James Wolcott Quotes

Editing and post-production is so important with comedy.

I wanted to do a comedy. I'd been actively looking for a comedy. I wanted to do one that was different. Nothing against them, but I wasn't interested in just your normal sitcom, boy meets girl.

I watched Master Class with Lorne Michaels on OWN. How can somebody produce a sketch show and talk for an hour and not say something even slightly amusing, or sarcastic, or ironic, or interesting, or informative? 'My mission as a producer is to encourage creativity.' Mission accomplished.

I love doing comedy, I really do. It was perhaps my first love. And I think, as an actor, you're young and you do school plays and the reason you go 'I might do more of this' is because you make people laugh in a school play. You don't go and do Hamlet when you're nine and go: "I feel people were really moved out there!" You do a silly voice and everyone laughs and you go: "Ooh, that feels quite nice. I might make a life out of this!"

I'm just going to keep doing comedy because I don't know what else to do. I have no other applicable skills.

I've been writing jokes since I'm fifteen. Not out of happiness, but to go to a different place, because reality wasn't good to me.

In his comic scenes, Shakespeare seems to produce, without labor, what no labor can improve.

Nothing's true that I say, because I don't really want to say anything. I don't think my life's that cool, and I don't think my opinion's that valid. They're just silly jokes. Usually I just take a topic that isn't funny at all, like Shakespeare, and work backwards. I just try to find an unfunny subject.

I tell the truth and I don't try to sugarcoat things. But I also decided that if you don't use humor or satire, then it's just too dark all the time. And one of my favorite literary works is A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift. As you know, that was an enormously famous satire piece that was able to point out, you know, things to people in a different way. And I do believe that satire and humor can reveal truth in a way that sometimes doesn't get revealed through other means. And so I decided to, every now and then, use satire and humor as well.

I really enjoyed Merrill Markoe's Guide To Glamorous Living, which was a weird hybrid reality/sketch thing I wrote, directed, and hosted, with two male-model bimbos whom I made agree with everything I said.

I asked Mr. Vann which O levels you need to write situation comedy for television. Mr. Vann said that you don't need qualifications at all, you just need to be a moron.

I would be jokesmithing. I had files with tons of disses that I would try to write as I was on the train going to school.

I'm an actor who loves doing comedy.

I'm not original, but I strive toward it as much as possible. I tried really hard on Weekend Update to do something that I considered original, which was, I tried to cut all cleverness out of the joke.

Roy Blount's stuff makes me laugh so hard, sometimes I have to go sit in a room and shut the door

Doing actual comedic material is just about the most joyful endeavor ever. That's the truth. The only time it's not funny is when business gets in the way.

I think being successful in comedy is being funny and making jokes - anything beyond that is the icing on the cake.

All of my life doing interviews, comedy has been my favorite thing, comedians are my favorite people.

Stand-up comedy had an interesting effect on me in terms of how I started to think about constructing things, because I really loved the interstices, the linkages, or lack thereof.

I remember one review of The Office Christmas Special that compared it unfavourably to Dickens. What? You're saying I'm not as good as the greatest storyteller ever. Boo! Boo! I think I can live with that.

Even if you know a character really well, there's no formula for what jokes will work and what won't.

If you're trying to make something funny, and it doesn't feel like you're always getting something, it doesn't have quite a lot of joy.

What I've always wanted to do is be as funny as possible.

I have become a giant fan of the testing process, especially with a comedy. I mean, they tell you what's funny. It's almost tailor-made for people who shoot the way we shoot, trying a million different options and versions of things. Because the audience doesn't laugh at a joke, we put in another joke. If they don't laugh at the next joke, we put in another joke. You just keep doing them and you can get the movie to the point where every joke is funny, if you have enough options in the can.

I just always loved comedy and I really wanted to be good at it. And it was heartbreaking, 'cause I started and I wasn't good at it. I was only 17-years-old, so I had a lot to learn about life in general. But I just kept on trying. I was young enough and stupid enough and I had no other choice. I had nothing else I was good at.