Coming from the Midwest, I didn't know about stand-up as an art. I just thought stand-up comedians were old men in suits talking about their wives.
Comedy is not funny. Comedy is hard work and timing and lots and lots of rehearsals.
I really admire stand-up, and I think I would have loved to learn how to do it. I think it's terrifying and thrilling. A really cool thing to do. It's a dying art, in a way.
Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.
I think comedy as an art involves the audience as a participant as much as is involves the artist.
To me, there's nothing greater than making people laugh.
comedy is a high form of art becaus it brings us more joy than anything else, practically but at the same time, it doesn't get a lot of respect. that's the sacrifice you make to do it.
It's hard to write a comedy sketch.
I think there's a responsibility more as an artist to try and push in the direction you think comedy should go... The biggest thing I could do for the art that I love was keeping it art: keeping it special, keeping it honest, keeping it truthful.
I don't know what it must be like to be a writer in general, but to be a comedy writer, it's got to be something - it's a very special kind of talent.
Some people use stand-up to get something else in their careers, but it's truly the art form of stand-up I love.
I can't pretend that I'm a great student of the art of comedy because anybody that becomes philosophical about humour doesn't know what he's talking about.
Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.
There's an art to stupid comedy. There's an art to offensive comedy, and I think the key is it's just gotta make you laugh.
Comedy takes a very specific technique, specific skills.
Stand-up is an art but since it's humor and it's funny - a lot of guys that don't think it's art are probably coming from the angle that they don't want to take it so seriously. I've always looked at it as an art but I don't look at it as a pretentious art. I understand it has to be taken lightly because it is just comedy in the end, but the good stand-up comics are someone with something to say.
I never defend my material. Comedy is subjective.
To spoon-feed people their comedy is not the proper evolution of the art.
The arts community still has a long lasting cynicism of the importance, or the artistic value, of comedy. Comedy is just farting about for money.
