A Quote by Brad Williams
There are things that I won't joke about, but it's not because I don't think they're funny or they can't be made funny. It's just that they don't fit my particular skill set.
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The problem is that we live in an uptight country. Why don't we just laugh at ourselves? We are funny. Gays are funny. Straights are funny. Women are funny. Men are funny. We are all funny, and we all do funny things. Let's laugh about it.
I have become a giant fan of the testing process, especially with a comedy. I mean, they tell you what's funny. It's almost tailor-made for people who shoot the way we shoot, trying a million different options and versions of things. Because the audience doesn't laugh at a joke, we put in another joke. If they don't laugh at the next joke, we put in another joke. You just keep doing them and you can get the movie to the point where every joke is funny, if you have enough options in the can.
It doesn't mean you can't discuss important things, but I would never do a joke about cancer, just because I don't think any joke is funny enough to justify upsetting someone who is going through that.
A joke is either funny or it's not funny. If I hear a funny joke, you know what I do? I laugh, that's what I do. I don't start a focus group to see who got hurt by the joke.
Funny stories on set - there are thousands of them, but they are only funny to the people who were on the movies. You start to have inside jokes and gallows humor. You have all kinds of things you laugh at, but as soon as you tell somebody, the joke falls flat because they don't know the context of it.
I don't really find things funny unless they're deeply tragic at the same time. I think if you're funny just for the sake of being funny, it's just frivolous nonsense. To me, all the best comic plays have been written about really serious and rather bleak things.
The idea of surprise is part of what makes something funny, or what gets a reaction. At least when I'm an audience member, after you hear a joke so many times it's not as funny because it loses its surprise or its twist. So I think funny has to do with surprise.
I'll just talk and talk for an hour, an hour and half, until funny things come out of my mouth - often things that I don't think will be funny, often things that I just thought were sentences, turn out to be funny, because they're the sentences of an idiot. There's level of self-awareness that develops, and I write down things that were funny, usually when I'm on stage, and that becomes the show.
I find a lot of things kind of funny and I often say what's on my mind, and then get nine texts from all my friends going, 'What's the matter with you?' But I haven't ever made a big attempt to have any particular image. And I don't really worry about it. If it's funny, I don't care.
It's harder when people are playing along, because it's just not as funny. They're trying to be funny, and it sort of cancels out the whole joke.
I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.
I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
I've noticed, as a comedy fan, that I really like Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino because when they're funny, they're actually funny. It's not like when other dramatic writers have comedy, and I'm just like, 'Well, that's not funny. Why are you even trying to make a joke here?'
You can analyse a joke and say it's funny because this guy thought this was going to happen, and that happened, and it's surprising. But not all surprising things are funny.
I always think any circumstances can be funny. Not that I'm irresponsible, but when things go wrong, I always come up with a joke or think of something funny to say.
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