A Quote by Emmett Kelly
By laughing at me, the audience really laughs at themselves, and realizing they have done this gives them sort of a spiritual second wind for going back into the battles of life.
Related Quotes
I don't come on to seduce the audience. I don't care if everyone laughs. I can't think about that anymore. If there's anything that a lot of experience on stage and a lot of stage time gives you is the confidence to know that it's ok if they're not laughing every second you're up there. Although that's what drives me and I still go too fast a lot of the time.
Other people have faces; Susan and Jinny have faces; they are here. Their world is the real world. The things they lift are heavy. They say Yes, they say No; whereas I shift and change and am seen through in a second. If they meet a housemaid she looks at them without laughing. But she laughs at me. They know what to say if spoken to. They laugh really; they get angry really; while I have to look first and do what other people do when they have done it.
When you watch an audience watching my movies, you realize that nobody laughs at the same time. Some people enjoy a beat, and then another group of people are laughing at a sight gag, and then someone laughs where nobody laughs before. They're not timed like a comedy. You're not supposed to laugh at every joke. You decide.
My dad doesn't get any of my jokes. He laughs at them, but he doesn't understand them. He's just laughing because people around him are laughing.
I think my whole life has been one of sort of daring, and sort of sailing against the wind instead of just going with the wind.
I do a lot of talking, playing with the audience, but I don't really know what that's going to be. Somebody kind of feeds me cold. He gives me these kind of cold games that I play with the audience or quizzes that I do with them.
In the first act, you get the audience's attention - once you have it, they will repay you in the second. Play through the laughs if you have to. It will only make the audience believe there are so many of them that they missed a few.
In theater, it's just you and the audience. It's less of a popularity contest. It's just you and the audience, and they're laughing or they're not laughing, that's the only gauge you really have. But with TV and movies and everything, it's like "Well, did you get a meeting at so-and-so?" and "So-and-so's really hot right now," which is all the stuff I'm probably still not used to.
What I love about improv so much is that we are all discovering it at roughly the same time. The performers are maybe, what, a half second ahead of the audience? There's very little lag time. I think of a thing, I say it, then the audience is laughing and it all happened in a second.
When an audience is laughing with a character, they make themselves so vulnerable, and they open up. They expose their heart the moment they're laughing, because they're relaxed and they're disarmed.
The one thing that I love about the live audience is the energy level. Like, from the minute of cast introductions, it's just constant energy being traded back and forth. When you do something funny, the audience laughs; when you're being serious, you can, like, feel the tension going through the audience.
Every laugh is not equal. They come from different places. That's sort of the challenge I go towards, making sure the laughs are for the reasons I want. It becomes a back and forth dance with the audience.
I think one of my favorite pieces I've ever done on the show which was about Hezbollah Israel conflict in 2006 and it was very pointed. It was a beautifully crafted piece of satire and it's a weird thing to say but it had a joke in there about 9/11 and I remember the audience sort of laughing but also kind of not knowing how to respond to that joke and it was just so - and I remember the tension after we did this joke on the air and there was this palpable gasp in the audience, but they were also laughing. And I thought oh, wow, that is something that is not being said in the Zeitgeist.
When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.
He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.
All my mother ever wanted to talk about was what she hated about my father and the times he cheated on her when he was younger. It really irritated me, and I told them they had to sort things out between themselves. Looking back on that, I see that it was really cold of me as a son.
Related Authors
Adam Carolla Quotes
American
Entertainer
Andrew Flintoff Quotes
English
Entertainer
Conan O'Brien Quotes
American
Entertainer
David Copperfield Quotes
American
Entertainer
Dick Cavett Quotes
American
Entertainer
Earl Nightingale Quotes
American
Entertainer
Jamie Hyneman Quotes
American
Entertainer
Jon Stewart Quotes
American
Entertainer
Khloe Kardashian Quotes
American
Entertainer
Marc Maron Quotes
American
Entertainer
Martha Stewart Quotes
American
Entertainer
Oprah Winfrey Quotes
American
Entertainer
Penn Jillette Quotes
American
Entertainer
RuPaul Quotes
American
Entertainer
Rush Limbaugh Quotes
American
Entertainer
Simon Cowell Quotes
British
Entertainer