I tried to make the punchline as close to the setup as I could. And I thought that was the perfect thing. If I could make the setup and the punchline identical to each other, I would create a different kind of joke.
I always told everybody the perfect joke would be where the setup and punch line were identical.
Victoria Wood's 'Dinnerladies' is just exceptionally written; every single line is a setup or a punchline.
I was very stale at Fox. Much of it was my own fault. I was lazy and didn't fight for things I wanted to do at other times. Most of my stuff consisted of setup/punchline jokes to the camera - a very old-school approach. I was part of the establishment, I guess.
I think as a blonde person with make-up on, you're automatically the punchline to the joke.
I definitely have friends who gave me a tag for a joke I already had. Like, 'Here's another line.' A tag is, 'Oooooh, it's an industry term.' It's like, there's the punchline, and a tag is like a secondary punchline.
Just because we wear hair extensions and make-up doesn't mean we're the punchline for every joke.
I like the rhythm of comedy in dramas, if that makes sense. In other words, I don't want to write setup, punch, setup, punch, where the joke dictates the scene; I want to find comedy in which the drama is actually driving the moment in the scene.
Donald Trump was seen for quite a long time as a punchline, the jokes about the excesses and the failures of the 1980s. And he had become, you know, a human shingle and a punchline.
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.
I like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.
The joke is, we all have the same punchline.
On Update, the only real original thing was trying to take away the cleverness of the punchline and make it as blunt as possible.
Comedy is just to me, maybe it's a natural knack, if I can see where the joke is in the writing and I can see where the setup is and I can tell this is the way to make it.
I always tried to make people laugh. I attribute that to - I come from a family of divorce. It was a way to distract myself from stuff. I always thought it was interesting that my brother and I existed in this really tight bond, and we would just take the piss out of pretty much everything. I knew I wanted to be an actor so it would be great if I could make people laugh while I was doing this, because I could be other characters and other people, and I could hide behind things. It was a great out for me, and a mode of expression.
Maybe the universe is a giant practical joke and we don't know the punchline.
If you want to land a punchline for how bad something is, you say 'Detroit,' even, like, in conversation. 'Oh, well, things could be worse. You could be in Detroit.' It makes me so mad.