I love doing theaters, cracking people up, hearing them physically roll in the aisles. But we need to get serious. These are serious times. No joke. No joke.
I think when the joke comes from the situation in a horror film, it's really great. I don't like jokey horror films like where people are cracking a joke or being post-modern about it.
The U.K. and Europe in general seem to be a lot more patient. The U.S. are expecting 'joke joke joke joke joke joke joke.' They don't actually sit and listen to you.
They think I'm being serious when actually I'm a very big clown. But you have to know me to see that. I'm constantly cracking up and cracking everybody else around me up.
When I'm writing columns, it's - all I'm thinking about is jokes, joke, joke, joke, setup, punch line, joke, joke, joke. And I really don't care where it goes.
As far as outlining is concerned, I don't outline humor. I might right down a word or two to remind myself of a punch line I thought of, but the actual structure of a piece I really don't. I don't think it would really help me because for me the process is joke, joke, joke, joke.
All my life's about is cracking up people and them cracking me up and trying not to think about dying. That doesn't cost very much money.
I am a fan of whatever makes me laugh my ass off. If it happens to be a Jew joke, then it's a Jew joke.
My mom was my English teacher in high school. So to be able to bend the rules and be the class clown and get to take on my religion, my mom, and my town all at the same time was glorious. I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit. If you're cracking a joke in school, it's sort of anti-authority, but it's in the nicest, "Please like me!" way.
Someone said to me at a party once, 'Oh, yeah, you're a comedian? Then how come you're not funny now?' And I just wanted to say, 'Well, I'm just going to take this conversation we're having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that's the joke. You're the joke later.'
There is always something funny going on between scenes with Adam Sandler. He's always cracking jokes and yelling at people for no reason. It's pretty funny. He'll joke around during scenes, too. When he guest-starred on 'Jessie,' there was nothing in the script that he said first take.
I keep on repeating something told to me by an American psychologist: "When you are making a joke about someone and you are the only one to laugh, it is not a joke. It is a joke only for yourself." If people are making a joke they have the right to laugh at me but I will ignore them. Ignoring doesn't mean that you don't understand. You understand it so much that you don't want to react.
What you never want to do is have a story that doesn't track emotionally, because then you're going joke to joke and you're going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that's going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is.
I had an awful joke about Auschwitz I drove everybody crazy with that joke. But that joke makes me feel good. You know what "cuit" means? When something is cooked. It's a joke like that: "What are the birds doing when they fly over Auschwitz? 'Cuit! Cuit!'" It's awful, but it's desacralizing. For me, it's good.
When I was governor, if I told a joke in front of the press - I learned. I would go, "That was a joke, joke, joke," and I'd say it three times.