Comedy Effectiveness Quotes

When people write comedy from neutrality, it just gets kind of silly.

The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.

My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

I think one of the big things about comedy is the ability for the audience to identify.

I realized that comedians of the day were operating on jokes and punch lines. The moment you say the punch line, the audience either laughs sincerely or they laugh automatically or they don't laugh. The thing that bothered me was that automatic laugh. I said, that's not real laughter.

A lot of people who claim they're political comedians are just comedians who have opinions. But they stop being funny the minute they give their opinions.

One of the many reasons why I love stand-up so much is when you're performing, you get instant feedback. You know if stuff is working right away.

One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.

One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.

I can tell how honest a joke is or how true a joke is by how fast the laughs come.

Many hundred-million-dollar Hollywood comedies aren't any good. They're trying to shock you.

You can't make people laugh for more than half an hour and be consistent.

Funny is funny. And if it's good, it travels.

I think all great comedies - or at least the comedies I like - it has some of the funniest moments, but it never breaks the spell for the audience. It never pushes the audience away by spoofing itself too much or undermining the characters or making them cardboard or flimsy. Everybody is really trying to do what their characters believe in - and so nobody breaks the spell of the world, even though in other ways it's a comedy and very funny.

There's nothing more dramatic than the comedy I've done. Because the comedy I've done is to get to the audience, get them to feel it, or they won't laugh.

I think that there's a fine line between comedy and drama. I think that ultimately, the less winking that's going on when you're doing comedy - and this is just my own thing, and maybe it's why I've never been hired in comedy except by Bill Lawrence - but I think that the less winking you do with comedy, the better off you are.

Transforming a line like that makes it into a belly laugh instead of a laugh against us.

At its best, alt comedy can be challenging, surprising, and innovative. And at its worst, alt comics think that being awkward.com/FAQS is a substitution for punchlines.

People say I'm good at standup. I don't even think I'm that great at standup. I just hit hard. I don't think I'm super technical or anything like that. I got a couple knockouts. I think I just hit hard more than anything.

I have always felt a comedy's story is undercut if you have a villain who is not really menacing.

In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny.

Before YouTube, I used to show videos at film festivals, and that was good and constructive. Watching things with an audience is a great way to gauge - it's pretty clear what's working in comedy when there's a joke and people laugh or don't laugh.

Mixing humor and politics is something that works.

I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think about it afterwards because in the end that's what the art that I'm working with is.

In order for American Pie to have worked, you have to have a character who, even while he is humping a pie, the audience still likes.