James Roday Quotes

I like the sitcom, as a structure.

Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that's really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type of comedy.

There are quite detailed rules with sitcom. When people can leave scenes, act structure, joke rhythm. You can't not have a straight man.

Well, usually, when you're doing a sitcom, you get a script and every word or for the most part, is written. So, you know, if it's a 30-minute sitcom, then it's a 35-page script or something like that.

In particular, I'm drawn to the stories that have big, high concepts and real characters at their heart. And I love where those two worlds meet, and 'Edge of Tomorrow' is the perfect canvas to explore that.

I love doing comedy. One of my favorite things in the world is to do 'Parks and Recreation'; a big fun character.

The shows I've been working on, especially 'Parenthood' and 'Friday Night Lights,' I think are completely character-driven stories. I think, for most writers, that's a privilege to be telling those kinds of stories. It's erroneous to me.

I write small and weird. Romcoms are not in my skill set.

I loved doing 'The Family' with Eunice and Mama. They were very interesting because there were no jokes written into those sketches. It was all character-driven. And sometimes it got a little heavy.

I learned so much from the writing on 'King of the Hill', which I thought was just magnificent. They would let real moments happen in this animated, one-dimensional world. I feel like I've been in school this whole time.

The one thing we pride ourselves on the most with writing 'Car Share' is that it's hard to predict what's going to happen and that's hard to achieve, especially with comedy.

Raju Gadu' is a situational comedy where I play a fun and bubbly character. She's a proper Andhra girl who's modern but loves donning desi looks.

I have tried many times to write a TV sitcom - with little success.

Generally, we try not to write down to kids. We really just try to write a visual, character-driven cartoon that has a lot of slapstick and really appeals to us. I guess we are just lucky that other adults find that amusing, too.

Sitcom writing is difficult because it's not just about writing jokes - there's a very fine balance between characters, plot, and comedy, that if you get one thing wrong, the whole castle comes falling down.

Despite the volatile mixture of family, politics and past misdeeds darkening the present, 'Hardball' doesn't have the sharp tang of the early novels or the expansive reach of more recent series installments.

Everyone told me that British sitcom was dead. Then I looked at 'Seinfeld' and 'Frasier' and thought, 'No it's not, it just needs more gags.'

I have always been doing sketch comedy since I was a kid because one of my mom's boyfriends was an improv comedy guy so were doing skits all the time growing up.

I need to write a sitcom, but something with warmth, not one where the dad comes home and he's treated like an idiot.

I wanna do some more goofy comedy stuff; I really enjoyed doing 'A Touch of Cloth.'

I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, 'rate-of-revelation,' that has come to mean a lot to me: 'the pace at which we're learning crucial emotional information about the stories' central figures.' An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not.

I tend not to approach things intellectually at first. Maybe after the fact i can look at it and see ultimately what it's doing. I start with the characters and their inner lives.

Being a screenwriter for a comedy, you're writing for characters in them in their voice. I could write anyone.

I write as if I'm someone reading the book - often people ask if I write one strand first and then go back and seed in the other, but I don't think I could keep track of who knows what, and the tension would come out wrong, so the answer is no - I write it more or less in the order you read it.

I think, in a comedy, it's easy to play people as very two-dimensional. But what is enjoyable to watch is seeing a more fully rounded person.