Comedy Influences Quotes

I am huge fan of Australian comedy. 'Strictly Ballroom' is one of my favorite movies. Definitely the British Commonwealth's sensibility is where I draw a lot of my influences.

As a comedian, I'm always quoting 'Caddyshack' and 'Dumb and Dumber.'

Mostly it was Mad magazine. And I did read a lot of - I had a subscription when I was little, but I also had access to some old collections, the little paperbacks of the really good stuff.

Some of my biggest influences are people like Steven Wright and Todd Berry. I'm a shy person, and I don't think people who aspire to do comedy think that's an option.

When I used to watch vaudevillian impressionists, people like Rich Little or Frank Gorshin, I always felt like the voice was the only point. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to be of the Robin Williams or Jonathan Winters model, where observation and storytelling was important.

British comedy - which has been a big inspiration to me for many years - is very different to Australian comedy and different again to American comedy.

I like to think of myself as the middleman between Fred Allen and Henny Youngman.

When I grew up, one of comedy idols was Rowan Atkinson, who of course is Mr. Bean and uses physical comedy. Same with Jim Carrey. Both of those guys. And Peter Sellers. Most of my comedy idols are physical comics.

A lot of my comic influences are distinctly American: Woody Allen and Bob Hope, for example. They were always the underdogs who were using wit to sort of battle their way through. And it seems to me that a lot of contemporary U.S. comedies are shot through with losers. None of the characters in 'The Big Bang Theory,' for instance, are studs.

Certainly there were so many different people I had as heroes growing up. Steve Martin is always my number one. David Letterman's show, that was important. And 'Saturday Night Live,' obviously.

I love comedy and I would write things to myself as an exercise in writing. I didn't do well for years, and I quit. I started to break down why I was afraid and started to look at people I admired, like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Freddie Prinze, George Carlin and all.

Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.

I started writing sketches when I was 13. I liked Vic Reeves, Fry and Laurie, and Paul Merton, and I thought you could just send sketches to the BBC, and they'd go, 'Great. We'll put these on telly.' But I gradually realised that you either had to go to university and join a club, or do standup.

Dad had a music store, and he'd often bring home comedy albums that I would listen to. I started listening to Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, and developing taste. They really influenced my style of comedy.

My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors.

I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.

I love Jerry Lewis. I loved Jim Carrey when I was younger, and Mike Myers and Phil Hartman, all the 'Saturday Night Live' people in the late '80s.

I just loved comedy as a kid and I think at some point, it just occurred to me that you could try it, and I did.

My inspiration to do comedy came from many places. Saturday mornings, I would watch Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis movies. I later got into watching stand-ups like Eddie Murphy, who was my main inspiration.

I was obsessed with 'Kids in the Hall', 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?', 'SNL'... like, I was a Conehead for one Halloween and the Wild and Crazy Guys for another.

I grew up on Jerry Lewis and Abbot and Costello, the Marx Brothers.

I've never seen 'The Goonies.' I've never seen 'Indiana Jones.' I watched 'UHF' over and over again when I was little, and that was it. I had no time for any other movies. I watched 'Naked Gun,' 'UHF,' and 'Airplane!' over and over.

I loved 'SNL' growing up, and I would trick my babysitter into letting me stay up to watch it. My family would rent Marx brothers' movies and Monty Python episodes, and we watched 'In Living Color', 'The State', and 'Strangers with Candy'.

People ask me about my influences and I say all the comedians in the 1970s and Dave Allen was a massive influence and a very big influence on a lot of modern comics.

I'm a comedian, and I decided I wanted to be a comedian when I was eight years old watching old Saturday Night Live episodes. I never decided to be a rapper because I'm not a rapper.