Comedy in the past hasn't spoken to women because it wasn't written by women, and male writers don't make women three-dimensional characters. Too often, women just facilitate the man's comedy: they're not crazy; they're not funny. But women are as vulgar as they are elegant, as stinky as they are smelling of eau de parfum.
Movies either work or they don't work and they're either funny or they're not and we work very hard. To achieve that kind of work is really kind of delicate stitching.
A stockbroker urged me to buy a stock that would triple its value every year. I told him, 'At my age, I don't even buy green bananas.'
To play the leading man in a 'Three Stooges' movie, you've got to think funny. Thank God I think funny.
My heroes were always Looney Toons, Robin Williams, the Three Stooges. I think everything I do is kinda funny. I think I'm sort of ridiculous.
If you have a character that doesn't have anything wrong with him, there's nothing funny about it. The idea of the straight man is very important. But I'd rather it be somebody else, because it's not as fun.
A lot of comedies are based on the reaction shot. You have one person doing something stupid and one person is generally the straight man, and the laughs generally come on the reaction of the straight man to the funny thing the other person has done.
To a straight man, the notion of walking around as a coiffed, waxed, nail-polish-wearing, lispy dude is uproariously absurd. As people, we find absurdities funny. That's our first step in making sense of them.
I think it's so funny because straight people just don't think about gender in their songs, or making a statement by talking about love.
There can be moments onstage - but sometimes in a movie, too - where you just feel you're in a golden space. You're in this strange world where everything you do makes sense. And it's funny: the audience is right in it with you, and the other actors, and you get these rare moments of feeling at one with something. You hear voices in your head.
If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.
I would love to do comedy. I think I'm funny and that comedy is my strong suit, at least in real life. I have yet to prove myself in the movies, but I'd love to get the opportunity to do that.
With kids, I have less time for things like masks - though I do try to treat myself, after they've gone to bed, to a mask or something. It's kind of funny because, as you get older, you probably need to do more in terms of beauty, but actually, you have less time to do it. But becoming a mother has made me a stronger person.
So to me, Texas Hold 'em puts me to sleep. At least when you play stud, you can be funny as you deal. Somebody some day is going to come up with a Stud show that's going to work.
When I walked in on 'Drag Race' and saw Katya, I had no idea she was gonna be funny, because she was stunning. She had this perfect red lip, I remember looking into her eyes and being like, 'This is a woman!' Then she was really funny. She kind of presents normal, and it's a one-two punch with the comedy.
If a comic laughs at their own jokes, I don't like it. They shouldn't find it funny; they should seriously believe in this stupid thing they're saying.
I used to stutter really badly. Everybody thinks it's funny. And it's not funny. It's not.
It's funny: as a director, there are movies you make because you're passionate about getting your vision across, and you know that you're vision is different than anybody else. In those cases, you take the plunge, and it works, or it doesn't. You make the stylistic choices based on how you feel about the material.
There are certain sorts of jokes which have only to do with the substitution of the unexpected word in a familiar context. If you translated something into French and then had it translated back into English by somebody who didn't know the original, you'd lose what was funny.
When I used to watch comedians with my dad, he laid it all out for me. He wanted to be a comedian himself, and he was so funny. We'd watch stand-up on TV, and he'd tell me the subtext of what they were saying.
