Kenya Barris Quotes

If I can make you laugh and learn, I want to be like George Carlin and Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Sam Kinison and Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle. I want to be of that ilk, I don't want to just make you laugh, I want to make you think.

I was doing a bit that stupid people should be slapped. But the more I did it, the more I didn't like that connotation, the violence and all that. The more I thought about it, I thought they should just wear signs. And, man, it just took off.

The comics that are just conversing with you up there and drawing on their own life, yeah, I guess so. I guess some do political humor, some do topical humor, but the ones that I like, the ones that are appealing to me, were guys who were just talking to you about their life.

Nihilism in American comedy came along way before 'The Simpsons.' There was a fairly nihilistic point of view to 'Saturday Night Live,' for instance, back in the beginning, and a lot of really dark comedy had a really anti-sentimental take on life.

There was a sea of change in comedy in the late 1950s and '60s. We were dealing with vignettes as opposed to jokes. We were more socially aware.

I get most of my news from the Jon Stewart Daily Show. It's the most level commentary you can find. You have to laugh, because it's all so true. It's the closest thing to a counterculture.

The biggest threat to any politician is an artist. Comedians unleashed can do a great deal of damage. David Letterman can do more damage than any Republican assault by Newt Gingrich.

The last thing I want to do is use my comedy as a partisan tool or as a method for preaching.

I think Chris Rock at the Oscars was a great example. I thought that was intellectually hilarious. The Gap starts a war with Banana Republic... That to me was funny.

Well I think comedy everywhere has lost a bit of its bite. In Canada, I can't argue with the quality, but it feels like it's gotten a little safe.

Everybody kind of looks to comedians and comedy for relief and a fresh breath about what is going on in the world.

The best comedy not only makes you laugh, but on the moment of the laugh, you learned.

'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.

All comedy is really talking about social issues and things that are affecting our lives.

I thought that through the strip, I could vent my spleen and be funny at the same time. But when it comes to humor, there's no substitute for reality and politicians.

The first show I worked on was 'In Living Color.' I think 'The Daily Show' was the culmination of having that point of view - being able to look at this third rail in our society.

I grew up in a bit of a vacuum. And as a kid, you see 'Monty Python's Flying Circus' and you're like, 'Oh, it's a cartoon.' There's mixed media. It's funny, and there's stop-motion. But as an adult, you figure it out, how the entire underpinnings of their comedy was poking fun at the rank and file of the British aristocracy and the monarchy.

I have always felt that the rise of what became known as alternative comedy was born out of the loins of the alternative theatre movement.

I think the best comedy enlightens, informs, and changes the way people look at the world.

The bipartisan approach filtered up through my typewriter. I used to say, "Mad takes on both sides." We even used to rake the hippies over the coals. They were protesting the Vietnam War, but we took aspects of their culture and had fun with it. Mad was wide open. Bill loved it, and he was a capitalist Republican. I loved it, and I was a liberal Democrat. That went for the writers, too; they all had their own political leanings, and everybody had a voice. But the voices were mostly critical. It was social commentary, after all.

American political culture quickly and always outpaces any attempt to satirize it.

The end of satire is the amendment of vices by correction; and he who writes honestly is no more an enemy to the offender than the physician to the patient when he prescribes harsh remedies.

Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.

I think the job of a comedian is to make people laugh, but also challenge them to laugh at things they didn't know they could until now.