

I love physical comedy. Comedy that comes from an emotional place is amazing too and lets me develop in a new way as an actor.

Comics know that they do best. They might not be best to rewrite to another person's comedy, but they know what is best for them. Luckily, I come from both a writing background - with 'Workaholics' - and I also act in what I've written.

I find that I'm just drawn to anything that's going to challenge me as an actress. So any time I get a chance to do a little comedy, that's also a nice change for me. Most of the time people think of me as a dramatic actress and singer. And there's a challenge there because comedy is hard. What do they say? "Dying is easy; comedy is hard."

Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward.

It's quite frightening; the business of trying to be funny is very hairy. In comedy, the potential for humiliation is huge. Trying to be funny and failing is about the most embarrassing thing you can do.

Typically, when you're with your friends, premises are coming up left and right. But when you're on stage, you must create the premise. So you have to create the premise, paint the picture and then deliver the punch line.

[Being a good comedian] is a skill, but it's also a weird thing that only certain people can do. I always equate it to surgeons and how they can just cut people open and operate. Certain people are just wired differently, and I feel like comics are the same way.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

I'm not a great joke writer, which is odd for a comic to say, but I'm not. So it's hard for me to come up with things, because I don't write stuff, I don't write my act down.