"We went through all the scenes and they became kind of funny and they expanded a little bit and because it seemed to be working so well in the movie, they added a couple of things later on in the movie and that's how it turned out"
About this Quote
Comedy, in Eugene Levy's telling, isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s a workshop with the lights on. The quote is almost stubbornly unglamorous: scenes “became kind of funny,” then “expanded a little bit,” then the filmmakers “added a couple of things later.” That shruggy chain of causality is the point. Levy is describing humor as something discovered in motion - a gradual accretion of small choices, timing tweaks, and collaborative trust, not a pristine joke delivered from on high.
The intent is modesty with a professional edge. He’s signaling process over personality, which is a quietly radical posture in an industry that sells genius myths. “Kind of funny” reads like understatement, but it also implies calibration: comedy isn’t binary; it’s a dial. When he says “because it seemed to be working so well,” he’s talking about audience testing in miniature - the cast and crew as the first crowd, reading the room, following the laugh.
The subtext is about how screen comedy gets built: rehearsals reveal character, character unlocks behavior, behavior creates laughs, and laughs earn more screen time. The repetition of “and” mimics that iterative momentum, as if the sentence itself is improvising forward. Contextually, it fits Levy’s brand of humor - observational, slightly anxious, ensemble-driven - and it doubles as a soft defense of mainstream comedy craft. The line isn’t trying to sound profound; it’s trying to sound true to how funny actually happens.
The intent is modesty with a professional edge. He’s signaling process over personality, which is a quietly radical posture in an industry that sells genius myths. “Kind of funny” reads like understatement, but it also implies calibration: comedy isn’t binary; it’s a dial. When he says “because it seemed to be working so well,” he’s talking about audience testing in miniature - the cast and crew as the first crowd, reading the room, following the laugh.
The subtext is about how screen comedy gets built: rehearsals reveal character, character unlocks behavior, behavior creates laughs, and laughs earn more screen time. The repetition of “and” mimics that iterative momentum, as if the sentence itself is improvising forward. Contextually, it fits Levy’s brand of humor - observational, slightly anxious, ensemble-driven - and it doubles as a soft defense of mainstream comedy craft. The line isn’t trying to sound profound; it’s trying to sound true to how funny actually happens.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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