Katie Holmes Quotes

Sometimes it's hard to tell if a joke is working or not for the first couple of minutes.

When I watch a comedy that's just hitting you over the head with jokes constantly, some really hit, but if they miss, you're like, 'Eh.'

When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.

It's pretty easy to hear what people are physically responding to versus what's just flat as a pancake in the room when it comes to jokes.

I'm dealing with a lot of scary things. I think you have to react to them. And you either laugh at them or you go insane.

For me, one of the biggest thrills is going to a theater and going, "Oh, I got a laugh!" Because you never quite get to hear it [otherwise].

If people do not laugh it's not comedy.

It's hard to get laughs when you're new.

A flutist who is moved to tears by his own performance will soon make the listeners laugh because of the sounds that he produces.

I've never watched my films with an everyday audience so it was really crazy to watch people clap at the end of my film - with no one there, no actors, no people from the film. It was just a spontaneous reaction, so I thought that was probably the best compliment you could get from an audience.

The only reaction that frightens me is people not laughing. It's extraordinary to me when you get a laugh. That you can go in front of a bunch of people you never met before, you can say some stuff and they all laugh in unison - that's amazing. It's a miracle.

It's quite easy to make a load of people laugh, it's often a reflex action, but I think to make them cry is harder without manipulating them.

I don't know what's funny and what's not so I test out all of my material in front of audiences.

Theatre audiences can't be made to think and cry: at best, they can be made to think and laugh, or to feel and cry.

For certain things, certain audiences, people will laugh. And in other places, there's dead silence. And I enjoy them both. You try to make films where it's never one way - like life.

I think that's my favorite thing about making scary movies, watching people watch them. When my films come out, I like to cinema hop and know what moments are coming up, I pop my head in and watch people squirm or slide down in their seats. I like that sadism!

I started out in stand-up, so it's very satisfying to make people laugh, but it usually means at your own expense.

You listen to the audience. The audience is wrong individually and always right collectively. If they don't laugh, it isn't funny. If they cough, it isn't interesting. If they walk out, you are in trouble.

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

When you do comedy, the audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say. Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough. I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in.

I had a couple of decent laughs on Townies, but for the most part, delivering a joke that you just know is not funny is hard.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.

Well, anybody can be a straight man if he hears well. You just have to wait for laughs. A straight man just repeats the questions and the comedian gets the laughs and you just wait for them and don't let them die completely at the tail end of the laugh.

The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.

I once heard a woman laugh at that most tragic moment in all drama, the off-stage shot in "The Wild Duck," and I afterward had her killed, so there will be no more of that out of her.