Julian Barratt Quotes

I'd like to explore the more abstract side of people's minds, as opposed to the usual sitcom stuff. I don't want to do the typical sitcom-type humor. I'd want to do stuff like go bowling with pineapples.

I have this very abstract idea in my head. I wouldn't even want to call it stand-up, because stand-up conjures in one's mind a comedian with a microphone standing onstage under a spotlight telling jokes to an audience. The direction I'm going in is eventually, you won't know if it's a joke or not.

I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.

I think I was the only person in my experimental film class doing comedy. But my sense of humor and a lot of comedy that I love is quite surreal and strange, you know? You could argue that 'Monty Python' is experimental film. It just happens to be really funny.

I like doing the mainstream, right-down-the-pike broad comedies as much as I like doing the kind of unorthodox different stuff.

Comedy is inherently subversive because it turns the normal reality on its head. The art form is all about these questions and contradictions. In comedy, we're dealing with language that we all understand, but words can have a dozen other things around them that alter or affect meaning.

I like the absurd and the surreal: the Coen brothers, Bunuel, Kubrick.

The dark comedies tend to be in a non-releasable area. There can be romantic comedies. There can be dramas. But there's no 'dark comedy' inbox for the advertising.

'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.

I was greatly influenced by 'The Goons' and 'Monty Python' reconstituting what comedy was - it could come from a funny word, not just a set up and a pay-off. I liked the zaniness; they were satirical, slightly saucy and very literary in their references.

Sometimes 'Portlandia' can be pretty traditional. But the stuff I've always loved on 'SNL' has always been the weirdest stuff I've done. The stuff that went on at 10 to 1 in the morning.

I'm going to do a lot of weird stuff that's not going to be like me prancing around like an insane 12-year-old. I showed everybody that side of me and I think it's time to do different stuff, even when it comes down to the type of humor. I want to do some drier, weirder stuff.

I love the absurd - kind of absurdist comedy, absurd things in life.

I like that feeling of discombobulation that comes in creating an absurd world that doesn't make sense. 'Monty Python' does a good job of it; 'Bugs Bunny,' too.

There's this weird kind of coming-in-from-left-field thing going on, and I love it - I am a huge fan of Christopher Durang.

I guess the essence of my comedy is to get into a very abnormal situation but act like it's normal.

Look at 'Batman' - that was theater of the absurd, as is 'Family Guy.'

'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.

In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.

I love the humor of 'Monty Python.' I always remember being so impressed by how violent 'Monty Python' are, actually, when you look at what they do. Terry Gilliam has a great way of kind of proposing violence.

People can see that we are part of a tradition of absurd comedy, stretching from Spike Milligan and Peter Cook through to Monty Python and Vic Reeves. We're not like Ricky Gervais's hyper-real cringe comedy. We're at the other end of the scale, but there's room for the sillier stuff, too.

Jill Eisenstadt's comic second novel, 'Kiss Out,' is a work of such extravagant wackiness, eccentricity, and exuberance that any attempt to squeeze it into the confines of a simple plot summary seems doomed to failure and is possibly pointless.

I like going absurd pretty quickly. You don't waste any time when you're doing theater of the ridiculous.

But I really like our experimental, performance and monologue videos, where there's barely jokes in the video, where it's almost a joke in itself that the monologue is even being recorded.

I think that the attraction to camp is its irreverence, it's strange, it in no way reflects reality while using real characters.