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.
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Larry David and I discovered that we were both obsessed with superman and admired him and also found him very funny at the same time, so that is why he came up a lot. Are you related to the hot dog Kobayashi in Coney Island?
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.
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.
i liked asking the Jesus Camp Counselor if he thought i was going to hell. He said no, but his eyes said "yes."
sometimes it just naturally goes in directions people didn't expect - i'm thinking of pam murphy and will hines on a recent episode. when we take a break, I'll usually ask, "Is there somewhere else you were thinking of going with it, and can i lead you back there?" Most improvisers don't care about where it ends up, because the journey is more important than the destination.
The Christmas episode where Michael asked Kevin to sit on his lap, and Steve had to pretend to be crushed under his weight. I think I'm laughing on camera.
plotting can be tough because you're never quite sure you're doing it right - it's usually kind of like an exploration. You try something, and figure out what it needs. For instance, one episode we were plotting last night, I felt like it was all things happening, and no emotional connection from our charaters. So we figured out what my own personal connection to the plot would be, and that actually helped us figure out the things that would happen more easily. It's also helpful if your characters can have opposite points of view about what's occuring.
To motivate, I would try to outline as much as you can before you ever start writing a line of dialogue. If you're having trouble plotting, ...
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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.
I still say "hey" to greet a lot of people like we did on the show, and I still will do thumbs up, like Kramer did. And I still say hello to people the way I said, "Hello Newman."
That was the most fun I ever had. The coolest part of that episode, that you couldn't see, was the head of the secret service explaining to me what was going to happen if someone started shooting at us. What they would do to the president and where they were going to throw me in the back of a van. That was really exciting Bourne Identity stuff.
Chris was always doing that bit to me at work. We shared an office, and you had to walk through our office to get to Chris Rock & Adam Sandler's office, so these 2 microscopic offices were back to back, and Chris' desk was behind mine, and he didn't really know how to write, or read, really (kidding!) but he would come in bored, because I would have to write my sketches to try to get on but they would always let him on, so he would get behind me and be bored, everyone would write him sketches, and he would say "Davey… turn around" and I said "if this is Fat Guy in a Little Coat I'm not turning around, it's not funny anymore." And he would say "no, i've got a whole new thing I'm doing."
And ...
I was credited as a STORY EDITOR but that's more of a title than an actual job description. I was in the writers' room pitching jokes and ideas for scripts. I got to work with some real-deal TV veteran writer geniuses who I learned a lot from. Oh! And in season 4 when Jeff Garlin sneaks through a second-story window, the group of people watching him from afar are all the writers in the writers room. THAT IS THE ONLY EASTER EGG THAT'S EVER EXISTED ON ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT.
Constantly. We all thought he was crazy. Little did we know!
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I’ve definitely seen some crazy shit. I saw this one show where a guy goes up and somehow picks himself up in a plastic garbage bag. It was so upsetting. I’ve also seen a guy in L.A. jump up and land on thumbtacks. Someone from Chicago, Ian Abramson, did sort of break the mold of a stand-up comic—he found himself performing on Conan, and he did his bit where he wears a shock collar.
The thing that I love about Scott is that he is not an agent of chaos, but he is an agent of mischief. He loves to paint other people into a corner. And it’s fun, it’s really fun. You know, there are times when it’s frustrating because you might have a thing that you wanted to do but now because you did screw up a word or something, he jumps on that — but, you know, everyone is in agreement. ... It’s entirely up to the improviser, to the guest, to say, 'You know what, yes, I am going to go along with this idea, this very challenging idea that he has pushed me into, because it’ll be fun to try to get out of it. It’ll be fun to try to make sense of this.'
And, ultimately, that’s one of the th...
One thing I learned from The Office is that the line between funny and dramatic is paper-thin (no pun intended) and often non-existent. If you ground a performance in truth, it can be both as funny and as dramatic as can be. I think no one embodied that lesson better than Steve Carell.
I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.
It was pretty crazy. I already had a whole rhythm to my week as a writer, so it took a while to change it up and focus more on performing than on writing. Here's what helped a ton: Rob Klein and Bryan Tucker took over most of the Head Writer job and they're two of the funniest writers I've ever met. Rob and Bryan and I write a lot together for the show. Also Dennis McNicholas who used to be one of the head writers with Tina Fey and Adam McKay started producing WU last year and that was awesome. And our WU writers are the best and made our jobs a lot more fun: Pete Schultz (Leslie calls him "Franklin), Josh Patten (Leslie calls him "Clarence"), Katie Rich (Leslie calls her "Rachel"), and Mega...
I’m really used to being onstage now. Next year will be 40 years. But being onstage, it’s not normal. It’s not a normal place. Because everyone is watching you, it’s all heightened. Everything that goes good goes great and everything that goes wrong goes horrible. So that has changed over the years. I’m not as nervous. But I still feel the tension of it.
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