Recent quotes:

‘Barry’: Bill Hader on “Disturbing” Season 3 Finale, What’s Next – The Hollywood Reporter

It’s interesting, comedy in general. I showed my kids Naked Gun, and we were dying laughing. I haven’t seen a movie like that for a long time. Actually, I take that back: Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar was really funny, hysterical. But so much of what’s funny, and where people are getting their comedy buzzes from: YouTube, in reality, in life. What used to be, “Oh, my God, you gotta go see this new Naked Gun movie,” is now, “Watch this five-second clip of a guy falling off a Segway.” (Laughs.) I remember being at SNL, and we would watch news bloopers, or whatever thing someone would send you, and you would go, “We can never be this funny.” When I was a kid, you would take your video camera around, and you would do things you saw in movies. Now it’s, “Here’s my YouTube channel.” It’s just different, but I don’t bemoan it. I just think things evolve. I love reading about Old Hollywood and the advent of television and how that flipped everybody out. The conversation of “Movies are dead, and comedy is fucked” has been going on forever.

The “Cancel Culture” Con | The New Republic

As far as comedy is concerned, “cancel culture” seems to be the name mediocrities and legends on their way to mediocrity have given their own waning relevance. They’ve set about scolding us about scolds, whining about whiners, and complaining about complaints because they would rather cling to material that was never going to stay fresh and funny forever than adapt to changing audiences, a new set of critical concerns, and a culture that might soon leave them behind. In desperation, they’ve become the tiresome cowards they accuse their critics of being—and that comics like Bruce, who built the contemporary comedy world, never were.

Stephen Colbert Shares His Struggle With Anxiety and Why He Stopped Taking Xanax | Entertainment Tonight

"I was actually medicated," he says. "I mean, in the most common, prosaic way. Xanax was just lovely. Y’know, for a while. And then I realized that the gears were still smoking. I just couldn’t hear them anymore. But I could feel them, I could feel the gearbox heating up and smoke pouring out of me, but I was no longer walking around a couch." "I had a bit of a nervous breakdown after I got married -- kind of panic attacks," he continues. "My wife would go off to work and she’d come home -- because I worked at night -- and I’d be walking around the couch. And she’s like, 'How was your day?' And I’d say, 'You’re looking at it.' Just tight circles around the couch."

Do lovers always tease each other? Study shows how couples handle laughter and banter -- ScienceDaily

The researchers observed that provoking others to laugh at you primarily has positive effects: "Women reported more often that they tended to be satisfied with their relationship and felt more attracted to their partner. They and their partners also tended to be equally satisfied with their sex life," Brauer continues. Being afraid of being laughed at, on the other hand, tended to have negative effects: people who have this fear are less content in their relationship and also tend to mistrust their partner. This also has consequences for the partner: men said more frequently that they did not really feel satisfied with their sex life if their partner was afraid of being laughed at.

You have to tell them the joke is funny, or important

“If you don’t care, or if you don’t seem like you care, why should they care?” You know, you’re the one with the microphone for some reason, and they’re sitting there in chairs listening to you for some reason, so you better act like you care about this. I started to pick things that I had more strong takes on, as stupid or random as they may be.

How Watching ‘Caddyshack’ Helps Me Stave Off Depression

To escape the world into a Caddyshack screening while I’m depressed means suspending time and entering another world. In this world, body and mind, self and soul, coexist side-by-side, not naturally, but as conjoined twins. In this world, I need beginnings, middles, and endings. Inside this world, I need Kenny Loggins overtures, bromances, cliffhangers, sight-gags, dumb homunculi and military-grade explosions. In this world I need Caddyshack.

Set the bar low, says Steve Carrell

I didn’t set the bar very high for myself, I’ll be honest. I didn’t have a vision. I just wanted to be employed, and I was willing to do almost everything short of pornography to continue working as an actor. I know that’s a pretty horrible image.

Digital comedy

A microphone placed at the front of the theater would provide White with a recording of the audience’s laughter, against which to edit future versions of the film. If a joke didn’t send the crest of the waveform sufficiently high, it would either be tweaked or replaced with an alternate joke and demoted to the film’s “B-cut” — a version composed of jokes that hadn’t killed but that Feig wasn’t ready to trash. Some test audiences would unwittingly watch the B-cut, and if certain jokes went over great, “then I’ll steal them and drop them into the A-cut,” White said. Last year, Paramount Pictures went as far as to give the “Anchorman 2” B-cut its own limited theatrical release: Overseen by Bretherton, White’s deputy, it told the exact story as the official release, but with 763 different jokes slotted in.

Back in the USSR

Comrade Ivanov applied to the communist party. The Party committee asked him, "Have you ever vacillated in following the Party line?" "No, I always vacillated together with the line.(2)"

Joan Rivers and Las Vegas

First of all, she said, those mobsters knew how to care for a lady, those guys with bent noses were respectful and gentlemen, except when they were killing you. Second, she said, organized crime is better than disorganized crime, which will replace it. Third, the mobsters had a patina of class, they dressed well and saw that everyone else did, so Vegas wasn’t a slobocracy, which is what it is becoming with men in shorts playing the slots in the lobby of the hotel. The old Vegas had dignity.
In makeup, they go, “Hey, Jimmy, some advice: Lorne Michaels doesn’t laugh when you audition. So don’t let that throw you.” Then the audio guy, he goes, “Hey, little advice — Lorne doesn’t like to laugh.” I’m like, “O.K.” Then Marci [Klein, a longtime “SNL” producer] comes out: “Jimmy, they’re ready for you. But hey, a little advice for you. If Lorne doesn’t laugh, be cool.” I’m like, what is this guy’s problem? He’s doing a comedy show. Why does he not like to laugh?
I got in an elevator, and there was a guy who was also auditioning, and I thought: “That guy brought a lot of props. I didn’t bring anything.” And he was looking at me, going, “That guy didn’t have to bring any props.” We were just sizing each other up in the elevator. And that was Andy Samberg.
Dennis Miller told me: “You don’t want to kill too hard, Spudley. It throws up a red flag. You don’t want to be a polished road act.” And I go: “Well, I’m certainly not that. There’s no danger.”