"It's good to be funny when you are a comedian"
About this Quote
"It’s good to be funny when you are a comedian" lands like a shrug, and that’s the point. George Lindsey, best known as Goober Pyle on The Andy Griffith Show, made a career out of a character whose charm depended on timing, innocence, and a kind of underplayed precision. The line reads as almost comically obvious, but it’s really a wink at how non-obvious the job actually is: being "funny" isn’t a personality trait, it’s a requirement you have to deliver on demand, in public, night after night.
The intent is deceptively plainspoken. Lindsey frames comedy as work, not mystique. No talk of genius, no tortured-artiste myth. Just a blue-collar metric: if you’re hired to do the funny, you’d better do the funny. That matter-of-fact phrasing also undercuts the way comedians are often asked to be endlessly entertaining offstage, as if humor is a constant setting. He’s drawing a boundary between the role and the person while still honoring the craft.
There’s subtext, too, about typecasting and expectations. Actors in comic lanes are rarely rewarded for nuance; they’re rewarded for hit rate. Lindsey’s career sits inside an era of American TV that prized broad accessibility and dependable laughs. The sentence carries that old-school professionalism: the audience doesn’t owe you patience, and the room doesn’t care about your process. Funny is the contract.
The intent is deceptively plainspoken. Lindsey frames comedy as work, not mystique. No talk of genius, no tortured-artiste myth. Just a blue-collar metric: if you’re hired to do the funny, you’d better do the funny. That matter-of-fact phrasing also undercuts the way comedians are often asked to be endlessly entertaining offstage, as if humor is a constant setting. He’s drawing a boundary between the role and the person while still honoring the craft.
There’s subtext, too, about typecasting and expectations. Actors in comic lanes are rarely rewarded for nuance; they’re rewarded for hit rate. Lindsey’s career sits inside an era of American TV that prized broad accessibility and dependable laughs. The sentence carries that old-school professionalism: the audience doesn’t owe you patience, and the room doesn’t care about your process. Funny is the contract.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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