Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I wasn't a sweet kid. I was an instigator and provoked everyone with my goofy hyena cackle, loving every minute of the drama I could create.
'Breaking In' is a very different office comedy and a caper comedy. Aside from 'Chuck,' there is no half-hour comedy that does stuff like that.
I was so obsessed with 'The Princess Bride.' I loved it so much that I even have a re-enactment I did of a radio play of the iocane powder scene.
For me, I went to NYU, and at that point, it was 1995, and everyone wanted to be Tarantino. I was writing these stupid comedies, and I felt lost.
I always say that even though my dad was alive during Woodstock, he was just not invited. He just seemed like he was from a different generation.
Do I think technology is bad? No. I think it's wonderful that the world is so connected now. But I think, as a result, childhood ends a little earlier.
I ended up going to NYU for film school - close to Pennsylvania - but we talked about what if I went to UCLA or USC, and my mom's whole world was caving in.
I was in college starting in '95, and 'Rent' was the only show I could see - because if you waited in line and camped out, you could try to get the lottery tickets.
I have many of the Rock Lords; Magmar, I'm obsessed with. That's a sign of how versatile the Rock Lords were, that they could come out with toys that turned into rocks.
My mom was always trying to figure out ways to make Hanukkah exciting and compete with our neighbors the Kremps, who always had these amazing blow-out Christmas parties.
I think the '80s works for a TV show because it's the last time the world was simple. It was before the Internet really changed everything and made the world really small.
I followed Evan's career through the '90s and went to many Lemonheads concerts in N.Y.C. Since he was my best friend's family, he always felt like my family in a weird way.
I remember running down the hallway screaming 'We're Not Gonna Take It.' It was really one of those childhood anthems that really stirred you up and made you want to rebel.
My brother Barry was into all sports, and so was my late father. For me, hockey was the one sport I loved and played. I didn't really pay much attention to the other sports.
Because my home life was nuts, I didn't look to my parents for help. I looked to my teachers. They made me who I am. They took on a parental role. They're like celebrities or heroes to me.
One of my favorite things was I got to work with Avi Arad on a movie for Sony, and we don't realize this, but he's the reason toys were sold off of cartoons, more or less. He created the Gobots!
My favorite thing to do as a kid was pretend I was in the opening credits of a sitcom. As the theme song would play, I'd look up at the imaginary camera and smile as my name would flash on the screen.
If I don't call my mom back, she'll go on Twitter and say, 'Adam hasn't called me. I'm worried about him,' and strangers will say, 'You're horrible. You go call your mom right now!' It's very complicated.
I've never made a show that goes right on the air and is perfect. People don't remember, but the original 'Goldbergs' pilot was poorly received, and I had to retool that for ABC, where it eventually became a hit.
Convincing Robert Englund to come out of retirement to play Freddy Krueger one last time is a true bucket-list moment for me as a writer. I've been a longtime obsessive fan, collecting Freddy artwork and action figures.
I am a Gobot junkie, and I pitched the Gobots movie as an animated movie a few years ago, and we're trying to work something out now that the rights are cleared. But that's my dream project, besides 'The Goldbergs' - doing a Gobots movie.
For me, every show that's about teachers - and there's been a number of them - they're like misfits who hate the kids and don't want to be there and hate their jobs. For me, having crazy parents, my teachers were the sane people who raised me, and they liked being there.
I was definitely more of a movie/cartoon guy than comics, but I really do like graphic novels - I don't have the time to sit down and read Stephen King like I used to, so I find picking up 'Saga' every now and then and just diving back into it is a great way to stay reading.
'The Wonder Years' family was the kind where everything seemed to be bubbling and simmering with the occasional explosion. There were a lot of things that went unsaid in that family. In my family, everything is said - on the surface, you scream and yell about it, and three minutes later, you're all friends.
The only interaction I had with my brothers is like negative attention where I'd basically egg them on into beating me up - which was delightful! Otherwise, it was me with a video camera jumping on a bed pretending to be the Ultimate Warrior or setting up my robots making a Transformers movie because I was a lonely kid.
There was kind of a no-nonsense parenting style that my parents had that was true of the time. Everything now... there are books, and there are websites, and there are blogs, and you're reading, and there's research. We're such an interconnected world now, and half the stuff they did was pretty terrible, but we somehow turned out fine.
In high school, I was so obsessed with the movie that I started an actual 'Highlander' club with my two best friends, Mike Levy and David Sirota. What began as a few geeks hitting each other with swords we made in woodshop soon became a school-wide game with 20 people playing. It became so disruptive that the administration had to shut it down.