Jonathan Levine Quotes

I'd have to say that my favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning. 'Little Miss Sunshine' is like that. That's my fave genre, if I had to pick one.

In terms of being vulgar, I don't think you need to be violent unless it's slapstick, violence to yourself. That can be funny - we've all tripped and fallen on our faces.

When you get down to it, at it's root, Comedy is truth, absurdity, and pain. One of my little mottos is: 'Do you remember the Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown kicked the football and kissed the Little Red Haired Girl? Neither do I.'

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.

The history of the relationship between comedy and swimming is short indeed. Of course it is always funny when someone falls into water, but that's about it.

I want to be in a 'Final Destination' movie.

Comedy comes out of everyone's worst day. No one writes a sitcom episode about everyone having a good day. It's always about someone being locked out of their house or someone being dumped or whatever.

I love the idea of comedy in horror. I think this should be allowed.

Where subtlety fails us we must simply make do with cream pies.

I know that's not the right accent, but I can't do the right accent. It's either the wrong accent or another Octomom joke.

It's always very interesting to bet who's going to go first and who is going to have the most unbelievable death. It's always fun to play with that and create more expectation. It's an interesting part of horror movie.

I like films that are so funny, dramatic and lifelike simultaneously, that you are laughing and cringing simultaneously all throughout the film.

I'm a comedian. I make comic films and there are certain ideas that occur to me that are comic, with heavy, serious undertones. There are some ideas that are more frivolous to me. The next idea that could occur to me could be comedy about death and famine or something.

Humor is not about problems with airline luggage handlers. It's about our lives in America and it's about the ends of our lives and it's about everything that happens after that and everything that happened before.

I love seeing somebody act real earnest and serious, like Jackie Gleason. He makes me laugh because he reflects back to me my own serious-mindedness and how ridiculous it all is. It's always easier to see somebody else in that position than yourself, and you laugh. It's like the classic slipping on the banana peel, or someone getting hit by a pie in the face. Why do those things make us laugh? Is it from relief, like: Thank God it wasn't me? Or is it something else: I'm being very serious now. I'm pontificating earnestly and solemnly about-POW! PIE IN THE FACE! The bust-up of certainty.

I'm very much of the "make it dark, make it grim, make it tough", but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.

The role of humour is to make people fall down and writhe on the Axminster, and that is the top and bottom of it.

But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.

Coach Hedge grunted like he was pleased to have an excuse. He unclipped the megaphone from his belt and continued giving directions, but his voice came out like Darth Vader's. The kids cracked up. The coach tried again, but this time the megaphone blared: "The cow says moo!

I did so many comedies that we've had numerous discussions about horror of film and I've always been really hesitant to do so because the last thing I wanted to make was a horror movie.

With a horror movie, you want to know where the engine of the fear is coming from. Like in comedy, you want to know what the engine that's going to make the comedy - where that's coming from.

I agree that someone falling down is really funny, and I can go on YouTube and watch people falling. It makes me laugh.

I think horror comedies tend to skew more comedy than horror, for the most part.

The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.

Comedy is a man in trouble. And without it, there's no humor.