I like a very dry wit, not the big kind of humor like Robin Williams. I don't think I'm capable of that.
It is almost a joke, but a joke that nobody tells.
I learned that you don't have to be all over the place, that you can be subtle and you can say what you say. The words that you put together can be just as hilarious as falling all over the place or doing something.
Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.
There's something grounded about 'Ugly Americans,' so I think it's good that I'm playing a version of myself in these elevated cartoon circumstances.
When people come in to act on the show, we say, "Just be extremely dry and not funny. Let the idea be the joke." That holds true through a lot of our stuff.
When you do a movie as opposed to a TV show, it's always tempting to think everything has to be big and exaggerated and spectacular. And in fact, a lot of the funniest comedy films have been very intimate.
I think the best kind of comedy is the least self conscious. I think if you just sort of let the comedy happen without the elbow nudge, did you get it, did you get it. I love straight face comedy or subtle - relatively subtle comedy.
When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.
I love straight-face comedy or relatively subtle comedy. And then I turn around and I find myself doing very broad comedy but it's all fun and you have to keep your sense of humor and not take yourself seriously.
Comedy doesn't have to be loud and obnoxious and beat you over the head. It can be this really small detail that, when it computes in your brain, you think, "That's great. That's masterful."
I think if you turn down the volume on the good comedy, you should not even know if it's a comedy or not. It should look like a drama.
Nobody is here without a reason. I always had a different sensibility. I like a huge range of comedy - from broad and farcical, the most sensitive, the most understated - but I always wanted my comedy to be more embracing of the species rather than debasing of it.
I like books that are funny, but that aren't trying to be funny. I like situational humor.
I feel that a lot of British comedy is often too bombastic, too obvious, dressing up and shouting and pulling funny faces.
Where I come from people are very deadpan with a dry humour that I suppose rubbed off on me.
Not all cartoon humor is just about having bugged-out eyes and tongues flying out of people's heads.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it.
