Comedy Perception Quotes

You know, I think British comedy is very smart comedy. You don't get too much dumb comedy over here. Or at least I haven't seen it. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize to all the dumb comedy makers over here.

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.

People get mad at bad comedy. Way more mad than at bad novels.

I think the No. 1 lesson I learned from 'The Simpsons' was just that animation could be as funny as live-action. That animation could be funnier than live-action. That animation didn't have to just be for kids.

I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor, financially, emotionally, egotistically. I still don't think I'm in comedy.

It bothers me when people say 'shock comic' or 'gross-out' because that was only one type of comedy I did. There was prank comedy. Man-on-the-street-reaction comedy. Visually surreal comedy. But you do something shocking, and that becomes your label.

Comedy is so subjective. If you trip and fall down, some people will laugh, and some people will say, 'Oh, physical comedy is so pedestrian.' Some people look at Three Stooges as lowbrow; some people consider them artists. No one is wrong. It's just a personal take.

I never saw myself as a comedian. I saw myself as a guy who can act funny.

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

I thought The Office was good, though I didn't think of it as a sitcom, just as a very good programme.

One of the many things I want to do is dig us out of that hole so that guys, in particular, can go: "Oh, yeah. Those people are really funny. I've seen that person. It's a woman. They are funny."

To me, what separates a funny movie from a good movie is something personal.

Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy.

Me, as myself, I don't think I'm particularly funny. But I've noticed that people in my life always have found me amusing. Which, when I was little, really bothered me.

I was always just like, 'Standups are making it up.' A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn't until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

Everyone told me that British sitcom was dead. Then I looked at 'Seinfeld' and 'Frasier' and thought, 'No it's not, it just needs more gags.'

I'm not a big believer in the sense of Jews having a monopoly on comedy.

I watch a lot of drama because I do associate comedy with work.

People used to make fun of alternative comedy because sometimes it would be someone being funny, and sometimes it was a crazy man with a flute making no sense. And it's very easy to be like, yeah, that's not really comedy.

In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons.

It is a difficult thing to like anybody else's ideas of being funny.

People think I am funny all the time. But I am not. I am serious, too. Also, I enjoy serious, dramatic films.

There are practical things which contribute to a joke's funniness. People will find a joke funnier if they are sitting closer together, if it's cold, if they've paid and if they are told it's funny beforehand.

When someone who is known for being comedic does something straight, it's always "a big breakthrough" or a "radical departure." Why is is no one ever says that if a straight actor does comedy? Are they presuming comedy is easier?

'Nice' is not a common label for comedians, but it is for Canadians. I like it.