comedy philosophy Quotes

In comedy you have to be willing to not take yourself seriously, you know? I take comedy really seriously, and so to take comedy seriously, you must not, you cannot, ever take yourself seriously.

Jacques Tati is the great philosophical tinkerer of comedy, taking meticulous care to arrange his films so that they unfold in a series of revelations and effortless delights.

I would say we had two goals when doing this CD. The first goal is to introduce people who have never seen the show before to the best comics that are on the show. And goal number two is to introduce people that they never heard of before and give you a bit more flavor of what the show is actually like. And those goals are very much in line with the philosophy of the show from the very beginning. It's the very best people who are out there.

I guess there are no real strict rules [in comedy], but I just learn to apply my philosophy about comedy which is, it's a serious business and the result needs to be funny, not the process.

If I could sew comedy and philosophy together, then I've done a good job. The primary goal is always going to be laughs and the secondary goal is always going to be saying something without it being a lecture.

I can't pretend that I'm a great student of the art of comedy because anybody that becomes philosophical about humour doesn't know what he's talking about.

If I could sew comedy and philosophy together, then I've done a good job. The primary goal is always going to be laughs and the secondary goal is always going to be saying something without it being a lecture. I think it's important to have substance for what you're saying.

This is going to sound pretentious, but I like comedy that addresses something I find either worrisome or interesting in my life. I like Louis C.K.'s stuff or Bill Burr's stuff. I feel like there's comedy where someone will think of something that they think will work comedically, and then they reverse engineer that point of view so they can say that funny thing. The comedians I like, it could be an allusion, but it feels like their point of view comes first and then the jokes are a reflection of what they actually believe, or are frightened of, or are curious about, or are interested in.

A lot of comics fly by the seat of their pants, and they pride themselves on being witty, quick, and off-the-cuff. That's not my show. I wrote a show, and I want to do the show I wrote. I'm not interested in what the audience has to say.

I definitely learned to embrace the quiet moments onstage from Garry Shandling - relaxing and not fighting with the crowd, not raising your voice, not ever trying to win them over.

One doesn't have a sense of humor. It has you.

If you try to go for a laugh, it's death to the comedy. Personally, that's how I approach comedy. But I'm no expert.

After I saw a couple of pictures put out by my fellow comedy-directors, which seemed to have abandoned the fun in favor of the message, I wrote Sullivan's Travels to satisfy an urge to tell them that they were getting a little too deep-dish, to leave the preaching to the preachers.

I don't really tell a joke per se, I build up an attitude and it becomes a joke.

I like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.

When you're coming up with your philosophy and approach to performing comedy, you take special note of the things you disagree with as much as the things you agree with.

Whether people know the evolution of the conversation or not, I don't know, but thematically, as a comedian, I stay in the same ballpark - around my issues and my philosophy of life.