Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I get a chance to write a comic book or do a voice in an Adult Swim show, I do it. It's much more fulfilling to me and I get to work with people who I'm a fan of.
For our anniversary, my wife and I went to see Godzilla, and then we ate at Barnyard Venice, and it was like, 'We are crazy! The Kardashians have to keep up with us!'
I was into writing and directing. I was a bit of a reluctant actor. I would always ask friends to shoot or direct their movies, but then they'd want me to be in them.
No one knows anything. You're going to make mistakes and you're going to do things that people think are stupid. You can't sit there and go, "I never want to make a mistake."
If you watch 'SNL,' any time there's this thing with everyone singing, I'm, like, the one person who just has a straight line of dialogue because I can't sing to save my life.
I was a production assistant in the post department on 'The Surreal Life.' And it's been reported before that I was an assistant editor on 'The Surreal Life.' That is not true.
My wife and I got to go onstage at a Flaming Lips concert at Webster Hall once. We dressed up like Scientology aliens and danced around. We had a shootout onstage with Santa Claus.
I'm the only one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that has Final Draft on my computer. Then you show up and go to any coffee shop in L.A., and there are a hundred people your age with Final Draft.
Voices are a good way to get in and out of things. James Carville constantly calls my wife to say I'll be home late. Mandy Patinkin and Al Pacino call to get me restaurant reservations.
People ask me, 'Did you always want to be on SNL?' No, actually, it never crossed my mind. It didn't even seem possible. It would've been like saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go to the moon?'
I saw 'A Clockwork Orange' when I was 11. When you watch 'Clockwork Orange' at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.
If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.
I don't think I could do what Woody Allen or Clint Eastwood or Ben Stiller do, where they direct a movie and they star in it. I would just be like, 'Oh, I don't even want to look at my face.'
My first real job, I sold Christmas trees when I was twelve for extra money. I did that until I was fifteen. Then I bagged groceries, and I worked at the first Borders ever in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
My kids, they're always embarrassed when my voice shows up in something. I took them to Inside Out, and my voice comes in, and they were like, "Ugh, Dad, what are you doing? Get out of there."
To be honest, I watch way more dramatic films when I'm chilling at home. I think when you work in comedy, you just want something different in your private life. Makes you feel balanced, I guess.
I took Second City out of desperation, and that's what ended up working out. It shows that you should be doing a lot of different stuff, taking whatever opportunities are there, to see what works.
I was always self-conscious about the fact that I didn't have as much comedy experience as other people at 'SNL,' and I kept thinking they were going to realize they'd made a mistake by hiring me.
Even though it doesn't look like it, I run. On a treadmill. And I bounce around to all the songs on my iPod - the Pixies, Wagner, Richard and Linda Thompson, even books on tape. Just not self-help ones.
I moved out to L.A. to be a filmmaker or director. I didn't even think about doing comedy or even acting. I wanted to be like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, but I wasn't going to a lot of comedy.
I can't do Twitter or Facebook, mostly because I feel like I'm the type of person who has to regiment the amount of time I spend doing certain things or I'll just wade in it, and then I'll never come out.
When it comes to comedy, it might be interesting to know why an airplane works, but really? Maybe it's better not to know why certain things work. Just fly the thing, and if nothing falls apart, you'll be fine.
I remember I could do - I did Bart Simpson once on the bus. I did, like, a really good Bart Simpson voice on the bus, obviously before I hit puberty. And everybody went, 'Whoa, that sounds just like Bart Simpson.'
I always felt better co-writing something - always co-writing. Because if I was the lead of it and it failed, then it failed on my own accord. I would say, "Well, I liked it or I screwed up. I take the hit on this one."
It doesn't occur to me that I don't drive a cool car until I hang out with Jon Hamm, who picks me up in what looks like a Transformer, and I think, 'Oh, that's what movie stars are driving. I guess I'm not a movie star.'
I work a lot, and it's kind of like, you meet people, and you just click. It's not like I'm looking at something and thinking: 'South Park' - how do I get on that?' I just became friends with those guys first. They're nice guys.
I move out here, and next thing I know I'm 25, and the only thing I've heard is, 'Can you get a coffee, can you hurry up with the thing, blah blah blah.' It was nice doing something and hearing someone go, 'Hey, you're good at this.'
I'm never going to say, 'Well, I'm never going to do comedy again.' I love comedies, and it's what people know me for, so I love doing it... I don't really think about it in terms of 'Well, I should do this because it's comedy or drama.'
It is funny that people always assume you have a bigger part in a movie than you actually do. I remember a lot of people thought 'Adventureland' starred me and Kristen Wiig. But we were like, 'No, we're only in the movie for like ten minutes!'
When I was on 'SNL,' I was getting weirdly anxious about being on camera, which I had never really done before. And so my solution was just to not watch my stuff. And then I found out that other actors do it, too, and I felt less weird about it.
'Vanity Fair' did this grid thing a couple years ago, connecting people who've worked together, and I had the most branches on it or whatever, because I'd worked with so-and-so and so-and-so worked with so-and-so, and I was kind of in the middle.
My wife and I were on our honeymoon in Turks and Caicos, in the middle of nowhere, and I'm sitting on this deserted beach, and I see one lone person walking along the shore. He walks right up to me and says, 'I love 'Laser Cats,' and then just walks away.
I got invited to the Playboy Mansion with the Lonely Island guys after their first season on 'SNL,' and I sat in the corner drinking coffee and talking to Akiva Schaffer about what aspect ratio he was going to shoot 'Hot Rod' in. Like, that's what we talk about.
I think that's the thing I learned at 'Saturday Night Live' - any time I would try and strategize, I would always, always fall on my face. Things worked out when I tried to make it about what I was feeling at that moment and what I was into in that moment of my life.
When you saw Jon Lovitz or Dana Carvey or Phil Hartman doing something, they were acting. It was real acting. Like, they were acting like that person. They weren't like - it wasn't even like they were really trying to go for a laugh, especially in Phil Hartman's case.
To be totally honest? I don't know if I'll keep doing more impressions. People told me I had a facility for it, and I was like, 'Okay, I'm the impression guy.' So you imagine the cast at 'SNL' is an A-Team, and you've got the explosives guy, and I'm the impression guy.
In the U.S., it's like, you start with a great script, and then on set - not everybody, but definitely in the Apatow group - you go off, and you're improvising on camera. So while you're on camera, you're saying things that no one else has ever heard before during the actual take.
I tried to get people at 'South Park' into 'Downton Abbey,' and it didn't work. I think they were like, 'Downton Abbey?' What?' And I kinda made a big plea in the writer's room, like, 'Guys, you should really watch it. It's good. It's addicting. My wife and I are obsessed with it.'
I don't believe in the term 'guilty pleasure,' because it implies I should feel ashamed for liking something. A real guilty pleasure would be, I don't know, taking gratification in some stranger's ghastly death or something - which I guess I do enjoy, because I read a ton of true crime.
I worked at a movie theater in Tempe, Arizona, when I went to community college there. And I got fired because a sorority had rented out a theater to watch 'Titanic,' and they were being really rude to me while they were waiting for the movie. So as I tore their tickets, I told them the end of the movie.
I'm crazy lucky. I was trying to be a filmmaker. I was doing Second City classes as a way to be creative. I was a PA for a long time. I was working as an assistant editor on 'Iron Chef America' when I got 'SNL.' It was one of those situations where you're concentrating in one thing and the peripheral thing popped.
I started 'SNL,' and I became the one who did impressions. I did that, but then I wanted to get an original character on, and that took a long time to get one on that stuck. And then I got Vinny Vedecci on - 'Oh great' - and then it took a couple more seasons to get Greg the Alien on. You have to have some patience.
I just did this movie with Kristin Wiig called 'The Skeleton Twins.' That's a straight drama. We play estranged twins, and I end up moving in with her and her husband, played by Luke Wilson. But it's a drama, and the Duplass Brothers produced it and this great guy, Craig Johnson, directed it. And that was great, you know?
I like doing a lot of research, and then you get there, you're in wardrobe, and then you're just reacting to what the other person is doing. The other actor is reacting to what you're doing, and it's this great back and forth. Because you've done all this research, you can use some of it or throw a lot of it out. You can get lost in it.
I remember getting in the elevator for my audition and there was a guy next to me who had a backpack full of props and wigs and things, and I went, 'Oh, my God, that guy is so prepared, I have nothing, I have no props.' And that was Andy Samberg. And Andy Samberg said he was looking at me going, 'Oh, that guy has no props. He doesn't need props.' And that was the first time we met, was in that elevator.