Eric Idle Quotes

I wish I could have a recurring role on 'Modern Family'. I think 'Modern Family' is the best comedy on television. It's extremely well written, extremely well acted and directed.

I don't have to write jokes. I don't have to write insults. If you ask the man of the hour in the hot seat, my mere existence is clearly insult enough.

The victory of the show is in the writing. Coming up with sketches and stand-up bits. The rest is just hitting buttons on a machine more or less.

At the very beginning, I was a page at Letterman, and I freelanced for any place that would let me write any word. I wanted to do this so badly.

The three main leads [in Townies] were Lauren [ Graham] and Jenna [Elfman] and Molly [Ringwald], and then Ron Livingston was on it as well. There was a lot of people to write funny stuff for.

It always seems to someone outside the business that it is very difficult to write for a comedy show because it must be done quickly. Actually, it is much easier to write this humor than to do a joke or a show from scratch, because the audience knows the plot. Just mention what is going on and then deliver the punch line.

I just wanted to be a good comic and had no sense of show business, but at some point you want the opportunity to write a show about your life.

In Britain people might know me more for my comedy writing background, things like that.

Frank Sebastiano is a real write. He has two Emmys, one from 'SNL' and the other from 'The Chris Rock Show' . The only award I have is an FM-mmy.

You could write a joke in the pub at lunchtime and watch it performed on television that evening.

I am excited about getting back to what I do best and what my audience likes best, I am writing new jokes every day and soon Ill be telling them every night. Just me, one Jew talking and that's it.

I try to write 'and it's all very funny' after each scene description so that the reader can imagine the movie in their head.

I love writing stand-up so much and tinkering and looking for ideas.

Anytime I can get either of them really laughing, I immediately pull out a pad of paper write the joke down, regardless of where we are or what we're doing. I must be absolutely insufferable.

There are terrific TV shows now. This is a golden age for TV humor, I think. There's an actual market there. Of course, I have no idea how you'd break in, but there must be a way. They have all these shows and they need jokes and somebody is writing them.

If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.

That's one of the great thing about writing is that you get to be in someone's head.

Comics know that they do best. They might not be best to rewrite to another person's comedy, but they know what is best for them. Luckily, I come from both a writing background - with 'Workaholics' - and I also act in what I've written.

Writing a novel is like an amusement park or a museum or a city. You go into that place and you have certain experiences and those experiences, hopefully, have some impact on you.

My original goal was just to do stand-up but then I became interested in films - writing a film, shooting one someday, and getting to act in them.

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later.

We had met with Ben Stiller here in LA when I was shooting The Ring and he was doing Meet The Fockers and we have friends in common. But we didn't know each other well. He's fantastic and we really had a great time on this and we were both laughing at where we were at, this other couple, and how it was mirroring what we were going through as well. It was clever writing in that way.

Writing for radio really focuses the mind, because you can't rely on thinking "Oh, just pull a funny face at the end of this sketch." You've got to try to work on the words.

If you can't write your own material, you have very little chance of making it as a comedian.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.