Even when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm I wasn't this "over-the-top" crazy character. It was still kind of play it straight but it was funny because the situation was funny. That's kind of how I portrayed things and I like dramas; I like to be able to - because in dramas you can laugh and joke and still be serious, be real. I like the realism of them.
I prefer comedies when they come from a dark kind of place and have a reality to it.
Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable.
I'm a huge fan of French comedy. The French play comedy in a slightly different way than we do: they play it with a sort of realism that we don't necessarily often do ourselves.
Something about not waiting for the laugh of a laugh track allows you to take lines that otherwise might be seen as just direct jokes, and make them seem realistic.
The more real it is, the funnier it is. The more awkward it is, the more people are stumbly, the funnier it is. I like a sharp joke, but it has to say something that someone would actually say.
A lot of times the movies I think are the funniest are dramas. I feel like dramas are so much funnier because they're actually capturing human beings. Humans are so weird and clumsy, and that, to me, often makes me laugh more.
A really good comedy, I think, is played as if it was real, and it's the circumstances that make it amusing. And I think that the - the inverse or the reverse is true for drama.
I think the best comedic actors don't play it for comedy, they play it for reality. Then you find it funny because it's real. Playing the genre is the worst thing you can do - it's embarrassing.
I love a good comedy, but the slapstick sitcom belly-laugh sort of comedy - the multicam thing - is not really where my interests lie. I'm very interested in single-cam, in intimate portraits. I like it when comedies have a little bit of realism and a little bit of darkness to them. It makes them more palatable and more relatable and grounded.
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.
There is this idea in comedy that you don't want to look like you care about your appearance because that takes away from what's real, what's important. And the real stuff is what's funny.
Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real.
I think if you turn down the volume on the good comedy, you should not even know if it's a comedy or not. It should look like a drama.
I think if you have a funny thought, and you want to get off a funny point, try to do it as realistically as you can. If you try to act it funny and accent the funny points, or do it in a funny style, you kind of lose it.
It's interesting to have the awkward moments play out, and the real human interactions. The more you cut that down, you lose the joke, which is that this is painful and hard.
