comedy creation Quotes

Comedy is essentially made by young men, or older men with some form of arrested development, for young men or immature older men.

To me, every episode is like a song, and every season is like an album. There's that part of the day when you first get the idea and you say, "This could be really funny." And you sit down and you write it. There's just something that happens there that doesn't happen when you really give it a lot of time beforehand.

The thing to keep in mind is that's how I started long before MTV and Twitter and Facebook. I studied at broadcasting school so I could learn how to shoot and edit videos, and tried to create my own television show so we could see through these wacky visions we had of funny bits we wanted to shoot.

I have rage and anger issues. So I get mad about stuff in real life, and then I yell about it onstage, and luckily, something funny ends up coming out. What I'll do is tape-record it, and it will end up coming out even funnier. And I add more punch lines.

What's the trick to writing a genuinely funny comedy? The trick is therapy. Take notes.

I was really gifted at being able to construct a joke, but it's like they weren't even memorable, my first jokes, because they were so about nothing.

I rarely sit down to write something. I usually have an experience and relate it to somebody and go, 'There I connected some dots,' you know? That's what makes people laugh. And then you go and take it on the stage, and sometimes it works, and sometimes people go, 'What's he talking about?' I don't know; I thought it was it funny in the kitchen.

I love dipping into worlds at a fast and furious pace. A little glimpse allows the audience to put together the rest of that world in their brain. I love sketches that require the audience to piece together the comedic engine themselves. Give them all the information but not tell them what the scene is about so they can have that eureka moment of, "Oh my God, he's only used to the way urban students pronounce their names. That's what's going on here.".

It's always exciting to be a part of the development and creative process, and I hope to continue to do it. I feel like, especially in the comedic world, it's how things have to be done. You have to be a part of the motivating factor of getting the movie made. It's so hard.

Sometimes you just create a joke out of thin air in the editing room. So I'm really glad I've had that experience. It gives me a little more confidence in front of the camera.

Bouncing ideas off people when you're thinking up comedy is great.

For me, comedy starts as a spew, a kind of explosion, and then you sculpt it from there, if at all. It comes out of a deeper, darker side. Maybe it comes from anger, because I'm outraged by cruel absurdities, the hypocrisy that exists everywhere, even within yourself, where it's hardest to see.

I think in most cases, if you're with good people, comedy creation happens faster in collaboration. That's how I can tell if it's a good collaboration: If it's faster than me by myself, then it works. If it's slower than me by myself, then I get out of the room.

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.

I am in no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company, yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof.

Humor is the hardest thing to do. Action is so much easier, because you're just trying to establish the mood, and a pacing, and a rhythm, and an energy. Where, in humor, comedy is so subjective.

Usually, impersonations come out of something you dig, because you're listening to it over and over. And you kind of start developing... You're really trying to emulate them, then you realize, 'I sound ridiculous doing this. Oh, hey, maybe this is a funny impersonation.'

With stand-up, there's a little bit of an exaggerated reality because things have to be manipulated to create comedy, to create jokes.

I don't think my comedy is that political. It's more social. But whatever. When you make comedy and you do stand-up, you work alone. Movies have to go under so much scrutiny. A stand-up special is a vision, and a movie is a consensus in a lot of ways.

When you make comedy, you make it for the people and you try to have as many screenings and as many tests and you do focus groups and you read the cards and you try to give the people what they want in this comedy.

Everyone talks about the gags, but the most difficult thing is coming up with the stories. You have to learn to do that for sitcoms.

We only ever write jokes that amuse us.

I enjoy doing these silly little videos, and a lot of stuff online is stuff I actually created for my live comedy shows.

I do comedy in my room by myself, so it's so different to see how that all works and get the behind the scenes on how they do the gory stuff.

As for making video comedy, pretty much anyone can do it. When I got started, I just filmed it with my webcam and used iMovie to edit the video, which I still use.