A Quote by Tom Green
If something becomes mean-spirited and hurtful, it's not funny.
Related Quotes
A lot of television stuff is mean-spirited, and I think that's how political advertising got so mean-spirited, to where people are throwing things at the television set every time we have an election.
When you're doing comedy, you're not trying to be funny. I think things are funny when the character is taking it totally seriously. I think when people are winking, it becomes slapstick, it becomes something else.
I don't like to do anything that's mean spirited just because I don't find it funny. I'd rather be the jackass than makes fun of somebody else. It just seems too cheap and easy.
I'm super grateful that there wasn't social media when I was a kid, but that sort of self-doubt crept in at a young age. It's bullying. It's the comments here and there, and maybe somebody says something to you that they don't even mean to be a mean-spirited comment, but they'll just kind of say it to you in passing.
For storytelling purposes, there has to be conflict, but that doesn't mean the people have to be mean. I've never liked mean-spirited comedy.
There are a lot of black-hearted, mean-spirited bastards in the world. It's important that we hold them to acount. But always remember that you might be the most black-hearted and mean-spirited in the lot, so hold yourself the most accountable of all.
I wanted to bring something to 'Celebrity Apprentice' to let America know that you don't have to be back-stabbing and mean-spirited in order to a challenge.
One of the things that is always difficult about a collaboration is that you don't necessarily find the same thing funny. And so the challenge becomes, how do you tell the other person that you don't think something's funny? The best collaborations tend to be when you are willing to be told that. But there's also ego involved, and so there's a lot of frustration in knowing that you're writing something, and the other person, on some level, needs to think that it's funny.
I don't really hashtag things. Unless I'm talking to somebody and I'm being funny and I say something mean but then I'm like, Hashtag...something that's funny. I like to only hashtag funny things, not real stuff.
You can't make Christ funny. He's self-aware, he's too flexible within the situation. It's rigidity, it's when the ego takes over and the behavior becomes inappropriate that it becomes funny.
The thing I have learned, especially in the Internet age, probably the easiest thing in the world is to declare that something is not funny. I mean it's not actually humor to say something is not funny, but it is viewed by a lot of people - and by that I mean mainly snarky young Internet men - as a kind of humor in and of itself is putting down other people's efforts at humor. And I don't care that much anymore about that because I know how easy that is to do.
Something is funny, most of all, because it's true, and because the velocity of insight into this truth exceeds our normal standards. Something is funny because it's outside our accepted boundary of decorum. Something is funny because it defies our expectations. Something is funny because it offers a temporary reprieve from the hardship of seeing the world as it actually is. Something is funny because it is able to suggest gently that even the worst of our circumstances and sins is subject to eventual mercy.
Just because we can shoot something that looks like a movie doesn't mean we should. Sometimes if something looks too good, it's not funny. Some things need to look good, because we think it's funny that you'd spend so much time and be so precious about such a stupid idea.
Good satire is about attacking the powerful, and that tends to be more the purview of the left. Maybe there's something about the conservative mindset that confuses mean-spirited name-calling and insults with actual humor.
All great companies have spirit and culture. Mean spirited returns mean spirit.
Whatever the joke is has to be funny, and not coming from a mean-spirited place. I think some things are totally off limits. If someone's spouse died, or one of their children, I would never joke about that in a Roast situation. I don't have any aspirations towards writing any cancer jokes, and there's some stuff that I think is definitely taboo.
Related Authors
Bill Maher Quotes
American
Comedian
Craig Ferguson Quotes
Scottish
Comedian
David Letterman Quotes
American
Comedian
Demetri Martin Quotes
American
Comedian
Ellen DeGeneres Quotes
American
Comedian
George Carlin Quotes
American
Comedian
Jay Leno Quotes
American
Comedian
Jim Gaffigan Quotes
American
Comedian
Jimmy Fallon Quotes
American
Comedian
Joan Rivers Quotes
American
Comedian
Mitch Hedberg Quotes
American
Comedian
P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
American
Comedian
Robin Williams Quotes
American
Comedian
Rodney Dangerfield Quotes
American
Comedian
Stephen Colbert Quotes
American
Comedian
Steven Wright Quotes
American
Comedian