David Zucker Quotes

The whole idea of comedy, there is nothing normal about going up on stage to make strangers laugh. But I'm also not an exhibitionist like other comics. I'm not up there talking about masturbating.

I don't think there's hardly a comic out there that does clean material all the way around. There's a couple of guys that are clean, but I'm not one of them.

I would love to do a movie with Albert Brooks; we're so different, but I find him so funny, and I can be just as seemingly narcissistic as he comes off, the 'it's all about me' kind of thing.

Show me one guy or woman as funny as Rodney Dangerfield or as good as George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Cosby, or Joan Rivers. There are a lot of good comics out there, no doubt, but as far as the quality of the comics goes, I think what you have is a bunch of situational comics.

In the best traditions of American comedy, from its beginnings through the crash-bang comedies of the 1990s and 2000s, Leslie Nielsen skewered the otherwise proper, did it with mischievous delight and convulsed audiences mercilessly.

There's only one rule in stand-up, which is that you have to be funny. Yet 99 per cent of comics look and talk exactly the same.

I'm topical as hell. That's not going to change if I lose weight. There are a lot of comics that do 'fat jokes' better than I do - Louie Anderson, John Pinette, Gabriel Iglesias. These guys are phenomenal.

I approach my work the way an actor approaches their work. The only difference is that I do comedy, and my job is to make things funny. My style makes things sound like they're improvisational and happening right then and there.

A comic says funny things. A comedian says things funny.

In comedy, you have to do all of the same stuff you do in drama and then put the comedy on top of it. You, the actor, are aware of the comedy but the character is oblivious. And you have to have a sense of humor.

I guess I prefer the laughs. I couldn't do a whole set of just shocks, but I like throwing a fastball inside every now and then to keep people on their toes.

As comedians, we have the opportunity to convey a message that will have an effect. The best can make you laugh and cry, the way musicians and actors can.

I make people laugh hard; I'm a comic, that's just the way it is. And I make them laugh because I'm funny, not because I'm filthy. The subject matter is dirty, but the pictures I paint are really funny. A lot of comics don't understand that that's what it's about. It's just, "I'll be dirty and they'll laugh." Nobody's becoming a superstar that way.

I don't know if I have actually good comedic timing. But I don't think I've worked at any timing. I think timing is probably something you can't work at. Well, I don't know. I definitely didn't work at it.

Funny is funny. You can be fooled by the eye, but if your performance is funny to the ear, it will be funny. I think it's that if you don't have the visual, you have to infuse the full personality into the voice.

It's fun for me to couple emotion with comedy. I think it helps comedy. I think a lot of times American comedies don't play on emotion too much.

Every comedian is just doing the comedy they find funny. This is me and it's not clean in any way. I could get a lot more work on TV playing clean but it's never interesting.

I don't know how (producer) Dan Harmon put that together but he did. Everyone gets along and we all babysit Chevy Chase (laughs) and it all works out. Plus we are given a lot of freedom to riff off each other and compliment each other's comedic style. The group is so talented, whether it be Donald Glover or Allison Brie and now Jim Rash who plays the Dean is finally a full member of the cast - oh my gosh, he is so funny. I call him Rumplestiltskin; he can spin comedy out of anything. I am in such a blessed situation - if only more people would watch it.

Comedy is all about the joke. Comedies usually don't do anything fancy with the camera [or] the lighting. It doesn't matter. It should never be fancy.

The key to comedy is commitment - if you're afraid, you shouldn't be a comedian.

Mel [Gibson] could stage physical comedy and put the camera in such a way... I mean, we did some really funny stuff, and he had some great ideas about how to do it. It was a delight to work with him in that regard.

I'm glad that that era of stand-up is over, because I think it adversely affected a lot of people who could have been really, really great comedians. Because they unconsciously or subconsciously stifled their wild impulses, and were thinking about the five clean minutes for The Tonight Show, or the 20-minute sitcom pitch as a stand-up act.

You gotta have the balls to go out there and be funny, man.

All that the comedian has to show for his years of work and aggravation is the echo of forgotten laughter.

The key, I would say to any fledgling humorist starting out, is to make sure that sloppiness is part of your recipe. That way they come to expect fumbling and clumsiness and they say, "Oh, it must be a charming part of his personality."