Comedy Evaluation Quotes

I've always maintained that I don't think comedy should be reviewed. I think it's un-reviewable, because it is so subjective.

The thing that is incredibly helpful is that we screen the movies and we ask the audience if they like it or not and we ask a lot of questions and do testing on the movies. For comedies, at least, it's very helpful. If they're not laughing and they don't say that they loved it, then I have screwed up.

The audience is so important. Because there's something that I might think is super funny, but if it's just not getting the feedback, I have to let it go.

Sometimes we have to actually say, I think you're really funny, but none of your jokes are going to make it on the air. So just answer my questions. Seriously.

I thought all comedy was stupid. I went to watch a friend do stand-up and I thought absolutely everyone was terrible.

I don't want to sound hoity-toity, but people told me I should watch 'Cheers' because it's very funny. So I watched it, and I just went, 'This is the great show of the universe?' To me, acting is making characters believable, not just doing jokes.

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.

If you're hired to be a funny person, you have to trust your judgment but also be open because sometimes you think something's funny, and the next day you read it and go, 'Oh, my God.'

I read a lot of scripts that I just don't find very funny.

Comedy is a serious business. It's frustrating when I can't find the right thing that makes the crew laugh. If I don't make them laugh, I get very disappointed in myself. You don't really have a live audience, so you just depend on the crew to let you know if you're doing something funny.

I'm the biggest proponent of test screenings now. There's two ways to face test screenings. For dramas, I don't know if I would rely on them as much, although I still think you need them, because you're making a movie for an audience at the end of the day. But with comedy... You could go through a script or anything I ever worked on, where you go, "This is hilarious," and you put it in front of people and you get nothing. And then the other side of it, is something you're like, "I think this is really stupid," and it gets a giant laugh.

The major caveat in all of comedy is that it's all instinctive. There's no true criteria. There is no right or wrong. Ultimately, often I'm surprised at what an audience will or will not laugh at. I have to stay very, very open to an audiences first exposure to that material and how they react to it.

I've always said that I myself am not the best audience for my own work, because I'm just not that receptive to comedy.

The scariest thing about screening a comedy... if you screen a drama, you know, there's no real way to tell in real time if people are enjoying it or not. But in a comedy, it's like, if people aren't laughing, it's sort of scary.

Comedy should never be over-analysed. It's either funny or it isn't. There's a subtle difference between those who say funny things and those who say things funny.

It's really stupid to defend your own jokes. That is for other people to do if they choose to.

There are some extremely acceptable male comedians out there: Joel Osteen, Abraham Lincoln, the man who played Phil Spector in HBO's 'Phil Spector.' But even those guys, while insightful and amusing, aren't exactly funny.

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly.