Chevy Chase Quotes

My dad was a stickler for teaching me the pratfall. There is something magical about taking a good fall, and when it works, when you get that laugh, there's no better feeling in the world.

I never was shy, but as far as telling jokes, I'm the worst. I like physical comedy; it's where I feel comfortable.

If you play it straight it's funny - the best comedy is always played straight down the middle. The adjustment is understanding from the screenplay that a moment is hilarious.

I love physical comedy. I love Oscar Wilde, I love Shakespeare comedies, I love improv.

You have to give people permission to laugh. That's why they would always cut to the banana peel in the Laurel and Hardy movies.

Comedy is so hard to do, so it was very cool to do dead pan humor.

All comedians have to use their physicality, so I use my size.

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me.

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.

Comedy is not something that a person can fake or learn how to do.

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

The violence or the vaudeville style of comedy is a technique all by itself. You get up there, and you are a comedian, and you're doing one thing. That is, you're going to make the audience laugh.

A laugh is a surprise. And all humor is physical. I was always athletic, so that came naturally to me.

I wanted to see how funny I could be without making the choice that every 10 minutes something big and visual had to happen.

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.

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.

I think so. I can't think of anything that requires more finesse than comedy, both from a verbal and visual point of view.

I never really feel like just standing there and telling jokes. I want to move around. In fact, it's hard for me to write a joke where I don't end up on the ground for some reason. Hey, at least that way, I know no comics will steal my jokes. Too many bruises.

If you work at comedy too laboriously, you can kill what's funny in the joke.

I'm a physical comedian, and I don't get to show it off very often.

Humor writing requires a rhythm and timing, as well as some kind of connection to the reader, and I think that's how I tap into it.

I loved Peter Sellers. I thought he was the perfect mix of physical comedy with out-of-the-box humor. I loved his tone; I loved his physicality; I loved everything about what he was doing as a comedic actor.

I enjoy doing physical comedy.