Every time I do a play, I'm like, 'When do I get to do the one where I wear a gown, sit in a chair, and say funny things?' I'd love to do that.
How to do half-hour comedy innovatively is something I do pride myself on. We invented it with 'I Love Lucy.'
He wasn't Bugs without the gags we gave him.
I love doing sitcoms. I love doing comedy. I love the whole shooting match.
The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment.
'Vicky Donor' proved that the audience was waiting for well-scripted funny films.
Situation comedies are old-fashioned - they stick to formulas. I resent their music which is old fashioned. I resent the use of a laugh track.
The whole experience of doing a sitcom is... Telling jokes with such precision is really exciting, but it's also terrifying.
I have an aversion to comedy where everybody speaks in punchlines.
I just don't like filming scenes where it's like, that's not how people talk. People aren't saying a joke every five seconds.
With comedy, if you write something for me, I'm better at it. I'm not sure I'm so good at improvisational stuff.
What you aspire to on a sitcom is the feeling of live comedy.
I grew up in a time where on things like 'The Red Skeleton Show' or even to a certain extent on 'The Carol Burnett Show,' people wrote in the breakouts or ad-libs. They were scripted to look spontaneous. So I always had a dislike of that kind of thing.
I don't think I could ever do a network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite circumstance. I don't want to be a part of a show where it's mostly about coming up with the jokes.
'Billy on the Street' is a persona. It's crafted; it has writers. It's a mixture of performance art and comedy.
There's a common misconception with sketch comedy that you just go up there and wing it, but it's written, and there really is order.
Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that's really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type of comedy.
