Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor. You have to be able to just hit the backhand. You can't think about all the pieces of it. You can't think about your swing. You just have to do it. Reading someone else's deconstruction of what I do, all it does is put me in my head. On nights when the show goes particularly well, I am not aware of its fluidity. A lot of nights I'm just worried that I'm not going to be as good as the script in front of me.
A lot of times when I sit down with the other comics and try to talk theory, they say I'm being too serious.
The comedians who I admire that are really good, they always take it to a deep psychological place.
Yet there are some people - Steve Allen would dissect comedy forever; he's a really funny guy, but he would love talking about comedy. I'm doing it right now and you all seem bored.
Our comedies are not to be laughed at.
I think training in comedy, as it were, a history writing comedy, is a powerful tool for anyone.
Truthfully, I almost avoided 'While You Were Sleeping,' because I find those romantic comedies kind of precious, and they're full of lines that leave you feeling a little bewildered when you say them.
'The Office' is less a comedy than so many other 'comedies' that have been on the air. It's really about the balance between what is real and what is comic.
I think when you dissect a joke too much, you have ruined whatever there is in comedy.
To be honest, I don't know how comedy works.
Not Going Out's jokes were based on the American mentality in terms of how often the jokes appear.
I think all comedy has victims, really. Even if it's not a victim that appears on camera, usually there's a victim. If it's political comedy, if you're talking about the president or whoever, there's a victim there.
People, when they talk or write about comedy, they don't really get it.
Female roles in comedies are usually quite silly, I think.
Jokes are a lot about meaning. I think if we understand what jokes mean and why they work, we'd understand everything else. Genuinely I do.
Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.
We didn't choose the joke because it's filthy! We chose it because of the structure!
It's always the girl comedy and the guy comedy. It bums me out. You'd think there'd be a progression, from James L. Brooks and Nora Ephron into more subtle humor and behavior and psychology. All these interesting things people can learn about themselves by watching talented writers comment intelligently on someone else's emotional life.
I've never found kicks to the groin particularly funny, although recent work in the genre of the buddy movie suggests audience research must prove me wrong.
In comedy writing, a sitcom plot is basically the same thing: What's the worst thing that could happen? But you're playing it for comic effect. It's a similar muscle being used with Black Mirror.
Recognition is one of the three big elements of comedy.
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy.
Steven Alan Green is ONE funny writer ---- Everything I read of yours makes me laugh and think - Not just the kind words about meBut the insights you have for the Comedy racket.You're Barbara Hershey, we are beaches.
There is nothing worse than annotated humour.
You look at material a different way when your ass is on the line financially for it. You want to know where the big laughs are, and how we're going to sell this.
