James Lapine Quotes

Comedy becomes intensified in short scenes.

I think there should be laughs in everything. Sometimes, it's a slammed door, a pie in the face or just a recognition of our frailties.

Comedy is much more difficult than tragedy-and a much better training, I think. It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh.

I am truly at my happiest not when I am writing an aria for an actor or making a grand political or social point. I am at my happiest when I've figured out a fun way for somebody to slip on a banana peel.

Comedy can be very deep sometimes.

'The Dictator' - well, that was just a comedy, and I suppose the morality was incidental. It was just something to try and make people laugh rather than being a serious thing.

I've always loved pure, silly slapstick comedy. It always makes me laugh.

For me, if you distill comedy down, it is surprise and the unexpected. That has to be it on its most base level, in any form.

There's comedy even in tragedy. There's comedy in life. And in 'Castle', we go for that comedy.

It's a great counter to doing the soap because it's a comedy. It's real physical comedy.

I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.

I like really stupid comedies.

Funny is funny.

Comedy is unique in the sense that laughter is a palpable noise that everyone makes.

Comedy is unusual people in real situations; farce is real people in unusual situations.

As you know it is a comedy so everything is a little bit pushed. That's what's funny about this kind of movie is you can laugh about the absurdity, and the bad side of life.

Comedy is drama. I think that if your characters are feeling something that is very real, then they have to respond in a way that feels real to them, and some situations, the only response you could possibly have is to respond in a way that's so extreme that people are going to laugh.

I know the new comedy god is surrealism, but it doesn't touch my heart.

The energy in a comedy is very serious. Somebody said comedy is a tragedy plus time. When you have a tragedy, for example, like this, like, 'We're going to die,' and you have time, like, five hours to die, it becomes a comedy.

'Naked Gun 33 1/3' I think made me laugh more than anything ever made.

I think one of the funniest things about '30 Rock' is that Liz Lemon is sort of like Buster Keaton - she's always the fool, the joke is always on her.

I like idiotic comedies.

In terms of pure comedic value, 'Tootsie' is brilliant.

It's both funny and sad which seem to me to be the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

The joke or the pratfall is easy for me to do.