Human life is a combination of tragedy and comedy. The shapes and designs that surround us are the music accompanying this tragedy and this comedy.
'Collaborator' is a hostage tragicomedy, but it's also, kind of, everything I know about post-war America. Well, not everything, but it does reference a lot of the post-war period.
If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy. That's the comedy that I like.
It seems to me that very sad things always contain an element of the comical
Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value; a little misfit in life makes us laugh; a great one is tragedy and cause for expression of grief.
There is a point in portraying surface vulgarity where tragedy and comedy are very close.
I naturally think in terms of comedy whenever I see anything because tragedy is so close to comedy, so I like to add the tragedy to the comedy or a little bit of comedy to the tragedy in order to make them both feel more real to me.
But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.
I think comedy is drama, often. It's hard to have comedy over a period of time - commercials are one thing, but over a period of time - comedy and tragedy go hand in hand.
It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I've always been a sucker for that.
Tragedy without comedy is melodrama, and comedy without a higher purpose is vacant.
In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.
