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. . . see "HUMOR" for related links Tragedy and comedy are but two aspects of what is real, and whether we see the tragic or the humorous is a matter of perspective. --Arnold Beisser (19251985) American doctor and Gestalt therapist. Tragedy is when I get I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall in a sewer and die. --Mel Brooks (1926 ) American actor, writer, and director. Comedy is tragedy plus time. --Carol Burnett (1934 ) American television actress. - All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman, and a pretty girl. --Charlie Chaplin (18891977) English film actor and director. _My Autobiography_ [1964] Charlie Chaplin (18891977) English film actor and director. (The playwright Charles MacArthur had been brought to Hollywood to do a screenplay, but was finding it difficult to do visual jokes.) 'What's the problem?' asked Chaplin. 'How, for example, could I make a fat lady walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh. It's been done a million times,' said MacArthur. 'What's the best way to *get* the laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the fat lady approaching: then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, and *then* she slips?' 'Neither,' said Chaplin without a moment's hesitation. 'You show the fat lady approching; then you show the banana peel; then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together; then she steps *over* the banana peel and disappears down a manhole.' --_Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes_ edited by Clifton Fadiman and Andrι Bernard [2000 ed.] - The first thing any comedian does on getting an unscheduled laugh is to verify the state of his buttons. --W. C. Fields [William Claude Dukenfield] (18801946) American vaudeville star and film actor. In _W. C. Fields, Rowdy King of Comedy_ by Robert L. Taylor. It is easy to forget that the most important aspect of comedy, after all, its great saving grace, is its ambiguity. You can simultaneously laugh at a situation, and take it seriously. --Stephen Fry (1957 ) British comedian. The more one suffers, the more, I believe, one has a sense of the comic. It is only by the deepest suffering that one acquires the authority in the art of the comic. --Sφren Kierkegaard (18131855) Danish philosopher. _Stages On Life's Way_ [1845] The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth. --George Jean Nathan (18821958) American drama critic and editor. "American Mercury" [September 1929] The difference between my generation and the current comics is that comedy was always at our expense. Now it's at somebody else's. --Eric Stykes (1923 ) British comedic writer and actor. In "Independent" [31 October 1998]. [While Edgar Bergen and his puppet Charlie McCarthy were taping a skit for the television program "Laugh In",] part of the set fell down behind him. . . . Bergen was so cool, he didn't even turn around to see what had happened. But *Charlie* did turn around. What a genius! --Lily Tomlin (1936? ) American actress and comedian. "San Francisco Chronicle" [26 July 1996] The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. --Horace Walpole (17171797) English writer and connoisseur. _Letters_ "To the Countess of Upper Ossory" [16 August 1776] Comedy is the kindly contemplation of the incongruous. --P.G. [Pelham Grenville] Wodehouse (18811975) English humorist; American citizen from 1955. - Genius is an overused superlative in show business. Lots of very talented comedians can make you laugh, but if you think of Mozart and Picasso and Shakespeare, it's difficult to find a comedian who rises to the level of genius. A genius is like a sudden mutation. It's not that you get very good and very, very good and suddenly you achieve genius. It's not achievable in a gradual or practiced way. Somebody's just born and hit with the magic. --Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg] (1935 ) American actor, screenwriter, and director. In Franz Lidz and Steve Rushin, "New York Times" [30 January 2000]. Humankind used to produce two or three geniuses per century. Now, it gives us a couple of dozen per month. Last November's Genius issue of Esquire showcased those men and women "transforming our civilization," including the N.B.A. point guard Allen Iverson and the brilliant Leonardo not Da Vinci, but DiCaprio. Today, everyone and his dog is a genius. (Literally: shoppers can buy "Caninestein: Awakening the Genius in Your Dog.") The coin of genius is now so frequently minted that it has all the value of the Botswanan pula...There are enough "comic geniuses" panhandling for approval in theaters these days to fill the Academy of the Overrated, the purgatory Woody Allen created for the not-great-enough in "Manhattan." --ibid. Even Harold Lloyd, whose final clock-clinging minutes of "Safety Last" (1923) are the most audaciously funny on film, does not make Woody Allen's All-Star team: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, W. C. Fields, Groucho and Harpo Marx and Peter Sellers. Mr. Allen had included Mae West, but called the next day and busted her down to "an enormously gifted performer like Bob Hope and Jack Benny, but not a genius"..."Peter Sellers goes to the deep core of what's funny," says Mr. Allen. "His funniness was the funniness of genius. What he had to offer was clearly gold." --ibid. - ...the modern comics are just... well.... sharper edges without sharper wit. --Ann, alt.fiftyplus (Usenet newsgroup) - Woody Allen when he shot the moose, but the bullet just creased his scalp so the moose wakes up as he's driving home. "...and there's a law in New York State against driving with a conscious moose on your fender, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and I'm very panicky, then, it hits me. Some of my friends are having a costume party. I'll go, I'll take the moose, I'll ditch him at the party it wouldn't be my responsibility." So, he does, and the moose is a great success except when the time comes to judge the best costume, "First prize goes to the Berkowitzes, a married couple dressed as a moose. The moose comes in second. The moose is furious! He and the Berkowitzes lock horns in the living room. They knock each other unconscious. Now, I figure, here's my chance. I grab the moose, strap him on my fender, shoot back to the woods. But! I've got the Berkowitzes..." --- In a piece Allen wrote for the New Yorker in 1973, 'Examining Psychic Phenomena', there's the following: "The most astonishing case of transsubstantiation was that of Sir Arthur Murray who vanished with an audible pop while he was taking a bath and suddenly appeared in the string section of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. "He stayed on as first violinist for twenty-seven years, although he could only play 'Three Blind Mice', and vanished abruptly one day during Mozart's Jupiter Symphony, turning up in bed with Winston Churchill." --- George & Gracie: [George Burns (1896-1996), Gracie Allen (1895-1964) George: Gracie, this family of yours.... Gr: When Willie was a little baby my father took him riding in his carriage, and two hours later my father came back with a different baby and a different carriage. George: Well, what did your mother say? Gr: My mother didn't say anything because it was a better carriage. George: A better carriage? Gr: Yes....and the little baby my father brought home was a little French baby so my mother took up French. George: Why? Gr: So she would be able to understand the baby... George: ...when the baby started to talk. Gr: Yeah. --- In a series named 'The Frost Report', John Cleese was recruited to write and perform. His height and manner were used to great effect in a sketch by John Law and Marty Feldman on class distinction. The point was rammed home by the fact that John Cleese, at six foot five inches, towered over Ronnie Barker's five foot nine inches, and Ronnie Corbett's five foot one inch. Cleese: I look down on him (indicating Barker) because I am upper class. Barker: I look up to him (indicating Cleese) because he is upper class, but I look down on him (indicating Corbett) because he is lower class. I am middle class. Corbett: I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don't look up to him (Barker) as much as I look up to him (Cleese), because he has got innate breeding. Cleese: I have got innate breeding, but I have not got any money. So sometimes I look up (bending knees and doing so) to him (Barker). Barker: I still look up to him (Cleese) because although I have money, I am vulgar. But I am not as vulgar as him (Corbett), so I still look down on him (Corbett). Corbett: I know my place. I look up to them both; but while I am poor, I am honest, industrious and trustworthy. Had I the inclination, I could look down on them. But I don't. Barker: We all know our place, but what do we get out of it? Cleese: I get a feeling of superiority over them. Barker: I get a feeling of inferiority from him (Cleese) but a feeling of superiority over him (Corbett). Corbett: I get a pain in the back of my neck. --- Here's another piece of Cleese/Graham Chapman writing: Chapman: Hullo, Mrs Premise. Cleese: Hullo, Mrs Conclusion. Chapman: Busy day? Cleese: Busy? I just spent four hours burying the cat.: Four hours to bury a cat? Cleese: Yes it wouldn't keep still. Chapman: Oh it wasn't dead, then? Cleese: No, no but it's not at all well, so as we were going away for a fortnight's holiday I thought I'd better bury it to be on the safe side. Chapman: Quite right you don't want to come back from Sorrento to a dead cat. It'd be so anticlimatic. Yes, kill it now, that's what I say. We're going to have our budgie put down. Cleese: Really is it very old? Chapman: No, we just don't like it. We're going to take it to the vet tomorrow. Tell me, how do they put budgies down, then? Chapman: Well, it's funny you should ask that, because I've just been reading a great big book about how to put your budgie down, and apparently, you can either hit them with the book ........ --written and acted by Graham Chapman and John Cleese, "Monty Python's Flying Circus" [TV Show, Episode 27] end page | CALAMITIES - CALM | CALUMNY - CAMPAIGN FINANCING | CAMPAIGNS & CANADA | CANCER - CAN'T WIN | CAPITALISM | CAREFREE - CARPE DIEM | CARTER (JIMMY) - CATS & DOGS | CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES - CENSORSHIP | CERTAINTY - CHANGE | CHANGING (ONE'S MIND) & CHANGING TIMES | CHARACTER | CHARACTER ASSASINATION - CHEERFULNESS | CHEER UP! - CHILDHOOD | CHILDREN | CHILDREN'S RHYME | CHILE & CHINA | CHOCOLATE - CHRISTIANITY | CHRISTMAS | CHURCH - CIGARS | CIRCUMSTANCES & CITIES | CIVILITY - CIVIL RIGHTS | CLARITY - CLICHES | CLOTHES - COFFEE | COLD - COLORS | COMEDY | COMFORT - COMMON SENSE | COMMUNICATION | COMMUNISM | COMPANIONSHIP - COMPASSION | COMPETITION - COMPLIMENTS | COMPOSERS - CONDUCTORS | CONFESSION - CONQUEST | CONSCIENCE - CONTENTED | CONTEXT - CONVENTIONAL WISDOM | CONVERSATION | CONVICTION & COOKING | COOLIDGE - CORPORATIONS | CORRECTING - COURAGE | COURT - COWS | CREATIVITY - CRIME | CRIME & PUNISHMENT - CROOKS | CRITICISM & CRITICS | CROWD (THE) - CUBA | CULTURE - CYNICS | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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