A Quote by Mort Sahl
I was afraid no one would laugh, and I wanted to pretend I wasn't noticing the audience. I didn't want the audience to get the idea I was telling a joke and waiting for a laugh.
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My brother was a great audience, and if he liked the picture, he would laugh and laugh and laugh, and he would want to keep the picture. Making people laugh with an image I had created... what power that was!
The audience works as such a mob. They either all laugh or all don't laugh, and, you know, changes from audience to audience.
The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.
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.
I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.
There's a guy in the audience with a distinctive laugh. I hope that guy is miked. The only problem with having a distinctive laugh is I know exactly when that guy isn't laughing. "Oh, distinctive laugh doesn't think that joke was funny!"
We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.
But when you're in front of an audience and you make them laugh at a new idea, you're guiding the whole being for the moment. No one is ever more him/herself than when they really laugh. Their defenses are down. It's very Zen-like, that moment. They are completely open, completely themselves when that message hits the brain and the laugh begins. That's when new ideas can be implanted. If a new idea slips in at that moment, it has a chance to grow.
My audience expects me to push the limits, to be politically incorrect. I do that because for me, that's the only place where the fun is, when I get to push the boundaries and make people laugh at things that they probably didn't want to laugh at.
I had a show that people thought used a laugh track. It wasn't; it was the real audience going crazy after everything that resembled a joke, that they could technically call a joke.
We were in front of a live audience and I would be acting with the man who was playing my lover, and we used those words, and the audience would titter and laugh, and make me uncomfortable doing the scenes. ... I wanted to sort of stop and yell at them, "What's so funny? What's the matter with you people? Grow up!" It made me very self-conscious at times.
When I watch TV I can tell when someone is punching the joke and telling me when to laugh (I’ll decide when to laugh, thank you very much).
If a comedian tells a joke that you find funny, you laugh. If he tells a joke you do not find funny, don't laugh. Or you could possibly go as far as groaning or rolling your eyes. Then you wait for his next joke; if that's funny, then you laugh. If it's not, you don't laugh - or at very worst, you can leave quietly.
I'm honored that other comedians like what I do. That means the world to me. But at the same time when I'm on stage I'm not just trying to make the comedians laugh - I'm also trying to make the audience laugh. I want to make everybody laugh.
Creator: A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
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