Comedy Risks Quotes

For 35 years, I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren't funny. Some of them weren't appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.

It's quite frightening; the business of trying to be funny is very hairy. In comedy, the potential for humiliation is huge. Trying to be funny and failing is about the most embarrassing thing you can do.

As a comedian, you have everything working against you.

When we were doing 'Viva Variety,' we knew, 'Boy, this really cracks us up, but this is not for everybody. This is a little weird.'

Comedy is the toughest. If it goes little bit here and there, and your partner doesn't cover up for you, then everything can go wrong.

There isn't a comedian in the world that hasn't bombed.

Especially with comedy, you take massive risks because ultimately you're trying to be funny. If you're not funny, then it's really embarrassing and you look stupid.

There's a lot of comedic value to fraternities, but whenever you start messing with power dynamics and you take away consequences, you can tread some dangerous waters.

I was always pretty broad. I've had a couple bad experiences. One time, I showed up late for a gig in Brooklyn at an Italian restaurant. I ran on stage, did my show, and then some guy in the audience threatened to kill me because he didn't like my joke. Instead of talking to him, I just ran off stage. And then, because I was late, the owner of the restaurant threatened to kill me. And I was 19 years old and so scared that I almost started crying. But, I've done every gig you can imagine, in every state.

The funny thing about our act is that dad gets the worst of it, although I'm the one who apparently receives the bruises [...] the secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment.

Everything about starting out in comedy is pride-swallowing, from handing out fliers to bombing in front of audiences.

Stand-up comedy is not for the faint-hearted or the thin-skinned.

Luckily, I'm not a stand-up comedian, so I don't get the fear of standing on stage in front of a dead audience: my humorous pieces have to make it past an editor before they get exposed to the public.

You're entering dangerous land when you start theorising about comedy.

When you're a stand-up comic, you live and die by what you say on stage. There's no director or writer or producer who can tell you what to say and not to say. Once in a while, a club owner will ask a comic to work clean, or not say something, but that's few and far between.

From 1936 on, I have taken more falls than any other 20 comedians put together. From the time I was 21, I've taken them on everything from clay courts to cement to wood floors, coming off pianos, going out a two-story window, landing on Dean, falling into the rough. You do that and you're gonna have problems.

Whenever I indulge my sense of humor, it gets me into trouble.

A comic's like anybody else - he does what he does to support himself and feed his family. But if a comic says the wrong thing, there's a chance the audience will want to take you down.

For some comedians it feels so cool to be like: 'I'll say anything, man!'. I'm not quite there yet.

For me, I believe comedy's about taking risks, taking chances, working in a safe environment where you're comfortable making a fool of yourself. It's so critical, especially in comedy, to just have all those right pieces in place.

The fine line that you do when you do political comedy is, as long as you have that laugh, you're fine.