Loretta Swit Quotes

I am a big fan of the TV series 'Taxi' which combined comedy and pathos better than any other show I've seen.

Yes, I loved MASH. As we are sitting here now talking, it's playing somewhere in the world.

I hope they make a show like M*A*S*H, which dealt with a lot of difficult subject matter but was very funny.

I love 'Cheers.' I didn't watch it growing up, but I watched it getting ready to do the first season of 'New Girl.' It bowls me over every time I see it. The romance, the comedy, the performances - every bit of it is just so compelling.

I've seen 'Mork & Mindy' a couple times. Robin Williams amazes me. And I love Gary Coleman. He puts me away. He puts everybody away.

Usually, comedy shows only influence other comedy shows. 'M*A*S*H' is one of the few comedies that influenced dramatic shows as well.

I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.

If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more.

The first season of 'Community' stumbled a bit because the plotlines too often veered into realism, but that is not a problem anymore. Not when prize episodes concern a campuswide blanket fort, or a secret garden with a magic trampoline.

I'd love to do a really juicy drama that's just really real. On the comedy side, I'd love to do something like '21 Jump Street.' I cannot stop watching that movie. Really funny, really extreme comedies are definitely my favorite.

I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well.

I just want to keep finding special characters that I feel like I can bring to life and characters that are real and not superficial.

You know what I would really like to do? I'd like to do a half hour drama with comedy in it.

I think when 'The Simpsons' first came on, there was an uproar. People got used to it. They realized the show's really funny, it's got a heart, so I think it's pretty safe.

'The Cosby Show' made an impact on comedy, television and culture. We rejected lowering the bar.

Actually, I think that 'Seinfeld' tackles the same kinds of issues as 'Six Feet Under,' just in a different way.

I love making characters real and believable, through my own experience and choices.

Character development is what I value most as a reader of fiction. If an author can manage to create the sort of characters who feel fully real, who I find myself worrying about while I'm walking through the grocery store aisles a week later, that to me is as close to perfection as it gets.

Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.

The way I approach any role, whether it's comedy or drama, I like to look for the truth first. I think comedy for the sake of comedy wears dull pretty quickly. You have to ground the character in reality first and allow the audience to sympathize, emphasize and be more invested.

'South Park' is so hilarious... I remember when it first came out: that show changed television forever.

Things that go on at Happy Times are very funny this year, and if you were watching last year, some of the people you saw then as basically extras emerge as real characters in their own right this season, at least to some degree.

Your structure and format may not be perfect, and you may not have picked the perfect franchise, but if I pick up a script, and the characters are real, whole, complicated and come from a place of somebody who really is feeling it, that's what people remember.

A whole generation was raised to learn about comedy from 'The Simpsons.' To get to be in a booth with Homer and Marge and be in Springfield - it was unimaginable the emotions that I felt.

Man, 'Hill Street Blues' was on when I was 12, and I remember feeling I'd never seen anything like it. It was that far ahead of its time, with dark characters you loved.