Harland Williams Quotes

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 can't do jokes. I've always come from left field and tried to subvert conventional comedy. I started as a rebellion against that - albeit a very soft and surreal rebellion. It's escapist.

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.

As I see it, there's mainstream comedy - and then there's me, out in the badlands.

With the 'Boosh,' we were trying to do this strange, weird thing that had its own language and visual style, and it wasn't really what the powers that be wanted.

All of the art that I love is about peeling back layers and delving into something that's in a subconscious or dream realm. People like Jan Svankmajer, or the artist Yoshimoto Nara, or David Lynch.

Watching everyone root through their psyche, it just delights me. Especially R. Crumb's stuff.

I grew up watching all these crazy movies, European movies and stuff, and I guess that I always laughed at things that were a little more offbeat.

The Internet is a great place to find unconventional comedy that you can't find anywhere else.

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

I only play projects with weird interpretations of presidents.

I think it's my nature to try and make original content, and that's what I've done, is just try and approach things in an original way, and do things differently.

You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.

What is genius but the power of expressing a new individuality?

I just happened to start playing music for the conceptual ideas.

I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

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 am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

It's good as an artist to always remember to see things in a new, weird way.

Imagination is but another name for super intelligence.

The people at MTV are encouraged to be very confrontational and declarative about their tastes.

Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me.

I actually do like playing off-beat people. I think it's more fun.

True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.

George Martin looks like Santa Claus, but he's got a wonderfully disturbed mind.