Regardless of what kind of film, the number one rule of comedy is to never take yourself too seriously and then the next rule is you can't have any self-consciousness, otherwise it kills the laugh, and that will never change.
I've been doing stand-up just about every night since I started in 1989. It's my home base. But I'm into doing comedy in all mediums, platforms and situations.
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
The main reason I got into comedy was in the hope that I could make a few people laugh and feel better about life, and the fact that I do that is quite overwhelming, really.
One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.
I'm sure I've all but lost friends by maintaining that, despite their love for it, I always saw Stanley Kramer's 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World' as more of an exercise in anti-comedy than humor.
I like very dry humor. I don't like things that are over the top. I like subtlety. I like things that are nonchalant. I like characters that are sort of monotone and based in dark comedy.
I try to give all my characters a sense of humor, so I guess I feel like I have done comedy, but maybe I'm better known for drama.
Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.
I experimented with my own one-man show a couple of years ago in Aspen when HBO used to have their comedy festival there. I called it 'A History of Me.'
Doing drama is a very welcome departure from comedy. Although I love doing both, I like to change it up a bit once in a while with roles in serious drama.
Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.
The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).
It's funny: All my friends back home are always wondering why every television show I'm on is a drama, but all the comedy pilots I did died a slow and painful death.
Romantic comedies seem to take over where the fairytales of childhood left off, feeding our dreams of a soulmate; though, sadly, the Hollywood endings prove quite elusive in the real world.
Georgia was a great place to live, but I wanted to get out because I knew the opportunities for what I was doing - stand-up comedy and eventually acting - were in Los Angeles.
By the time I finished comedy, I was really burnt out of it. I had had enough. I don't really have a strong desire to prove myself in that area, or to go back to it in any great way.
I'd never really done comedy before 'Community,' so getting to work day in and day out with all these great people, directors, writers, and actors, I feel like I've learned a lot.
There's a film I did called 'Front of the Class', about a teacher who had Tourette's. That was a beautiful blend of drama and comedy. There's some great moments of levity in the script.
There's a reason Tony Stark makes fun of 'Thor,' and mentions 'Shakespeare' in the park in 'The Avengers.' It's great to play high drama and comedy alongside a modern story.
When I first started acting, I started in opera and had a great desire to play grand, tragic characters. I got sidetracked in musical theater and ended up doing a lot of comedy.
