Jay Roach Quotes

'Scary Movie' was a different type of comedy than I'm used to. I've mostly done sitcoms, so working with David Zucker, who wrote the film and who directed the last two 'Scary Movie's and 'Airplane' and 'Naked Gun,' was a lot of help.

Chris Farley, I was a huge fan of his growing up. I would love to do something kind of slapstick and funny, maybe where I could change my look even a little bit.

Most people think that action movies are difficult and comedies are easy, but it's actually the opposite. Comedy can be a lot of hard work too.

I do mostly comedy, and it tends to be a subtler comedy. But I think that probably lends itself well to commercials.

I never like to do parodies. I never do. It's just not my style of comedy.

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

For me, my preference for comedy is grounding it in the psychology of the character, and not just kind of making faces. Even when it's a crazy character, grounded comedy resonates more with people because it doesn't look like you're watching someone do vaudeville. No offense to vaudeville.

I've never been a shirt-off, pants-off kind of comedy guy.

So the laughs had to come from the character, not because we had balloons in our shirts or were speaking in high voices. That was very important to us.

I mean, comedy's hard. If you go back and look at the first season of 'Seinfeld,' it's a work in progress and that's what happens. It just takes time for people to figure each other out, and figure out timing, and to develop creatively with the writers.

I like to approach comedy from character, to have the stakes for the individuals in the story be very high.

I'll continue to make the typical Adam Sandler comedies.

I don't do jokes. The characters are my jokes.

My preference is for people who can do sketch comedy or situational comedy, where it's not a joke, but it's telling a story.

I'm a student of comedy in general, so I've always loved Billy Crystal. But I'm a different type of showman. I'm a clown and a jester.

Working with Lucille Ball was just a master class in how to do comedy.

I loved doing 'The Family' with Eunice and Mama. They were very interesting because there were no jokes written into those sketches. It was all character-driven. And sometimes it got a little heavy.

'Monk' planted the seed that a procedural could have character and be quirky and have comedy.

I wanna do some more goofy comedy stuff; I really enjoyed doing 'A Touch of Cloth.'

I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.

All these movies are observational comedies. I see somebody, maybe a dry cleaner, and notice how they are. Maybe I'll decide to turn a person with those traits into a studio chief.

I've always been a huge fan of Tina Fey's. She's a very unique storyteller and has such a great voice and sense of character and comedy, and manages to do things that are oftentimes very broad but still have a lot of heart to them.

All of my favorite comedy has always been of the grounded variety. Even 'MacGruber.' I think that MacGruber is a really grounded character.

That's humour - doing what funny people have done since comedy began without being edgy and pushing boundaries.

Comedy is all about the character. When you're too focused on the gags, the character suffers, and you don't get the laugh. Comedy has to come from the character.