Noel Fielding Quotes

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.

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.

I didn't want to do comedy again. It is way harder when you are doing comedy. You can't just concentrate on the character and the plot. In comedy, the writers, instead of obsessing about character and plot, obsess about the jokes.

The basic function of a comic is stand-up because it's so straightforward and simple. If the audience don't laugh, you didn't do your job. I've had some audiences where I didn't care if they laughed or not because they were either too drunk or stupid.

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

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.

And you can't hide in a comedy scene either. You have to give in to the scene and commit.

I remember going to Bob Preston's dressing room because I was losing a laugh - as you do in a long run. He said, 'Give me the script. That's where you're going off the road.' That's comedy. It's never the line itself; it's in the foundation.

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

But television, when I was doing it, was all about scoring. You had to make these jokes bang, do whatever you could to make the material really pop. And if it didn't, there was something wrong with the material, or with you.

I know what's funny, and I probably know the best way to deliver the joke. Whether it's walking out of a room, facing that way, facing this way. I just have a sense of that.

Whether it's a double take or a spit take or an extra-long pause before a reaction or a line, I try to be as cognizant as possible about the technical end of it. So I think the physical stuff works easier for me than maybe for others who are more just going on instinct.

Impressions are still kind of hard for me and not what I love to do the most, but with characters, I think there's an element of fearlessness. You try to figure out the best reading and wording of the jokes before the show, and then you just really have to go hard.

I thought that I was going to be a stand-up comedian or an actress. Turns out, I can't act my way out of a paper bag and stand-up comedy is a lot harder than it appears.

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

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

I could never do stand-up because it's that thing of having to get up on stage. And out of every 10 jokes you tell, nine of them have to get a really good response.

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

I think comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off. You either have timing or you don't, and that's something I don't have for sure.

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.

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.

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.

I really loved what I was doing being creative and being funny as a stand-up comedian.

You really have no idea whether or not what you're writing is funny. In stand-up and sketch comedy, you know right away and you can make your changes accordingly.

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