A Quote by Christopher Guest
The truth of it is that people are not going to want to go to improvisational theater if it's not funny. You can succeed in doing all the things you're supposed to do - be truthful to scene - and if it's not funny, I'm telling you that no one's gonna care.
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What reaches an audience is honesty. If you're saying something truthful that's supposed to be a funny line, it's going to be funny. And if it's supposed to be a serious line, it's going to be serious. But, I don't think there's a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it's based in the truth.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
In order for comedy to be funny you have to play the truth of the moment. But if you're not being completely truthful to the basis of the character, its not going to be funny.
I am much more likely to care about someone trying to be funny and give them some credit for whatever he or she did that was remotely funny than I am to be mused by somebody declaring this isn't funny, that isn't funny, this sucks. If you want to write humor, you're going to have to get used to that.
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.
Comedy is not supposed to be funny. Its supposed to tell the truth and then that's funny.
People are getting careers from YouTube and uploading videos. And they're totally different - you can't necessarily be funny on a video, and then all of a sudden you're live in a theater. You don't have the tools yet. It's a lot more involved to go from being funny on a little iPhone screen to being live in front of people and being funny.
It's funny, when people want things to be very truthful and you're dealing with an inexperienced actor. I'm of the school that believes things like that have to be very carefully choreographed. You need people there to say, "It's going to happen like this."
[In comedy] you never want to leave the actors hanging out to dry. So you need to come up with funny individual stories for each character, and then you do this sort of comedy geometry, weaving them together. Once you've got a funny structure and you know why the scenes are funny, then you get super funny people to say your own lines, say their own lines, say things in their own way, and every scene is a live rewrite in front of the camera.
I don't want any funny business, and above all I don't want to be dragged into other people's funny business. If it's to be my head on the block, I want to know that it's doing there, and not that it's some stupid things that other people have done.
Thery're both iron, isn't that funny?" "Funny haha or funny strange?" James handed them back to me "Funny 'occult'" "Ah. Funny strange" James looked at me sternly, "Don't start that. I'm supposed to be the humorous one
One of the many things I want to do is dig us out of that hole so that guys, in particular, can go: "Oh, yeah. Those people are really funny. I've seen that person. It's a woman. They are funny."
My philosophy is that if you're playing a moment truthfully, that it's a funny moment, then hopefully it will be funny. I like to just go for a truth in the work as much as I can. There's a lack of ego when you're working with comedy that I really love. It's hard to come up with something funny. It's become a fun game in a way. Everyone is going for the gold, for that humor.
I think if you have a funny thought, and you want to get off a funny point, try to do it as realistically as you can. If you try to act it funny and accent the funny points, or do it in a funny style, you kind of lose it.
You see a lot of comedic content that's not funny, and you can tell that it's supposed to be funny, but it's actually not funny.
You do what you're supposed to do, but you have to be honest about what they're doing. When you do a comedy show on a network the problem is there are going to be a bunch of people who aren't comedians that are going to tell you what's funny.
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