"Like I said, all comedy is based on exaggeration, big or small, whatever you can get away with"
About this Quote
Drew Carey’s line lands like backstage advice disguised as a shrug: comedy isn’t magic, it’s calibration. “Like I said” frames it as shop talk, the kind of rule you pass along after bombing enough sets to know the difference between a premise that’s true and a premise that plays. The key phrase is “whatever you can get away with,” which drags the audience into the mechanics. Laughs aren’t just about being right; they’re about testing boundaries in real time and reading the room fast enough to not lose it.
The intent is practical, not romantic. Carey is describing exaggeration as the engine that turns observation into performance. You don’t report reality; you inflate it, distort it, sharpen it until the pattern becomes unmistakable. That “big or small” matters: exaggeration isn’t only the loud caricature or the over-the-top story. It’s also micro-exaggeration - a pause held a beat too long, a minor annoyance treated like a catastrophe, a facial expression that editorializes without words. That’s craft.
The subtext is that comedy is negotiation with power and taste. “Get away with” acknowledges gatekeepers: network standards, club owners, internet pile-ons, the shifting lines of what different audiences will tolerate. Coming from Carey - a comic who moved from stand-up to network sitcom to hosting mainstream game shows - it also reflects a career built on mass appeal. He’s not arguing for transgression as a virtue; he’s arguing for knowing the limit, because the limit is where the laugh lives.
The intent is practical, not romantic. Carey is describing exaggeration as the engine that turns observation into performance. You don’t report reality; you inflate it, distort it, sharpen it until the pattern becomes unmistakable. That “big or small” matters: exaggeration isn’t only the loud caricature or the over-the-top story. It’s also micro-exaggeration - a pause held a beat too long, a minor annoyance treated like a catastrophe, a facial expression that editorializes without words. That’s craft.
The subtext is that comedy is negotiation with power and taste. “Get away with” acknowledges gatekeepers: network standards, club owners, internet pile-ons, the shifting lines of what different audiences will tolerate. Coming from Carey - a comic who moved from stand-up to network sitcom to hosting mainstream game shows - it also reflects a career built on mass appeal. He’s not arguing for transgression as a virtue; he’s arguing for knowing the limit, because the limit is where the laugh lives.
Quote Details
| Topic | Funny |
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