Comedy Standards Quotes

I think Trump is terrible for comedy. A lot of people say he is great. He's not. You can't joke a joke.

If I've got a black joke, and I can't tell it in Oakland, then I shouldn't tell the joke anywhere else.

I know the fashion is that everything is fair game [for comedy material] but I don't believe that.

Too much comedy today is vulgar, not clever. I say that as a comedian and as a consumer.

In the old days, if you topped the bill one evening, you'd do 22 minutes maximum, and if you overstepped and did 27 one night, you'd get a knock on the door telling you it wasn't acceptable.

There's a lot of hypocrisy in audiences. I'd never dream of telling even on a nightclub stage, let alone my show, some of the jokes that are told in a lot of the living rooms from which we get those letters!

If you're a studio writer, the funny better be on the page.

When it comes to English stand-up comedy, Indians have only seen the best - Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Cosby and the like. So, when someone claims to be an English stand-up comedian in India, he'd better be very good if he's going to make a life of it.

I don't know how many sacred cows there are today. I think there's a little confusion between humor and gross passing for humor. That's kind of regrettable.

The only thing that I don't like is my kids watching comedy that isn't actually funny. There's a lot of supposed tween comedy on TV that isn't particularly funny, but it's got a lot of laugh track. And I go, 'Please don't watch that. Please just watch something that's actually funny.'

I come from a time when people like Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby told stories that were devastatingly funny without being off-color.

Most modern comedy is crap.

I've never pitched a joke that I wouldn't be comfortable seeing in a Pixar film.

When you're going for a big studio comedy, the joke tally better be pretty high, and you better have some big comedy set pieces. That was one of the issues when I was trying to get 'Swingers' made for the first time, which is that there weren't any broad comedy set pieces.

I've dropped a lot of race humor from my routines, not because I think it is in bad taste, but because I don't want to be guilty of telling old jokes.

Before Twitter, if comedians wrote what they had for lunch on a Post-it and put it through your letterbox you wouldn't find it acceptable - but now apparently it is on Twitter.

I never want to compromise my act just to get a laugh.

For me, it's a purity thing about the joke itself. It's a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that's a legitimate item you have there. For me, it's nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It's just not what I'm in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

There are certain things that are probably too mean. I don't particularly like fat jokes. Those kind of bother me. But I guess what I was trying to say is, if I said I would never laugh at this, you could probably dig around and find a situation where I did laugh. I try not to be a hypocrite with that one. I find when there's a controversy about someone saying something offensive, I usually take the angle of, "Well, I don't know if that was offensive; it just wasn't funny." I generally don't gasp, "Oh my God!" I think people have been getting raked over the coals lately.

For a comic to put a public performance in jeopardy for a snickering little laugh - no, no, no, I don't believe in it.

If you get a good comedy once a year, man, that's pretty good. I may be pickier than some, but still, there aren't that many movies that are really, truly, honestly that funny.

Comedy now is all about body shaming and delivering vulgar dialogues. There can't be another Manorama.

It's the American view that everything has to keep climbing: productivity, profits, even comedy.

I'm totally comfortable not being as funny as Larry David.

Late night television is ready for someone like me... standards have gone to an all-time low.