Quotes About Black Comedy

#1. Black Comedy is a farce that is played in the dark, as you know, with the lights full on. It's the Chinese convention of reversing light and dark, and exactly where anybody is at any given moment is the play.

Peter Shaffer

#2. A great production of a black comedy is better than a mediocre production of a comedy of errors.

Tom Stoppard

#3. My oldest brother used to take me to the theater. The first play he took me to see was 'Black Comedy,' then he took me to see 'Butley.' We'd see all these British plays. And 'Hello, Dolly,' with Pearl Bailey. I was unconsciously thinking, 'Gee, I would love to be able to do that.'

Nathan Lane

#4. I love America and I hate it. I'm torn between the two. I have two conflicting visions of America. One is a kind of dream landscape and the other is a kind of black comedy.

Bono

#5. I set out to do a horror film with 'Dog Soldiers,' and what I came out with at the end of the day was something that was more of a cult movie, more of a black comedy with some horror elements in it. It kind of went over the top.

Neil Marshall

#6. My career is a black comedy of sorts. I spent a lot of time explaining myself to various different groups. But more and more, I'm finding that the desire to communicate, which all these audiences share, is a powerful thing.

G. Willow Wilson

#7. Society in the English countryside is still strangely, quaintly divided. If black comedy and a certain type of social commentary are what you want, I think English rural communities offer quite a lot of material.

Rachel Cusk

#8. All my work shares a kind of balance between black comedy and sad and despairing melancholy.

Martin McDonagh

#9. When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response.

John Cusack

#10. Yeah, even a black comedy. Where it's a little eerie. I'd love to do that. But there are about three really fabulous ones on the air now and I don't know if I can do any better than that. I'd like to sort of forge new ground.

Sharon Gless

#11. When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that flavor.

Terry Southern

#12. The day of the wedding went like these things generally do, full of anxious moments interspersed with black comedy.

Janet Street-Porter

#13. I did this Super-8 film at art school called 'Tissues,' this black comedy about a family whose father has been arrested for child molestation. I was absolutely thrilled by every inch of it, and would throw my projector in the back of my car and show it to anybody who would watch it.

Jane Campion

#14. Stanley Kubrick went with his gut feeling: he directed 'Dr. Strangelove' as a black comedy. The film is routinely described as a masterpiece.

Tim Cahill

#15. Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise and shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes; but when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, how wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears!

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

#16. Ever since the romantic comedy-drama 'She's Gotta Have It' antagonized black women and black men in 1986, Spike Lee's films have enjoyed the outrage of various groups.

Lee Siegel

#17. I thought I'd be living a much more bohemian life and be very poor. I never thought I'd do comedy or be married living in the suburbs. Every time I try to plan my life out it just doesn't come to pass, and I think that's a great experience.

Michael Ian Black

#18. When I first started doing comedy, there was no such thing as a room that had black people and white people in it. That didn't exist.

Trevor Noah

#19. I can pretty much guarantee that if I do a show in a comedy club, there will be someone who will come out of the audience and tell me the worst joke ever. It's just a guarantee.

Lewis Black

#20. When a musical act performs, the black audience goes crazy for all the stuff, the album cuts, everything. White audiences, they're nice and all, but they're not going to lose it until they get the hits. Comedy is the same thing.

Chris Rock

#21. Michael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept. I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.

Barry Sonnenfeld

#22. They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.

Lewis Black

#23. I never watched the Oscars. Come on, it's a fashion show ... What straight black man sits there and watches the Oscars? Show me one. And they don't recognize comedy, and you don't see a lot of black people nominated, so why should I watch it?

Chris Rock

#24. Each of us is full of shit in our own special way. We are all shitty little snowflakes dancing in the universe.

Lewis Black

#25. There's this misconception that comedy and music go together. They don't. Comedians can't compete with rock stars; they're just not on the same level. Rock stars will always be cooler. They will always get more girls.

Michael Ian Black

#26. In black neighborhoods, everybody appreciated comedy about real life. In the white community, fantasy was funnier. I started looking for the jokes that were equally hilarious across the board, for totally different reasons.

Will Smith

#27. I love comedy and drama equally and music too. I just sort of follow my nose to whatever seems really exciting at the time. Eventually, I might want to do a rock opera.

Jack Black

#28. Yeah, I love being famous. It's almost like being white, y'know?

Chris Rock

#29. There's no such thing as a limit on being the best. You can always go for more. That's what it means to be human. No... That's what it means to be me. - Claire Stanfield

Ryohgo Narita

#30. My comedy has no color, it's for everybody, black, white, Latino, Asian. It's not a pro-black show, not a def jam show; it's just straight, wholesome type of humor.

Bruce Bruce

#31. Black Mage: I was joking.
Red Mage: OH. See, I was confused by the total lack of comedy.

Brian Clevinger

#32. The fine line that you do when you do political comedy is, as long as you have that laugh, you're fine.

Lewis Black

#33. I don't know if you've noticed, but our two-party system is a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.

Lewis Black

#34. The most I can hope for is to die in a pose that confuses future archaeologists.

Yahtzee Croshaw

#35. What I've found in my career is that 70 to 75 percent of comics are nice and have some sense of social skills, but there are those who end up in comedy because they don't know how to socialize. I don't want to deal with that group.

Lewis Black

#36. Don't get mad, get everything. Ivana Trump

Jan Bryndza

#37. I don't watch that much comedy. I think it's professional jealousy. That and a lack of support for my community.

Michael Ian Black

#38. I think the best comedy is tragicomic. Yeah, I suppose if you were to look at everything I've done, there is a bit of a black streak through all of it. It's not deliberate: it's what makes me laugh, and there's a fine tradition of it, especially in Ireland.

Sharon Horgan

#39. Every Friday is black where I work.

The Covert Comic

#40. The little woman, wearing a pink and black zigzag-striped pantsuit over a black turtleneck, resembled a skinny zebra who'd OD'd on Pepto-Bismol.

Vonnie Davis

#41. I love 'Monty Python,' 'Black Adder,' 'Fawlty Towers.' I'm a huge fan of British comedy.

Isla Fisher

#42. They have what you call a black night where they have black people come in for just one night only to watch comedy, and you get all your local drug dealers, thugs, prostitutes, all of them come in, sit down, and listen to you tell jokes. They the hardest people to make laugh.

Mike Epps

#43. ...Mrs. Percy understood that staying beautiful all day long is the most important aspect of being married...

Tevin Hansen

#44. He quite liked dentists' waiting rooms. Waiting for dentists was good. Waiting for them was so much better than having them stick metal spikes in your mouth.

Jackson Radcliffe

#45. In America now every romantic comedy is interpreted politically. I can remember when I was promoting Black Hawk Down we were all being asked what it said about September 11th. Well, it was shot before that happened, so, nothing.

Eric Bana

#46. People always say 'You do racial comedy.' And I don't, exactly. I do cultural comedy. Because race and culture are two different things. There's black people from America and then there's black people from Africa. Racially, they're the same; culturally, they're extremely different.

Russell Peters

#47. Her occupation was the worst that anyone could think of. No guest in the park had to think of it because, unlike the wandering dwarf women, her job had no bearing on paper.

Pam Jones

#48. I'm a black male, over 40, with no kids, living in the suburbs - they wanted to put me in a museum. Why did I move to the suburbs? I started watching Desperate Housewives. If comedy didn't work out I can always try gardening.

Alonzo Bodden

#49. When I first started comedy, me and my friends were kids. I claim - although I know that it's a spurious and probably untrue claim - that we were the first generation of kids to act black.

Moshe Kasher

#50. In college I was one of six males who auditioned for five male roles in a comedy play. I was the one rejected. At that moment I made up my mind never to place myself at the mercy of some pompous, goateed, black-turtleneck-shirted "should I yay him or nay him?" pantywaist ever again.

Emo Philips

#51. I work in comedy, journalism, media, and technology, many of which don't have a lot of black faces in visible positions. I walk through Brooklyn with a surfboard. It's fun to challenge and expand people's expectations.

Baratunde Thurston

#52. Lactose intolerant milk?! KISS, MY, DICK!

Lewis Black

#53. I think back to back romantic comedies are good for black film.

Taye Diggs

#54. My school was 90 percent white, but 90 percent of the kids I played with were black. So I got the best of both worlds. I think that is where my comedy developed.

Will Smith

#55. Just relax and breathe through your ass.

Lewis Black

#56. I ejaculated about ten minutes ago and the stuff was black. So everything is not normal.
Silence greeted that happy little announcement. Man, if he had hauled off and sucker-punched V, he would have gotten less of a shocked-out reaction.

J.R. Ward

#57. I was so drunk I couldn't tell a vagina from a bullet hole

Andres Aloi

#58. Eddie [Murphy] is an icon. He's one of the reason why I started doing comedy in the beginning. He opened a lot of doors for black people.

Tracy Morgan

#59. He looks like a horse in a man costume!

Dylan Moran