Comedy Failure Quotes

My daughter doesn't even get my humor. She's like, 'Um, no. I don't get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.'

I don't have any horror stories of trying to start as a comedian and eating it constantly on stage.

Like most comics, I tried to come up with a sitcom idea that was based around my life. And it didn't work out. But maybe because it didn't work out, that's why I ended up on 'Breaking Bad;' I don't know.

If I tried to do comedy for the rest of my career, I would not be very successful.

I don't think I've ever died on stage. I've had jokes that died on stage. I've told a joke and absolutely nothing. They didn't know it was the end of the joke.

James Caan told me at the end of filming 'Elf' that he had been waiting through the whole film for me to be funny - and I never was.

I'm not a big one for jokes. I can't tell a joke, believe it or not. If you gave me a thousand bucks and said, "Don, get up at a party and tell a joke," I'm the worst.

The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.

[sam] Kinison, when he started out, he'd come to Canada when I was first starting, and he'd always [bomb].

When comedy fails, seriousness begins to leak back in.

I told jokes badly.

I was the worst game show host that ever lived, and I knew it.

I did a sitcom with Desi Arnaz Jr. in a pilot called 'Whacked Out.' We were bombing, and Lucille Ball grabbed the mic and started berating the audience.

I did a gig at a comedy club in Bournemouth where they served a buffet while the acts were on. There was the clang of people carving turkey during the set. If you put comedy and turkey side by side, turkey always wins.

Sometimes when I do a joke and it doesn't get a lot of laughs, it kind of feels like I'm doing jazz. That's kinda cool because jazz is cool, but sometimes jazz sucks ... Maybe I'm the Kenny G of comedy.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

In addition to comedy, I'm a writer. I write checks. They're not very good.

When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop.

... the majority of us scarcely see more distinctly the faultiness of our own conduct than the faultiness of our own arguments, orthe dulness [sic] of our own jokes.

I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."

Dick Martin, if you put a gun to his forehead, he couldn't tell you a joke.

It's painful for me to watch someone who isn't funny. It's horrifying to sit in the back and watch some guy who just totally sucks.

Comedy is surprises, so if you're intending to make somebody laugh and they don't laugh, that's funny.

I remember the Time review [on the Hit and Run]said that there wasn't one laugh in it. And I had watched the movie 50 times with audiences, and it always played great. There was certainly a moment where you could tell the audience was like, "Wow, this is really getting weird."

I'm probably not very funny. The scripts just don't come in, or the ones that do aren't that good. I suppose I'm just an old drama queen, really.