Steve Coogan Quotes About Comedy
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I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.
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There is a strong ethical dimension to the best comedy. Not only does it avoid reinforcing prejudices, it actively challenges them.
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I enjoy comedy but it can become wearisome.
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Big comedy is good, I like things that are big, but good comedy has to be truthful I think and has to reflect some sort of reality.
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The British often shy away from any cinematic interpretation of real sex. They sometimes have what I call "subtle sex," which is really introspective and has soft music in the background. Either that or it's played for comedy. The British are kind of hung up about sex. They find it kind of titillating and they make jokes about it because they're nervous.
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If you are a great dramatic actor then you often don't know if people are enjoying your stuff at all because they are sitting there in silence. But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
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The great thing is that the funny side of getting old is fuel for my comedy.
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I've always been drawn to discomfort and that limbo of unease you get between comedy and tragedy.
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I like comedy, but I like comedy as a device in drama. It's more interesting for me to use comedy to seduce people into thinking about something serious. If you want to hit a beat in a drama, you can distract people with a little comedy, and you can punch them in the gut with some emotion.
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Knowing about comedy has helped me with the drama. To see people laugh, it's like there are moments of catharsis in the middle of sadness.
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I am not a politician going around bragging about family values or putting myself on some ridiculous virtuous pedestal. I write comedy. And I am an actor. I am not going to solve the nation's problems. I don't actually spend my life in the way the tabloids like to think I do. I actually spend 95 percent of it writing comedy. Sober. Well, nearly sober anyway.
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Comedy can be silly and gross and offensive, as long as there's sort of a point. You can make a joke that, on the face of it, is racist. Ostensibly someone can appear to be racist, but if you know you're making a point about race, and not just being pig-headed, then you can do that. I think some people who don't understand comedy will have a knee-jerk reaction to some stuff, and will always be offended by it because they don't understand it. Some people react to it in a vociferous way, which is unsophisticated, but there's always going to be those people out there.
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But with comedy it's a simple premise. If it's funny, people laugh. If it's not, they don't.
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To me, most theatre looks ridiculous. I find it very difficult to do. Personally, if I ever try to do serious stuff, I always end up looking like an asshole, so I might as well try and do comedy, because I'm good at that.
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I'm a huge fan of Jack Lemmon, he was someone who managed to tread that line between comedy and tragedy and sometimes give very big performances, but they were never over-demonstrative and they were never not based on a kind of real truthful human being.
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Comedy is unique in the sense that laughter is a palpable noise that everyone makes.
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I don't think there's anything outside what comedy can address.
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When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.
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I don't like comedy that I think is bad comedy, where people are trying to be sick for the sake of it, where there's no intellectual point behind it. I like stuff that's got an underlying point of view.
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