In comedy you feel you need to go back to the theatre every now and again, you feel you need to go back to an audience every now and again to see if you're still getting your craft right, making people laugh at the moments you think they should and that sort of thing.
I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could. And I thought that was the perfect thing. If I could make the setup and the punchline identical to each other, I would create a different kind of joke.
The only difference between a comedian and someone else? We need to make people laugh more.
I have gotten a couple of letters meant for Mr. Bean aka Rowan Atkinson. These letters would say things like, 'You're so funny, you make me laugh, with your big rubbery face,' and I would say, 'You can't mean me!'
The misconception is that standup comics are always on. I don't know any really funny comics that are annoying and constantly trying to be funny all the time.
I was considered by my peers to be a good comedian. So that's all I ever strived to do was get some recognition from my peers.
My dad loved comedians, especially George Jessel, and he loved Henny Youngman and Buddy Hackett.
The difference between tragedy and comedy: Tragedy is something awful happening to somebody else, while comedy is something awful happening to somebody else.
I feel that I'm a stand-up comedian more than anything else, that's my job.
When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.
That's a lovely experience when you make an audience laugh. Then the nerves go away for a bit. And sometimes you do things then that you've never done before that are really funny.
I think Flip Wilson is a brillant comedian.
I don't think of myself as funny - I don't fill up a room with my humor... I would fail miserably as a stand-up comedian.
There's this little recipe that you have to hit pretty well to get somebody to laugh. And it's a combination of the way in which you say something, with the facial expression that you have, married with the body language that you have, etc.
I'm always blown away by stand-ups. I'm blown away by people like that who are craftspeople at comedy.
I don't think my film style has changed. I'm doing the same kind of jokes I did when I was younger.
I do love situational comedy, clowning, and slapstick; I approach that with a lot of respect. The goofier you are, it doesn't mean you're going to be funnier.
'Yamla Pagla Deewana' is not slapstick but a situation based comedy.
When you do an hour and a half and you destroy, like tonight was great. I had an awesome time. I realized that I'd been up there for about an hour and a half and I realized, "Wow, I'm gonna get out of here without doing Walken." It is a bit of a moral victory.
Usually the beginning of a story that people hear a lot. For example, "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut" or "My dad keeps losing his car keys." And then I just think of different ways the story could end. "My girlfriend is upset about her new haircut. I don't understand why she's crying. I'm the one who has to get a new girlfriend." Then I try it out on stage. I don't do a lot of re-writing. My jokes either work or they don't. The trick is just to write a ton of jokes.
Every time I wrote a sketch that was in my voice, Ferrell would just do it better.
I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'
The role of a comedian is to make the audience laugh, at a minimum of once every fifteen seconds.
You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.
I always remember writing a page of jokes for a comedian and handing it to him backstage at a club and he read it and then took his cigarette lighter and lit the page on...
