Dr. Jan Adams walked off the show, Mel Brooks jumped on top of the desk and sang a song called "Dancing in the Dark" saying it was how old jews die, they jump on the desk, they can't hit the high note, and they die. Or when I asked Heather Mills to show me what an artificial leg looked like, and she took it off. That was a great moment.
Question: You come from a very affluent family – are you a reformed “rich dick” or are those characters informed by people you went to school with? Or both? Or neither?
Answer: All of my characters are informed by who I am and people that I've come into contact with, as well as everyone else involved in making the show - like in the case of Rich Dicks, John Daly and people that he knew.
It might be surprising but keeping a straight face in many of the situations we get into on the show is quite difficult for me. I began to realize that I'll sometimes do this thing where I act like I'm picking a piece of food out of my back teeth to cover the fact that I'm smiling. Then if I can't get it together within a few seconds, I might ask for some dental floss or something because I've clearly been picking at this tooth for 20 seconds or so.
Some moments that stand out off the top of my head would be the Gas Station episode where the owner told me that he drinks his grandson's urine to ward off fear. I often laugh when I feel uncomfortable too, so I remember having to turn my head a...
GRANT! U.S. Grant (Hiram Ulysses Grant was his true name). I have been messing with an idea for a screenplay about the man. I quiet, unassuming fellow who was passed over for years by everyone around him (nickname "Useless") but in the end he drove it home and saved our beautiful republic.
Really fun, and kind of surreal. I remember Garry Shandling coming up to me after we filmed a take. He had a note for me, but made a point of saying "only do this if you think it's funny." I was impressed by that.
A lot of times it's like a crazy person running up to a whiteboard in the writers room and drawing a turd monster with breasts for testicles. And that crazy person's name is Justin Roiland, or, as I call him, Li'l Goldmine!
Intuition mostly. I trust the writers I work with and my own instincts. If we all feel like something is hilarious or fresh, I have to assume it is. And those are the things that tend to be well received.
Her name was Tracy and I accidentally named Traci Reardon the same name - I came into the studio planning to name Traci Reardon Brittney Reardon and I just told Scott my name was Traci on accident! I did the original "tracy" again but changed her name to Amanda Calzone. You can hear her on the first Betsy Sodaro ep of WSGLL.
The situation certainly is. Half my family growing up were carers of some sort, mostly retirement homes (stroke, Alzheimers), and Derek is like my fictional superhero of an everyday gentle outsider. I suppose they're all little fables about kindness. And possibly, a love letter to my lovely, poor and humble family growing up.
I come up with a few bits on TEAS a lot of the time, those are my genuine reactions to what's happening. He does some weird stuff on that show and it throws me off sometimes.
Kevin sitting on Michael's lap in one of the later Christmas episodes. Michael was playing Santa, and Kevin didn't realize he was absolutely crushing Michael while he took his sweet time figuring out what present he wanted to ask Santa for.
It was very fun. Amy is a joy to watch work. I learned a lot from seeing her on set. She is involved with every part of the shoot and she is extremely upbeat and charismatic at 5'oclock in the morning even if she didn't want to be because she knew it was important for everyone involved in the shoot.
Someone asked "will there be a Garfield 3?"
I don't think so. I had a hilarious experience with Garfield. I only read a few pages of it, and I kind of wanted to do a cartoon movie, because I had looked at the screenplay and it said "Joel Cohen" on it.
And I wasn't thinking clearly, but it was spelled Cohen, not Coen.
I love the Coen brothers movies. I think that Joel Coen is a wonderful comedic mind.
So I didn't really bother to finish the script, I thought "he's great, I'll do it." So then it was months before i got around to actually doing it, and I remember i had to go to a screening room in somewhere, and watch the movie and start working. And because they had had trouble contacting ...
Q: Would you agree that this is the best time to be a nerd as the nerds are rising up while the jocks and bullies are pumping our gas?
A: i think nerds are on their way to greatness. im SUCH a nerd myself. #hollywoodhandbookref
We shot video for many many years. When I would edit the videos and see myself cracking up it ruined the bit. So I got good at keeping a straight face. Practice.
When you do a movie, and you use a song, or a band, or an image on a t-shirt of a band, there's a quiet clause stating that you can't say anything negative about them. And it's sort of just understood if they're selling you a song, or letting you use a t-shirt, you're going to be respectful. So that line was not in the script, but I asked Kid Rock to yell it to me when I ran off, so I could make an extra whimper, like that was a real dagger. And so when we did it, we couldn't put it in the movie yet until I talked to Def Leppard's manager to make sure that was okay. So I called someone, cuz we originally couldn't put it in, and said "hey, is there any way we can do this" and i had to explain...
He is SO good, and such a method actor, that Oliver Sachs wanted to hook him up to an EEG to see if he actually duplicated the brainwaves of the actual patients. No joke.
Q: I’ve recently been watching Jerry Seinfeld’s new show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. In Tina Fey’s segment she mentions how she, Louis C.K., and a few other comedians helped you re-write a movie over a weekend. As a thank you, you gave them all a Rolex with the inscription “Thanks for your help Mother Fucker.” At the end of the story she says “I like that someone had to a Rolex store and ask for 5 watches inscribed with that phrase”. Who did the other 3 Rolex’s go to and what movie was it they helped you re-write? I'm familiar with the work you have done with Louis, but I can't find Tina Fey's name attached to anything you have done outside of SNL.
A: I'm not sure. It was either "Head...
It was incredible. I have a movie coming out called The King of Staten Island. Steve plays my superior in a fire house. He was such a nice guy. We were trying to be respectful but eventually asked him a ton of questions about Reservoir Dogs. He's just one of those guys that can raise half an eyebrow and steal the whole scene. I've seen everything he's ever done. He's had one of the greatest careers in Hollywood. Amount of work and level of quality.
One of the best times I've ever had making a movie. Kind of hard not to have fun with that crew. Anything Craig Robinson says makes me laugh. I think Channing Tatum is most like his character.
Larry King