"Funny is when you're serious"
About this Quote
Comedy doesn’t come from winking at the audience; it comes from refusing to. “Funny is when you’re serious” is Harvey Korman distilling a performer’s trade secret into six blunt words: the joke lands hardest when the character believes their own reality with total commitment. The laugh isn’t created by a comedian trying to be “funny,” but by a human being trying to be right, dignified, competent, or in control while the world sabotages them.
Korman’s career made a laboratory out of that principle. On sketch shows like The Carol Burnett Show, the tension often wasn’t in the punchline but in the actor’s attempt to maintain seriousness as chaos (and sometimes a co-star’s corpsing) crept in. His best characters weren’t clowns; they were earnestly self-important people whose certainty became their vulnerability. The audience laughs because they recognize the impulse: when stakes feel real, we cling harder to decorum, and that very grip makes us brittle.
The line also pushes back against a cultural misunderstanding of comedy as personality rather than craft. “Funny” isn’t a mood you switch on; it’s the byproduct of structure, stakes, and status. Seriousness supplies all three. It raises the cost of failure, gives behavior a logic, and makes the inevitable collapse feel both surprising and deserved.
Underneath, Korman is defending sincerity in an industry that rewards “likability.” Real comedy, he implies, respects the scene enough not to mug for approval. The performer’s job is to mean it. The audience will handle the rest.
Korman’s career made a laboratory out of that principle. On sketch shows like The Carol Burnett Show, the tension often wasn’t in the punchline but in the actor’s attempt to maintain seriousness as chaos (and sometimes a co-star’s corpsing) crept in. His best characters weren’t clowns; they were earnestly self-important people whose certainty became their vulnerability. The audience laughs because they recognize the impulse: when stakes feel real, we cling harder to decorum, and that very grip makes us brittle.
The line also pushes back against a cultural misunderstanding of comedy as personality rather than craft. “Funny” isn’t a mood you switch on; it’s the byproduct of structure, stakes, and status. Seriousness supplies all three. It raises the cost of failure, gives behavior a logic, and makes the inevitable collapse feel both surprising and deserved.
Underneath, Korman is defending sincerity in an industry that rewards “likability.” Real comedy, he implies, respects the scene enough not to mug for approval. The performer’s job is to mean it. The audience will handle the rest.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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