Stephen Merchant (Stephen James Merchant) Quotes
I've always been a fan of physical comedy. It kind of hits you in a different way; it bypasses the intellect and hits you in the gut.
Quotes to Explore
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I cultivated this fan base that I really didn't really understand or appreciate until I put my first headlining tour up for sale. 500- to 1,000-capacity rooms weren't an underplay for me at the time. I'd never done a tour before!
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I'm a student of comedy in general, so I've always loved Billy Crystal. But I'm a different type of showman. I'm a clown and a jester.
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I wanted to be less well-known in comedy.
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I try to be an ethical, moral person and a nice person, and I like to have that reflected in my comedy. I'm not a mean comedian, and I don't think that my comedy is mean. I think that for the most part, it's more focused on the diversity that we all handle and try to provide a distraction from the disaster of modern living.
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I'm a big fan of movies, but I'm a bigger fan of filmmaking itself. I fell in love with it when I was very young, and I have always loved to learn the craft, every aspect of it.
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I was not influenced by composers as much as by natural objects and physical phenomena.
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If I could sew comedy and philosophy together, then I've done a good job. The primary goal is always going to be laughs and the secondary goal is always going to be saying something without it being a lecture.
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We often operate effectively on the physical battleground but not on the psychological battleground. We fail to communicate our resolve.
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Comedy is basically self-deprecation.
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The entire New York comedy scene has moved to L.A. - it's bled the New York comedy scene dry.
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Let's not call physical comedy falling down and pratfalls. All humor is physical, no matter how you dish it out. It's timing, like a dancer or an athlete would have.
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This hiatus coming up I'm looking at a comedy because I need the balance.
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Perhaps I've been perceived more as a romantic comedy actor, but overall, I enjoy acting in any shape or form.
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I'd really been wanting to do a television series. I was looking for a comedy.
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Dan Curry is the funniest guy in the world. I can sit in a room with him for hours, and he's just cracking me up constantly. And Kitao is the next Terry Gilliam. A lot of comedy directors are just comedic writers, but they don't have any sense of aesthetic or visual vocabulary.
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Tarantino thinks the Bing is a great room for comedy.
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My comedy comes from pain. I can't stand to see someone hurting.
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Comedy, when it works, is light on its feet and has the illusion of complete spontaneity: as if there is no film, no camera. You are standing there experiencing it all in real time. This illusion, I believe, is why so many people think comedy is easy.
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There is that stereotype of a nerd with the high pants and pocket protector and that kind of thing. That can sustain comedy for maybe a movie - hence the 'Revenge of the Nerds' franchise - but not for hopefully years on the air. It's a sight gag, not a story.
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As I get older, I think I'm more interested in comedy that doesn't take cheap shots. But I watched some of that Justin Bieber "roast" and I thought it was hilarious.
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I was funny around my family. My family, they're pretty funny, too.
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I have walked into several pubs, and guys in there have said to me, 'My God, you are the girl off the dancing horse.' They have got no idea about dressage, and they said, 'I can't work out whether you make the horse do that or the horse does it itself - we just couldn't tell - but it brought tears to our eyes.'
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The metaphor I've used is... somebody's going to push my family off a cliff pretty soon, and I won't be there to catch them. And that breaks my heart. But I have some time to sew some nets to cushion the fall. So, I can curl up in a ball and cry, or I can get to work on the nets.
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I've always been a fan of physical comedy. It kind of hits you in a different way; it bypasses the intellect and hits you in the gut.
