Michael Dirda Quotes

The straight man has the best part. He gets to be in the show and see it, too.

Every sitcom needs their straight man or straight woman.

I've committed myself to perfecting the art of the straight man. I try really hard not to crack up.

When you're a stand-up, you play in front of 600 people, and it's all about timing. I could never do stand-up comedy; it would be way too hard for me.

I see my role in the Bonzos as being the straight man, in many ways.

Doing drama is, in a sense, easier. In doing comedy, if you don't get that laugh, there's something wrong.

I've always been terrible on regular sitcoms with lots of jokes. I don't know how to tell jokes.

People say: 'Why do you want to play the straight man?' Well, it's because he gets to be in every scene.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.

The brilliance of Adam Scott is that he is so damn funny in a straight man role.

I can never tell when something is funny. I just have to do it onstage and find out.

Although in Abbott and Costello, and straight man was first. That's a very interesting concept.

When you're doing stand-up, you can comment if something fails, get a laugh from that.

Richard Lewis is the master at taking a joke that he's told a million times in a row in the past year, on the road, and making it look like he's pulling it out of thin air.

Sometimes an actor will stumble on the joke, and I'm right on them. Back it up before the audience hears the bad version of the joke, because humor is 90% surprise. If they know what's coming, they won't laugh as hard.

Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.

I was the kid who always hung back and then dropped the jokes when you least expected it. Timing was everything. My mouth sort of developed over time.

My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

I'm not a comedian, but I love the comedians who know when to get off the stage.

With comedy, it's really hard to tell if something's working on the page - you really need the actors to bring it alive. The scariest part is if people will laugh or not.

You can't teach someone to be funny, but you can teach comic timing. If you listen to a good comic, you can learn how to put it on a page.

Religion theme aside, most of the time I'm in some sort of comedy and I'm a straight man and it's really just, let's wind this guy up and see him explode.

Whenever I go on a show with a comedian I just counter punch.

It is a great rush to come up with a joke that gets a good response from the audience. It's gold!