Lennon Parham Quotes

'Raising Arizona' is maybe my favorite comedy of all time. What's great about it is that as slapstick as it gets, it has great moments of emotion and caring. Them bringing the baby back and Trey Wilson's character. I love that, man.

'Friends' played in this territory of being funny, and then also just grabbing your heart. And not afraid of that. It was a comedic soap opera. Not being afraid to have an audience feel something, laugh and cry, was quite extraordinary and quite wonderful.

I am a big fan of the TV series 'Taxi' which combined comedy and pathos better than any other show I've seen.

I consider my comedy to be dramatic comedy. I always wanted music underscoring the dramatic monologue. It was always drama with comedy, in my head.

With music, I get to a much darker place. Where I'm able to go with 'Portlandia' has a wider range, but also a brighter range.

'50/50' is a comedy. I shouldn't say it's a buddy comedy because it's not farcical, and it's based on a true story, but it's viewing that experience through a very truthful lens of humour.

My dream career would be to be in things that have real heart and are telling real stories but while doing that, you're getting really big laughs. I don't necessarily love the straight crazy comedies. 'Caddyshack' is amazing, but there's not a lot of new 'Caddyshack's.

I think I'm interested in these kinds of character dramas, psychological dramas, domestic dramas, whatever you want to call them - comedy dramas.

'Pleasantville' seems tonally ambitious, but it can handle a wide breadth of tone because it's so fanciful.

What's special with 'Corrie' is that they have the comedy element, women are funny as well - they might do the emotional stuff, they might do the drama, but they're really funny too.

I make dramedies, but 'Tangerine' really has a lot of comedy, and I saw that it had a great effect - it reached a larger audience.

I was very moved by shows that combined things that were funny and sad. I remember liking 'Simpsons' episodes in which emotions were central.

I like to weed out the people who aren't going to enjoy me straight off the bat. If you look at all my specials, I do start more extreme and then, as I get into it, sort of at the three-quarter mark, I normally have a bit of pathos. Is pathos the right word?

The tragedian will always be a limited tragedian if he has not learned how to laugh. The comedian who cannot weep will never touch the highest levels of mirth.

I'm being provided with some emotional ballast by giving me an intimate portrait of one character in particular in contrast to the collective. I'm fortunate that I had very sympathetic readers, but ordinarily - if a book makes you laugh too much, it shifts from "literature" to "entertainment."

It's funny because being comedic and happy and lighthearted is who I am as a person, so they're easier emotions for me to connect with. The challenge is accessing pain, angst, depression. . . It's more exciting because it gives me somewhere to go and allows me to tap into a part of myself that everyone can relate to.

Happiness, sadness, being mean and being nice. They're all very close to one another. My goal in my career is to do movies that are both... I hate when people say is it a comedy or a drama? My favorite movies are kind of both. Just like life, one day you're not crying all day, one day you're not laughing all day. I like to play characters that have that kind of balance, too.

Those who can soar to the highest heights can also plunge to the deepest depths and the natures which enjoy most keenly are those which also suffer most sharply.

As a writer, I haven't delved into dramatic writing. As an actor, I could always, even more so than comedy, do drama. When you do your comedy and your drama, your acting style doesn't change. If it's a comedy, the situations and the characters might be a little funnier, but you're just trying to be honest.

The important thing is being capable of emotions, but to experience only one's own would be a sorry limitation.

People keep referring to me as a standup, and that just doesn't sit well with me because a lot of my friends are standups and they're brilliant at writing jokes, and I'm not.

I never wanted to do just comedy or just drama; sometimes, going back and forth you can get yourself in trouble which happened to me on other things so you're always trying for a delicate balance - I also think that they compliment each other so well.

Just because you have the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have.

To be an actor or actress, you have to feel on a deep level and tap into emotions that you've never felt before. You're imagining how something would feel. You have to use your imagination so much.

In romantic comedies there's a certain ceiling and a floor that you can't necessarily love as hard, or hate as hard, or have as much pain, because you sink the shop of the romantic comedy. But in a certain drama, like some of the ones I've been doing, the ceiling and the floor was my own. And in many ways, that was a higher ceiling and a lower floor, so that was more of a band-with for those emotions.