Mike Flanagan Quotes

Comedy is one of the hardest genres. You can tell if it's working or not. If the director is convinced of the vision, you have to have faith in that.

Every script I've read for 'Black Jesus' has been hilarious.

When I worked on 'The Daily Show,' we had some puppets made of myself, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart. When I left the show, I stole the puppet. I took what was rightfully mine.

Humour is ahead of everything creatively. I think if things aren't humorous, they are just crap.

Using humor as a wedge into different kinds of stories is my go-to. I think anything I do would have some sort of streak of humor in it.

Comedy can be destructive, and still very, very funny. But if I can do something that is fun to watch and critical of the world but not wantonly destructive, I pursue those kinds of ideas more. The world needs less destruction. And destruction is kind of “easy,” too.

I don't aim it at anybody specific, I don't aim my characters to make old people laugh or young people or professionals or blue collar, just whatever I think is going to be funny and it just so happens that.

When I started making movies about weird people, I knew they were weird, I was infected with irony, and I wanted New York to notice.

I just draw what I think is funny, and I hope other people think it is funny, too.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about, and that's really it. I have great respect for people who are in the front lines and the trenches of trying to enact social change, but I am far lazier than that.

Comedy is a noble art.

But the main thing I don't want to be is un-funny. That's really the mandate. Just whatever we're doing, make it as funny as we can possibly make it. And believe me, if the show starts going down, we'll introduce a baby. We'll do everything that they did on 'Family Ties.' I'm not afraid of that.

I find comedy to be one of the highest of the art forms.

I think if anything, the fact that it's popular right now makes me go: "Well, I guess I'm going to start doing something else then in the next few years." I dunno, it almost feels hackneyed at this point. To start a premise by saying, "I did this awkward thing." But then again, awkwardness and feeling alienated are always going to be a part of comedy. Alienation, I suppose, can't be hackneyed because it will always exist.

Puns are the highest form of literature.

Drag queens always love a portmanteau of combining words and making something new, because this whole world is shilarious. And so you have to contain yourself with words. Shilarious is just something that is a really hooty kiki funny item.

I used to think of myself as a comedian. I've always admired comedians. Their minds, the way in which they se the world is so striking, the way they juxtapose things, the way they can see humor in people. There's a liberation in that.

I've found that there's a pretty wide range of silly. I don't want to do outright parody, because I like keeping my own characters and stories at the core of the books. And to be honest, I'm not smart enough to do the kind of wickedly sharp satire you get from someone like Pratchett.

A truly comic, invented world must live at the same time as the world we live in.

I think of myself as a comedian who has the pleasure of writing jokes about things that I actually care about.

I do like to make films with a political theme, but sometimes it's nice simply to make people laugh. That's the hardest thing to do in fact.

The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.

Comedy is a very delicate business, especially comedies that sort of attempt to do things in an honest way and in a very naturalistic way the way that 'No Strings Attached' is.

I tend to basically exaggerate in life, and in writing, it's fine to exaggerate. I really enjoy overstating for the purpose of getting a laugh. For another thing, writing is easier than digging ditches. Well, actually, that's an exaggeration. It isn't.

Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature.