Video: Seriously Funny

Transcript

Kay Ryan: This is funny already. [laughter] You know, one of the awful things about talking about the 'seriously funny' is that it just dries your mouth up terribly.

Harryette Mullen: I'm going to have some water.

Ryan: Doesn't it? As soon as you think about being funny, you feel very not funny.

Robert Pinsky: We have the hardest subject.

Audience: Could you talk louder, please?

Pinsky: (louder) We have the hardest subject, because being funny is hard and hard to talk about.

Ryan: Are we okay? Is the volume okay now?

Voice: (over the P.A.) You know, let them speak for minute, and we'll get it all straightened out, before you start yelling out things.

Ryan: You want us to keep talking? Sounds like we're not going anywhere at all.

Pinsky: We're going to do the comedy panel in mime.

[Pinsky stands and gestures theatrically. Ryan and Mullen join in.]

Pinsky: (bows) Thank you for your attention.

Ryan: Are we okay now? Can you hear us? Okay. Well, that was it. (pause) I will say something. I think that the comic is a force of lightness. It takes the same material as everything else does, including the tragic, and it evaporates it. It turns it to gas. And it rises.