Sean Baker Quotes

Comedy can take you a lot further in getting your point across. People are entertained, and then, by being entertained, they get your point.

You have to make them laugh and then make them listen.

I've been approached after shows from people who said, 'I don't agree with anything you said, but I laughed the whole way through.' That's still a little strange to me. Like, nothing, really? But at the same time, that's what happens in a conversation.

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

The minute you make people laugh, you get them to listen.

I think if you can get people to laugh, you can get people to listen.

It takes both courage and talent to stand up in front of fellow human beings and make them crack a smile, and at the same time keep it clean.

Of course, all my films are high on comedy, but I ensure there's something for the audience to take back home.

One of the things that I intend to devote a lot of time to in the coming years is continuing to try to move people's hearts and minds with humor, with stories, with anecdotes, with facts and information.

I'm a yarn teller. My job is to engage you as much as I can and as often as I can.

Whether you do stand-up comedy or write a story, you have a duty to deliver. As a comedian, you walk out on stage, and you have a minute to hook them, or they'll start booing. As a writer, it's very similar. A reader doesn't have time to say, 'I'll give him 50 pages, as it's not very good yet, but I hope it'll get better.'

I just want to keep people entertained.

In fifth grade, we had to write a story and read it in front of the class. When I read mine out, the class were just belly laughing. And I remember being like, 'This is the coolest!' So I want to dedicate my life to trying to make people laugh. I can't imagine doing anything else.

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.

You'd better get your laugh while you're making your point, or you won't be doing it very long.

I had a strong vision for 'The Best Man Holiday,' so I was able to translate that to the actors and ultimately to the screen. Things can't get too heavy or too outrageously funny; it has to strike a balance. Tone is everything. If you've set the right tone, you can get away with a lot of stuff. You can get away with making people cry.

I'm motivated by entertaining people.

I guess that is my favorite thing - to make people laugh and also to maybe engage them emotionally and touch them somehow in telling the story.

When I was nine, we'd take a bus to the seaside. Coming back, we'd take turns entertaining, singing songs and the like. I tried some stand-up comedy. I had a captive audience in that bus. Then I realized I wanted to do more than that.

I've always had an idealistic streak about storytelling in that I believe we owe more to audiences than repeatedly bludgeoning them over the head while stealing their lunch money. We owe them inspiration. That's why I'm more interested now in creating new heroes than hooking up jumper cables to old ones.

I do feel it's important to entertain people. I try to.

I try to make the majority of my audience laugh.

I want you to laugh and cry. That's what I do.

To be perfectly honest, drama is a lot simpler than comedy.

All my films have some kind of statement about something - but I have to coat it with entertainment to make it palatable. Otherwise it becomes a polemic, and people don't want to see it. If you're trying to get a message out to people, you've got to entertain them at the same time.