A Quote by Brian Regan

A formula for comedy is comedy equals tragedy plus time. A difficult or uncomfortable situation takes place, and then you laugh about it later down the road.

Brian Regan

Quote Topics

About Comedy Difficult Down Down The Road Equals Formula Later Laugh Place Plus Road Situation Takes Then Time Tragedy Uncomfortable

Quote Author

Brian Regan
Comedian
Born: June 2, 1957

There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.

Harry Treadaway

Here's the thing, with comedy - and I learned this from Will Ferrell - you can't be ashamed. If you're doing comedy, you have to fully commit to the joke. Shame is not part of it. If you act shy or uncomfortable about your body, that makes the audience shy and uncomfortable. And in a comedy you just want them to loosen up and laugh.

John C. Reilly

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.

Amy Hill

The timing of comedy is so difficult. You've got to leave room for a laugh, you don't want to kill the laugh, but on film, you can't just suddenly stop for a laugh and then carry on. So, I think it's a real art form, comedy on film.

Helen Mirren

I don't play comedy as comedy. That would be the biggest trap. I think about the characters and their situations. Then you don't have to worry where the laugh is going to be. But comedy is harder than drama.

Penelope Cruz

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.'

Gilbert Gottfried

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like its crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like its laughing. Nowadays, we would say, How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.

Gilbert Gottfried

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

Carol Burnett

Comedy is tragedy - plus time.

Carol Burnett

Comedy is an intellectual affair, and deals chiefly with logic. Tragedy is an emotional affair, and deals chiefly with value. Horace Walpole once said that "life is a comedy to the man who thinks and a tragedy to the man who feels." Comedy is negative; it is a criticism of limitations and an unwillingness to accept them. Tragedy is positive; it is an uncritical acceptance of the positive content of that which is delimited. Since comedy deals with the limitations of actual situations and tragedy with their positive content, comedy must ridicule and tragedy must endorse.

James Kern Feibleman

I've stopped doing things that aren't clear comedy gigs - to do something that's not "comedy night," it's a difficult thing. People have to be given permission to laugh. You need to know it's comedy; otherwise you might just think I'm a man talking out loud.

Simon Amstell

Originally the premise of killing Hitler was fueled by deep traumatic feelings of wishing and fantasizing that if only things had been different, we could have spared ourselves all kinds of suffering. More recently it's been turned into a comedic trope. As we go forward, tragedy plus time equals comedy...

Gavriel David Rosenfeld

I was sort of trained in drama. I went to theater school. I started on the stage. Comedy is absolutely an essential part of what we do as actors. But I think in the grand scheme of things, comedy was born from tragedy. First there was tragedy and then there were the comedies.

Alex O'Loughlin

There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.