Comedy Structure Quotes

I think a lot of American comedies tend to apologize for their bad behavior in the last 10 minutes of the movie.

I like the sitcom, as a structure.

Too many comics today ramble. By the time they get to the punch line, the audience has either gone to sleep, gone to the bathroom or gone to bed.

I learned that comedy is born out of strong characters. I won't begin writing a character until I have a clear take on them.

As far as outlining is concerned, I don't outline humor. I might right down a word or two to remind myself of a punch line I thought of, but the actual structure of a piece I really don't. I don't think it would really help me because for me the process is joke, joke, joke, joke.

There are quite detailed rules with sitcom. When people can leave scenes, act structure, joke rhythm. You can't not have a straight man.

As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have to end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes. You're all happy at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

We didn't choose the joke because it's filthy! We chose it because of the structure!

The important thing, once you get 'em laughing, is to keep 'em laughing until you're through. With a 90-minute feature, you've got to stop the laughter and then pick it up again, which is tough.

In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is.

A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.

If you're making comedies, they have to have a fun and a rhythm to them.

I think I am someone who is very interested in structure and different ways of delivering jokes.

Comedy is the only form of entertainment where the audience doesn't know what to expect. In an evening, you might get ten comics doing ten different things. That's not what happens when you go to hear music. There isn't a classical performance followed by a hoedown followed by rap.

I do think comedy needs to be a living thing, but I think without a great script and fully realized characters, you cannot keep it living. Otherwise, it just becomes long and rambling, indulgent. So I think you need both, frankly.

I think comedy has to be an intellectual pursuit. It comes down to logic and analysis. As soon as it becomes emotional, it's not comedy anymore.

Low comedies are written for the drawing-room, the kitchen and the stable, and if you cut out the kitchen and the stable the drawing-room can't support the play by itself.

A lot of comedies fall apart because they just go from joke to joke, and the characters are all sort of being crazy off on their own.

People always talk about the content, in terms of the politics of it or whatever social issues are in it, and it's like, "Yeah, but I'm also a good comic." You could at least talk about the form of it, and I feel like that's always the thing that's missed.

Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor.

I had always been - everybody kind of likes comedy. I was very interested in comedy, beyond just liking it. I had friends that took apart radios; I wanted to take apart jokes.

After the comedy boom of the '80s, there was a certain formula that comedians had to do and could do in order to be successful touring comedians, and those were mainly observational comedians who had a very strict structure of what made an act, and I think it was very performance oriented.

I've learned to start from a really sound argument, boil down the essence of what you're trying to say, then build your humor around that, rather than starting with, 'This sounds funny,' and going from there.

My experience - and it might be just the kind of comedy that I do, which is usually sketch comedy - is that there's a lot more texture and subplot in drama than in comedy.