Mitchell Hurwitz 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.

I know what is funny coming out of my mouth and what is not funny coming out of my mouth. You have to figure out, What is the joke that I can do that nobody else can do?

It's fun to deliver material on live TV because it's more off-the-cuff, but I like writing better. You really can measure the joke, think an extra second and nail the right reference.

With silly stuff, it's seventy-five percent confidence. I always tell people that it's because I'm nervous about getting that next laugh and I need to hear it. I always want to condense a joke.

When I'm playing comedy, I never do 'jokes.' Sometimes I'll deliver a line in a way I think is more likely to get a laugh, but all the best comedy is played straight. What's funny is the way it hits the world around it or the way it hits the other characters.

We don't have a laugh track, which helped Seinfeld a lot, and did kind of tell people when to laugh. It just made it a lot easier. Our show doesn't have that, so it's hard for Middle America to catch on.

Sometimes, comics will make the observation that it's not jokes that are funny, it's characters that are funny. And isn't that true! That's why I always kill jokes. I'm terrible at them, because I get the joke right, but I can't get the character right, and it just goes down like a lead balloon.

Soon I learned that the worse the puns and jokes, the funnier they could be, if you knew how to deliver them.

The jokes are great but what really matters for a comedian is his performance, his whole attitude, and the laughs that he gets between the jokes rather than on top of the jokes.

There's this little recipe that you have to hit pretty well to get somebody to laugh. And it's a combination of the way in which you say something, with the facial expression that you have, married with the body language that you have, etc.

I hate to give myself credit for anything, but I will say I really enjoy, as an actor, and especially with comedy stuff, playing with different rhythms and with different ways around a joke. There's always an obvious route, and there's one that maybe is a little bit different.

I know what I want to talk about, but I don't really know what's funny about a joke until I perform it in front of an audience.

One joke coming from one person can land completely flat, while somebody else delivering it in a unique way can really elevate it.

A lot of things matter in comedy - the script, the lines, your timing, the co-actor's timing, how it's shot.

There is nothing more joyful to me than hearing a live audience laugh. Especially when I planned it that way!

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

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

In comedy, though, it's good to get feedback from the audience about what they find funny.

A comedian needs to have his own filters, needs to know his audience, how far he can push things.

As a comic, you try something and if it works you go with it and grind it to death.

Estelle Getty used the language of a truck driver, or a sailor. Bea Arthur didn't wear shoes. Bea Arthur was a comic genius. Her timing was extraordinary.

Stand up is really fun because if I think of a joke or a funny idea, then I can just go and tell some people and if they laugh, they laugh right away.

Stand-up is the kind of gig that'll show you where you're at.

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.

When you're doing stand-up, you want to stand onstage and, to the extent that you can, uncomplicatedly entertain.