Rob Reiner Quotes

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way. If you've ever made up something on the spot and made somebody laugh, you can credit Jonathan Winters with inspiration.

Generally I know that we've hit on a good idea if there's a moment where I'm going "HA HA HA!" because that's usually my starting point, me laughing.

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.

Believe it or not, I write on stage. I can't write anywhere else; I have to be in a moment. I also have to challenge myself to make something funny out of a premise. I never have my own jokes written. I have to change things as I go along, and I have to entertain myself.

It's hard to force creativity and humor.

I put the storyboard down and came back to it like two weeks later and saw that I had written 'Butt-Head' next to the picture, and it kind of made me laugh and I thought, Well, might as well go for every laugh you can get.

When I'm at home creating music, I usually wind up laughing. It's always, like, funny - like, what the hell did I just write?

I know comedians who go on weird day trips in order to have random experiences they can talk about. They'll go on their own to Thorpe Park waiting for something hilarious to happen. That's really sad.

I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it.

I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it.

But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.

Also I can come up with new bits - people yell stuff out and it's a new subject or a subject that I've been thinking about that I haven't done onstage yet and I'll just run with it.

That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.

There's something very edgy about Bill Murray out there improvising.

Often the ideas in the show start out as ideas that make you laugh - outrageous "what if" ideas. I wanted an outlet for doing those.

Kanye [West] just says the funniest analogies that are so random. I should start keeping a book - in 20 years, I'll have a big book of analogies.They always make me laugh.

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way.

I'm always doing what I can to look for and just feel out funny things that are happening in the scene and improvise off of them.

I never know when I sit down, just what I am going to write. I make no plan; it just comes, and I don't know where it comes from.

Once you learn how to make people laugh, then you get to choose exactly how you want to make them laugh.

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

Comedians kind of write what comes to them. You can give yourself little assignments, but it's what inspires you. So I feel like with food, it is a passion of mine. It's where my sensibility rests. I love topics that are universal, and I love stuff that doesn't alienate people.

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

Sometimes actors' mistakes give me ideas I can use, because mistakes are always sincere, absolutely sincere.

I want to be remembered as a guy who inspired, encouraged and made people laugh.