Russell Baker Quotes

In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.

My experience tells me that any time you hear people laughing on a sitcom, it's the writers who happen to be closest to the microphones - not the audience.

Sometimes if you do a multi-camera comedy, often there's rules, like, 'We've got to have three main laughs per page.'

'Family Ties' was a very successful situation comedy. And, in almost every respect, it functioned on a day to day basis like a well-run, well conditioned basketball team. The show was performed live each week in front of a studio audience on Friday night.

I have an aversion to laugh tracks - the moment I hear a laugh track, I go to another channel.

The hardest thing to write is sitcom.

I've written for the last 15 years on TV shows, but now I'm doing the new Charlie Sheen program, 'Anger Management.'

I love '30 Rock.' It's one of my favorite shows. It's certainly the gold standard of comedy writing.

I think if you look back at all those great comedies on television in the past, it's all lovable losers that gathered together - 'Taxi' and 'Cheers,' 'Seinfeld' and 'Friends.'

'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' was the best television, the best cast, the best-written television show ever.

'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.

You look at shows like The Simpsons or Larry Sanders or Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld, they're really sophisticated shows that we all love back home.

I think multicamera comedy is a much-maligned American art form.

Something about not waiting for the laugh of a laugh track allows you to take lines that otherwise might be seen as just direct jokes, and make them seem realistic.

I love TV. I think I'd do a half-hour single-camera comedy.

So many shows don't have laugh tracks now that, when you hear it, it can be slightly jarring.

I'm often asked for advice on how to go about making comedy shows like the begrudgingly accepted 'IT Crowd'.

The one [The Beverly Hillbillies] flaw in this is that you can't hear the people laughing.

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.

As far as outlining is concerned, I don't outline humor. I might right down a word or two to remind myself of a punch line I thought of, but the actual structure of a piece I really don't. I don't think it would really help me because for me the process is joke, joke, joke, joke.

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line.

Frank Sebastiano is a real write. He has two Emmys, one from 'SNL' and the other from 'The Chris Rock Show' . The only award I have is an FM-mmy.

The first thing you start with when you're trying to write something funny is it has to - it really has to come to you first. I has to be an idea that you have that first makes you laugh, that strikes you as funny.

I think 'The Big Bang Theory' is one of the greatest written TV shows of all time.

I wrote on the fourth season of 'Arrested Development.'