James Wolcott Quotes

I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.

I feel reviewers are tougher on comedies in general. They don't take them seriously, and the ones that get great reviews are not necessarily the ones that I like.

After doing comedy for a while and knowing how hard it is to do physical comedy right, I learned how incredibly talented the Three Stooges really were after re-watching old episodes. They still stand up!

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they're built to be buoyant. It's easy to demean them.

Light and funny has a more compelling quality when you're younger. But I haven't abandoned the genre: I love falling down; I love Lucille Ball. It's just that a lot of those stories revolve around problems that I can't convincingly portray at this age.

A farce, or slapstick humor, does well universally.

I look up so much to those movies, 'Airplane!' and 'Naked Gun.' I think that stuff is so funny. I grew up just loving all that stuff and sort of idolizing Leslie Nielsen.

I can consciously say I like squashing things because I saw 'Tom and Jerry' films or Charlie Chaplin in 'Modern Times.' That's true.

My favorite movies were 'Singin' in the Rain' and stuff that had a more classic comedy type feel, that more slapsticky stuff. It's the comedy I've gravitated towards.

A lot of comedy films, there's the opinion, 'Well, if it's funny, put it in.' But I think you have to be more disciplined than that.

We're delighted that Freddie Flintstone and his friends have made such a hit. The comedy is not the old cartoon slapstick. Most of it is situation stuff and dialogue.

'Cannonball Run II' - you watch that, and it looks like they're having a good time, but it's not necessarily a masterpiece.

In the summer of 2000, four college friends and I grew mustaches, bought highway patrol uniforms, and shot a $1.2 million budgeted independent film called 'Super Troopers.'

That movie - 'Airplane!' - it influenced so many of us.

I really miss doing masala films.

There's more to Gujarati cinema than characters wearing kediya and ghagra choli and saying 'Aa ra ra ra.'

I love doing comic roles and believe I am best at it.

'Veerey Ki Wedding' is a comedy of errors in more ways than one. It's one of those basic, perky comedies. We're not trying to give out a message or anything.

A lot of my comedy is physical, so you don't have to understand English to get that I'm choking to death on cinnamon or falling out of this tree or whatever.

I want to see good-quality comedy shows, not the slapstick ones or where people imitate others.

Things like 'The Office,' and arguably shows like 'The Only Way Is Essex,' are comedies, just using real people in real situations.

Comedies are very hard to do. They are difficult. Unless there's the Judd Apatow school, where they're like okay, we know that, we're going to do those. Or unless it's something that's far to the other side.

I think I could have a funnier, more economic sets. But that's the comedy I do. And I understand if people aren't interested in it and would rather listen to someone else. But I'll never understand the anger people have toward me.

I think it was somewhere around age 3 when I fell down the stairs at my house, and I got up and did a Jerry Lewis impression and got a big laugh. And I thought, "Oooh, I like that. I think I need to do this for a living!"

I'm not the biggest fan of comedies where nothing is real.