John Cleese Quotes About Comedy

Quotes about: Comedy

• Comedy always works best when it is mean-spirited.

  John Cleese

  Mean, Comedy, Mean Spirited

• When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.

  John Cleese

  Teenage, Writing, Kids

• By watching the great, old comedians I picked up a few tricks about how to do physical comedy. And whenever I could learn something, I sort of added that to my repertoire.

  John Cleese

  Comedian, Comedy, Tricks

  "Early On, Comedian John Cleese Says, He Had Good Timing But Little Else". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. October 16, 2015.

• When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed.

  John Cleese

  Needs, Comedy, Fixed

  "Early On, Comedian John Cleese Says, He Had Good Timing But Little Else". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. October 16, 2015.

• Michael Palin decided to give up on his considerable comedy talents to make those dreadfully tedious travel shows. Have you ever tried to watch one?

  John Cleese

  Travel, Giving Up, Watches

• Bureaucrats shouldn't be in charge of comedy.

  John Cleese

  Comedy, Bureaucrats

  "Interview: John Cleese and Eric Idle, founding members of Monty Python". Interview with Tony Jones, www.abc.net.au. February 18, 2016.

• I think you can write very good comedy without a partner, but what I love about it, working with a partner, is that you get to places you'd never get on your own. It's like when God was designing the world and decided we couldn't have children without a partner; it was a way of mixing up the genes so you'd get a more interesting product.

  John Cleese

  Children, Writing, Thinking

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. October 22, 2009.

• When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.

  John Cleese

  Years, Comedy, Forty

• I want to write a book which is the history of comedy.

  John Cleese

  Book, Writing, Want

• Everything in comedy's got to be exactly right, which is why making a comedic film is kind of a difficult process, because, for most of the two years of shooting it and editing it and reshooting and all of that, it's not quite right. And it's only when you just at the end, you put the final polish on it, it becomes really funny again.

  John Cleese

  Two, Editing, Years

  "How John Cleese got his accidental start in comedy". "PBS NewsHour" with Judy Woodruff, www.pbs.org. June 19, 2015.

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