Comedy Principles Quotes

When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.

I'm very observational in my comedy and what I create with the characters that I'm blessed to play. I don't believe comedy needs to be offensive, and I don't believe it needs to be a mockery of anything.

I love doing great entertainment, but I like the joke to be on me. I don't want to take advantage of some poor person and dog 'em out and let the chips fall.

The first rule of comedy should be, you must be very lazy. Whoever works should be immediately removed.

I'm not a comedian. I don't make things funny if they're not funny. I don't invent funny stuff.

Topical-sketch writing were incredibly rational and well reasoned: don't do a joke if the subject doesn't deserve it. An ad hominem attack on someone might get you a cheap laugh, but it doesn't earn you any long-term trust. The biggest rule was: you attack whoever's in power. Don't bring your personal bias to the table.

The principles of comedy are the principles of comedy. I can hear funny.

Science would like to tell us that people laugh because of the benign violation theory, but comedy doesn't have hard rules.

I thought if I could do stand-up comedy well enough, I could parlay it back into films - like Charlie Chaplin and Woody Allen did. They merged principles of comedy and drama together, and that's what my first film really was, a stab at that kind of comedy.