I just knew that if you engaged the audience with a promise that something would develop, you were in business. If not, you had to contrive automatic ridiculousness continuously. Comedy, in this sense, is all about preparation. Things have to be arranged and set up—cause and effect—and if the cause is apparent to the audience, they’ll stick with it until their sagacity is rewarded. It’s their intelligence that foresees things, while the comic character doesn’t.

—George Stevens