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.
You've noticed that same joke told by two different people, once works, and the other time doesn't, simply because how the person edits it. The silences, the pauses, what they neglect, what they emphasize - all of this matters.
I only know one way to pitch. I really do.
Regan’s greatness as a rhetorician was in his delivery not in the content of what he said as with Churchill and Roosevelt.
You can give a guy a funny line, but you can't make him say it funny.
One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.
Waka Flocka Flame, some of his lyrics are, like, common sentences. But just the way he is, and the way he delivers it, makes it this crazy metal hip-hop.
Ninety-nine percent is in the delivery. If you have the right voice and the right delivery, you're cocky enough, and you pound down on the punch line, you can say anything and make people laugh maybe three times before they realize you're not telling jokes.
There's something about us as stand-ups that when we're on our feet, we feel more in control of the situation and in control of our bodies and our delivery.
And she [Margaret Thatcher] also had a sort of a way, like a railroad train, of going, taking a breath and starting quite quietly and making a point in a way that you don't really know that this point is going to be made through several examples, and there will be not be a break in the speaking voice at any point.
Any comic is a very good actor. Look at Don Rickles. He is saying the same joke every night for 20 years and making it look like he just thought of it.
A great actor is independent of the poet, because the supreme essence of feeling does not reside in prose or in verse, but in the accent with which it is delivered.
I'm real particular about delivery. You can write the illest rhymes in the world, but can you deliver it right?
Some actors are what I call more like mirror actors, which means that they do a performance at home in front of the mirror, and then they go deliver it. I'm not that type.
It's not what I do, but the way I do it. It's not what I say, but the way I say it.
At an early age, if you develop a delivery or a throwing motion that is direct to the plate, then that's fine. If you have one that's slightly open, that's fine, too.
While the subject matter of my novels could not be further removed from the stuff I used to trot out at the Comedy Store, the delivery of the material employs many of the same techniques.
In standup, you don't have anything near you except a microphone.
In TV, you just have to decide the night before exactly how you're going to say it and stick with that. You can't kick it around; you haven't got time.
Learn the art of the pitch and of messaging.
It isn't what I do, but how I do it. It isn't what I say, but how I say it, and how I look when I do it and say it.
The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression - all of that is very important.
Finding the fine line between satisfying a daytime TV audience and an afternoon radio audience. That involved editing down my delivery to under an hour. I've been blessed to have great producers and a great staff to achieve that. I have a small team but they're very efficient.
If you try to deliver a funny line in a funny way, it comes out as wacky and you ruin the scene.
As a comedian who's used to, like, punching the jokes, it's hard to teach yourself that that's not the strong choice in the sense that you have to really have to dial it back.
