A lot of times when I sit down with the other comics and try to talk theory, they say I'm being too serious.
You know, I think British comedy is very smart comedy. You don't get too much dumb comedy over here. Or at least I haven't seen it. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize to all the dumb comedy makers over here.
'The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too.
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.
A lot of people think I'm going to be like someone who's stepped out of one of his own cartoons. And maybe I am. But I sure have a hard time analyzing it.
The comedians who I admire that are really good, they always take it to a deep psychological place.
Stand-up is cool. In stand-up, you get to learn about yourself if you do it from a thoughtful place.
The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.
Woody says I can make jokes, but I don't get them - I'm always looking deeper for the meanings.
What the joke displays is a switch in perception. This is important in changing the way we think.
Surprise is not humor. I think that there can be a fine line there.
Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog: Nobody really enjoys it, and the frog generally dies as a result.
When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.
Louis CK knows that just because a joke is using space as a resource instead of something to be crammed like a hamper, this doesn't mean a story isn't happening.
A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.
You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.
Steve Allen was on Johnny Carson one time - I looked for it, but I couldn't find it - and he read the lyrics to 'Hot Stuff' by Donna Summer like a poet. He read them very seriously. I was maybe 8, but it killed me.
It's very hard to watch comedy for me, when I'm doing a comedy show, because I either watch a show and I love it, and I'm jealous, or I watch a show and I see all the problems with it, and I'm angry that I watched it.
I have never examined the subject of humor until now. I am surprised to find how much ground it covers. I have got its divisions and frontiers down on a piece of paper. I find it defined as a production of the brain, as the power of the brain to produce something humorous, and the capacity of percieving humor.
Describing comic sensibility is near impossible. It's sort of an abstract silliness, that sometimes the joke isn't the star.
We didn't choose the joke because it's filthy! We chose it because of the structure!
And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn't work then you've got to the whole root of comedy.
I can usually judge a fellow by what he laughs at.
