Timur Bekmambetov Quotes

Todd Solondz is a film maker I've always loved because of how he balances darkness, humour and surrealism in his films.

Comedy exists to laugh at things that aren't laughable. But isn't it? That's what separates us from the animals. We laugh.

I think that Ionesco's greatest weapon is that he's able to make us laugh at the darkest corners of our souls.

With Portlandia, I don't think our intention is always to find something funny. Sometimes the humor comes from taking something really seriously. We're okay with making somebody feel uncomfortable or uneasy.

Whenever people ask where I get my sick and twisted ideas from, I reply, 'Just open your eyes.'

I was born in a blender.

Russian humor is to adapt or make some sense or nonsense out of the insanity of their lives.

You might find me outside with a can of hair spray, spraying it with the hope that the sun will burn a hole in the Earth. Another part of me hopes people will grow up and evolve and get smarter. That's the paradox of Marilyn Manson.

Everyone seems to see bleakness and despair in my books. I don't read them that way. I see myself as writing comic books, books about ordinary people trying to live ordinary, dull, happy lives while the world is falling to pieces around them.

For me, comedy starts as a spew, a kind of explosion, and then you sculpt it from there, if at all. It comes out of a deeper, darker side. Maybe it comes from anger, because I'm outraged by cruel absurdities, the hypocrisy that exists everywhere, even within yourself, where it's hardest to see.

A book, small in size, but immense in its perversity

I'm not really crazy about broad comedy. I like very possible, real situations that you might have found yourself in.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

Look at 'Batman' - that was theater of the absurd, as is 'Family Guy.'

Twin Peaks' without David Lynch is like a girl without a secret.

I think a joke is a form of truth-telling. A good joke that's absurd contains elements of our daily darkness and also a possibility to escape that darkness. So, for me, humor is an attempt to capture everyday tragedy and everyday hopeful moments that we experience all of the time.

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

One of the things I love about Joel and Ethan Coen's movies is that there is this element of the ethereal and the mythic that they play with.

'Wonder Showzen' is one of my favorite shows of all time. When I first saw it, I thought it was so funny and new and original and edgy and insane and subversive. I didn't know comedy could do that. It redefined what I thought you could do with a TV show.

In Czechoslovakia, we consider Kafka a very funny man. A humorist.

I think the amazing thing about 'Twin Peaks' was that it completely changed television from that point forward. It showed everyone that you can just sit really quiet with storylines and characters. It can be scary, it can be uncomfortable, it can be weirdly funny.

Comedy is good at analysing and dealing with evil because it doesn't present it as evil but a collection of banalities.

In my comedy, I'm not always trying to say something, but when I'm playing a creepy dude, you're laughing because you know that creepy dude. You've heard that dude say something awful, and I'm just putting a little creative spin on it.

I love the humor of 'Monty Python.' I always remember being so impressed by how violent 'Monty Python' are, actually, when you look at what they do. Terry Gilliam has a great way of kind of proposing violence.

We're always aiming for storytelling that feels a bit surreal.