A Quote by Steve Coogan
If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
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If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence.
But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
Some people get into comedy because they love comedy. Then there are people who have a message and have realised that if they can be funny, maybe people will listen to it. And then there are people like me, who are just addicted to making people laugh.
With comedy, it's a combination of knowing the comedic beat was good - it made you laugh, it made people on the crew laugh. With drama, you do something deep and if your stuff was really effective, the ultimate result is silence. Silence is not necessarily... that would also be the result if you sucked.
But, sooner or later I'd love to do a comedy. I mean I think that, you know, people don't think that that's in my wheelhouse because I've sort of played a lot of dramatic stuff and that's certainly a side of myself that I want at some point in the right context, in the right stuff, that I find really funny.
The first purpose of comedy is to make people laugh. Anything deeper is a bonus. Some comedians want to make people laugh and make them think about socially relevant issues, but comedy, by the very nature of the word, is to make people laugh. If people aren't laughing, it's not comedy. It's as simple as that.
When a dramatic actor does a funny film, people are like, 'Wonderful! I didn't know he was funny!' But when it flips, people can get really thrown by it.
There are people that have only seen me in dramatic stuff and they go, "Oh, I didn't know you could do comedy," and then there are comedy people that go, "Oh, I didn't know you could do drama." I want to try to do both.
I have to say that my background in comedy, of performing live, has been such a great foundation for what we do now on camera. I really value having that kind of experience. Because when you're doing comedy shows you're writing your own material and trying it out on people and you know people find funny and don't.
Most of the jokes that I wrote were funny and there always seems to be an aspect of comedy in my long-form work. I think that's how life is. I think even the more dramatic moments of one's life are often punctuated by very funny comments or situations. I like to say, "Keep your comedy serious and your drama funny, and you'll be pretty true to life."
Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of über-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, "Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny."
Kind of the exhausting thing about doing pure comedy, or something that's broader, is you're kind of a slave to the laugh. If it's not funny, then there's not much point in doing it. The kind of ueber-objective is to make people laugh. You always have to have that in the back of your mind, 'Eh, I've got to figure out a way to make this funny.'
It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy.
I always found the dramatic side of things easier than the comedy, because there's so many ways to do comedy, and it's also subjective. Someone might not laugh at what you do, whereas if you're going to do a dramatic scene, there's usually only one way you can do it.
I think the role of comedy in your life should supersede anything and everything negative. Just by virtue of the fact that you have to be funny, you can't afford to focus on the negative. As a comedian, your challenge is to turn negative stuff into positive energy. You should be able to hear anything that sounds bad, that people normally wouldn't laugh at, and make it feel funny to you. No one should be able to deter you, once you have your mind set on comedy. Your survival as a comedian should be as natural as breathing. I need to breathe and I consider my career my air.
Often when you are starting out in comedy, you will find that people will laugh at the things you didn't think were funny. It's important to pay attention also to what people are laughing at when you are just talking in regular conversation. Often that is when you are truly being yourself.
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