I feel like comedy is where I'm most at ease, but I also have an allergy to silly jokes.
I always say, 'If you can't give a reason for the banana peel being in the alley, then don't have the comic slide over it.' Do you understand what I mean? First explain how the banana peel got there quickly. And then there's a reason for all the comedy.
Stand-up comedy is not a man's job. It's an alpha job: To be the only person in a room with a microphone who's allowed to talk.
The problem with comedy audiences - it's like the Coliseum - when they see someone struggling, they don't feel altruistic towards them. They feel slightly repulsed by it.
My sister would write plays, and I would act in them and perform them for my parents. They were on the comedy side, very much inspired by 'The Amanda Show.'
Verse comedy is interesting to me because of the challenge of writing in rhymed couplets, which is not a form that's usually amenable to English, yet to me it gives great possibility for comedy.
American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.
I was doing comedy in laundry mats in 1992, literally where I would bring a little gorilla amp and a lapel mike and just start performing.
I had the humble beginnings. I was doing comedy in laundry mats in 1992, literally where I would bring a little gorilla amp and a lapel mike and just start performing.
I don't like to bad-mouth other shows, but I was very disturbed after seeing 'Starlight Express.' It had very little to do with musical comedy as I know it. It had to do with sound and spectacle and records and technology and amplification.
The duty of comedy is to correct men by amusing them.
I've been pitching a show of five female stand-up comedians through the generations, from Phyllis Diller to Amy Schumer, so when I got an e-mail asking me if I would participate in the Women in Comedy Festival, I was thrilled.
Comedy is good at analysing and dealing with evil because it doesn't present it as evil but a collection of banalities.
I'd like a bit of a crack at some kind of anarchic comedy, but whether or not I'm skillful enough at it all, we'll see.
Comedy is the ultimate anarchist.
Talent grips us. We are overtaken by the beauty of Michelangelo's sculpture, riveted by Mariah Carey's angelic voice, doubled over in laughter by the comedy of Robin Williams, and captivated by the on screen performances of Denzel Washington.
The first time I met Jon Stewart was at the press conference that Comedy Central held to announce Jon would be the new host of 'The Daily Show,' which back then was not called 'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.'
Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There's entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.
I would love to work with Sir Anthony Hopkins. How and why that would happen in a comedy I'm not sure - why he would be dragged over to my side, or I'd be be dragged over to his side.
Friends applaud, the comedy is over.