Josh Gondelman Quotes

A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.

I've always felt that in a comedy script the stage directions should also have a comedic value.

Actually the hardest films to make are comedies. In normal life, funny things happen by accident; to re-create those by design in a film takes real technique.

Although in Abbott and Costello, and straight man was first. That's a very interesting concept.

A lot of the jokes had some build-up to some nasty stuff. But most of it was all character situations leading to what the ultimate payoff would be for that character.

You have to know you are in a comedy. You have to know that you are actually allowing the audience to participate on some level. When you go dark and mean it, then you don't let them in.

There are certain types of stand-up, who are very successful, who do one type of joke, and never stray out of that. The audience knows that he's the depressive comedian, he's the up-beat, crazy comic. He's the one that talks about real life.

You know, I liken it to - when you write a joke for somebody else, it's like you - you know, like the Wile E. Coyote dynamite plunger, where he pushes the plunger down and then you see the fuse go then there's an explosion in the distance? That's like writing a joke for somebody. When you tell the joke, you're in the explosion.

Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change.

I think when you dissect a joke too much, you have ruined whatever there is in comedy.

The goal of almost every comic is to find a comedy voice - a specific point of view that an audience can latch onto.

People confuse the subject of the joke with the target of the joke, and they're very rarely the same.

I think any kind of comic sequence is as easy and as difficult as it is written. So, if it is written well, then it becomes easy. Sometimes you find it difficult because the humour is not coming out.

If you're a comedian, you are looking for material in daily life.

As you get older as a comedian and keep doing it, what you actually start to cherish on stage is not the build-up to the jokes, but how comfortable you can be in the silence and the non-laughing parts, and how long you can take the audience without a laugh to then get a huge reaction.

Every sitcom needs their straight man or straight woman.

I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.

When you do comedy, you can't please the world, although I'd like to think that most of my audiences were on my side.

My foray into comedy was to avoid getting a job.

I'd rather try and cram in another two gags than leave a pause to say, 'Hey, wasn't that bit funny?'

Even in comedy, I'm always the straight guy, which is okay because that's a skill. But it would be nice to get out of that box.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.

In comedy, if you don't have the right tuning with your co-actor, the humour can fall flat.

When they first start doing comedy, new comics or even people that have only been doing it three or four years, they're doing an impersonation of a stand-up. This is what I think a stand-up should sound like.

You can't teach standup comedy. You can teach someone how to formulate a joke, but making it funny is different.