Comedic Failure Quotes

I like some of my stuff not to be particularly funny. It's supposed to be amusing, entertaining or thought-provoking, like a curiosity. If you put it on in front of 500 people in the Odeon they wouldn't laugh. They shouldn't laugh.

Joy Behar... Is never even funny accidentally.

People get mad at bad comedy. Way more mad than at bad novels.

The safest genre is the horror film. But the most unsafe - the most dangerous - is comedy. Because even if your horror film isn't very good, you'll get a few screams and you're okay. With a comedy, if they don't laugh, you're dead.

One of the great things with comedy is that there's no such thing as a mediocre comedy; it's either uproarious or crap. That's the problem.

The real challenge in acting is in comedy. It's easier to get that gasp in a drama. Not easy, because you still have to find that emotional pitch. And when you do something in drama and you hear that sob from the audience it's so fulfilling. But as a comic actor, when the laugh is supposed to come and you punch in that line and nothing happens it is dreadful. It's horrific and you feel like dying right there.

I'm comedy's forgotten nearly man.

When you're on a movie set and you are hopefully making a comedy, everyone's stifling their laughter. You're looking at the crew guys, hoping someone is making that face like, and not like, this is not working out, man.

Humor is hard, hard, hard. And if you fail with humor, you don't fail halfway. You drop the ball humor-wise and everyone notices.

I remember thinking as I was doing the jokes for the first time, "If I can hear that very clearly, I'm not hearing laughter." It just became deafening, this buzzing noise. I mean, it was brutal. It was really terrible. Then I remember thinking, "At least nobody important, or anyone who I really respect, saw that." And then literally right when I went off the stage, Jerry Seinfeld got up and went on. So I was like, "Oh great. Seinfeld saw me bomb." On the other hand, I thought, "At least no one will be thinking of me anymore. They'll just be focusing on him."

Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed.

At its best, alt comedy can be challenging, surprising, and innovative. And at its worst, alt comics think that being awkward.com/FAQS is a substitution for punchlines.

Stand-up is successful if they laugh. It's unsuccessful if they don't laugh.

I watched Master Class with Lorne Michaels on OWN. How can somebody produce a sketch show and talk for an hour and not say something even slightly amusing, or sarcastic, or ironic, or interesting, or informative? 'My mission as a producer is to encourage creativity.' Mission accomplished.

Shakespeare - it's not funny. No matter how they try to make Shakespeare funny, when it's meant to be funny it's not funny.

And if you can offer an explanation as to why it doesn't work then you've got to the whole root of comedy.

I've never laughed a woman into bed, but I've laughed one out of bed many times.

I have always considered The Merry Wives one of the worst plays, if not altogether the worst, that Shakespeare has left us. The wit for the most part is dreary or foolish; the tone is coarse and farcical; and the characters want the fine distinctive touches he so well knew how to give. If some luckless wight had written such a comedy in our time, I should like to see what the critics would say to it?

I already tried that. Something heavy metal like. And sunglasses. But it didn't work; I went to the gas station and when I left the guy at the counter said, 'bye Mr Schumacher

I was so depressed for so many years over trying to become a working comedian that my sense of self-worth would plummet.

Everyone says that I have no sense of humor, then I construct a perfectly sound pun around a well-known psychological condition, and it is ignored.

If I've inadvertently become some sort of role model for failed comedians, then it's really backfired very badly on me.

I wasn't exactly uncomfortable when I did my first comedy. I was just very aware of the risks; if you do a comedy that sucks, and you suck in it, then you won't get a chance to do it again.

My girlfriend doesn't think I'm funny at all.

There's nothing worse than trying to be funny and not being funny.