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It's definitely particular to each situation, but whether it is a long history or someone that you're intimidated by or someone that you didn't think you ever had a shot at, at the end of the day, I think we're all living through high school, every day.
It's definitely particular to each situation, but whether it is a long history, or someone that you're intimidated by, or someone that you didn't think you ever had a shot at, at the end of the day, I think we're all living through high school, every day.
The idea of family is really one of the only things we can all say we have and we can't run away from. Whether you like your family or not. Whether it's complicated or not, there's something - call it spiritual, call it existential, whatever - that's in you.
If you did go to high school and then college, there's definitely a solidarity with someone that is from your hometown and knows your mom, and all that stuff. There's this weird politeness that we have, as a society. You don't want to make it hard for anybody.
Acting is always more fun for me.I love being a part of a story, I love collaborating, I love working with different directors. If I just directed more and more, it would lessen the opportunity to work with all these big directors that I've had the opportunity to work with.
I was born in Newton, MA. Graduated from Brown University in 2001 with honors in English as a playwright. I attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Center in Waterford, CT just after Brown. I moved to NYC in 2002 and was a professional... waiter, for 3 years.
My favorite thing is watching people watch The Hollars movie and then come up to me and say whether they went through an experience like that or they went through an experience nothing like that, but it still was their mom or "that was my brother" or whatever it was - that's great.
The perfect gadget would somehow allow me to fly. Isn't that what everybody wants? It would also cook a damn good microwave pizza. So while in flight you had something to eat - an in-flight meal. Where would I go? Well, nowadays, it would probably just take me to work a lot quicker.
It's a great wake-up call for our entire industry: What movies are we making? What storytellers are we allowing to tell the stories? What people are we allowing to be cast in those stories? I think we need newer stories, and more people given the opportunity to do anything they want.
The first acting thing I ever did was my senior year I decided not to play a sport in the Spring and, in that Spring B.J. Novak who went to school with me, asked if I'd be in this show that was a parody of all the teachers in the school, 'sure!' That was the first acting thing I did.
I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to do it for the corduroy jackets with patches on the side. When I got to college, as I was walking across campus one day, I ripped off a little flyer for this sketch-comedy group. It ended up being one of the greatest things I've ever done.
I'm a huge classics fan. I love Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. I'm that guy who rereads a book before I read newer stuff, which is probably not all that progressive, and it's not really going to make me a better reader. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, you should read To Kill a Mockingbird.
I'm a huge classics fan. I love Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger. I'm that guy who rereads a book before I read newer stuff, which is probably not all that progressive, and it's not really going to make me a better reader. I'm like, 'Oh, my God, you should read To Kill a Mockingbird.'
It's funny: I've always had the analogy of a snow globe, that Hollywood is a snow globe. No, it's true. If you shake it up, you can look at it and really enjoy it. But don't ever go in. Don't ever buy into it and be like, 'I deserve all of this!' because it can go away at any time, so just have a lot of fun.
In a lot of relationships, when you're an adult, you realize that you've actually just been repeating a pattern. When someone breaks that pattern and it makes you realize what's right or wrong about the person. When you actually have to confront it, that's probably why a lot of adult relationships don't survive.
Working with Robin Williams, what can you say? He's the best of the best. What I really liked watching was, not only is he incredible funny, probably the funniest person on Earth which is a tough award to give out, but to see what it really takes to be a huge star is way beyond a good partner being extremely funny.
I was extremely lucky to get this project [Brief Interviews with Hideous Men]. It was one of those things that I worked on in college. A friend of mine asked me to do a stage reading of that book and I was just completely blown away because, at that point, I was like, 'Acting's having fun with your friends and making people laugh.'
I hadn't heard the Gary Cooper thing so I'm not grounded now. I feel pretty good. That's incredibly nice. When I met Robin [Williams] at the read-through, I remember when he came in, I was so nervous meeting him for the first time is incredible because I did actually write him a letter when I was a kid and told him he was my favorite actor.
As far as Ken Kwapis saying all those things, I think he just really wanted me in the movie so he probably told Warner Brothers, 'Don't worry, Jimmy Stewart? Gary Cooper? Who else do you like?' If they'd said they were huge Chris Farley fans, he's like, 'He can do that, too. He's a huge physical comedian.' But no, that's really nice to hear.
Let's be honest, you and I have probably seen a whole lot of family films - you have to do something special. Jim Strouse has the ability to write this hairpin turn between emotion and comedy that is very real. In real life, you don't have time to prepare for the bad stuff and you don't have time to prepare for the good stuff, it just sort of happens.
I love to have the people watching [The Office ] just because it's fun to have people watching, but our fans are so dedicated, so smart and so cool for the most part. We don't have these fans that overwhelm you if they see you on the street. They're like, 'Love the show', or 'What an idiot. You should have said something to her last week.' I'm like, 'I know.'
The only reason I acted in school was because of the community. I was in the chorus of every play and was never the lead other than one time, but to me it was about the community. I was an English major and my whole goal was to be an English teacher and was lucky enough to get into the playwriting group. The whole experience I had at Brown was eye opening and the most mind-bending experience.
I think there's a part of us that would like to use the fact that we're married, but you don't want the idea that we're married to overshadow the project itself.We're just looking for something that's so specific and good that it becomes a part of the story of why we did it rather than when we go to do press it's, 'Oh, my God, you're married and that's the only thing we want to talk about.' If we can merge both, that could be great.
To be an actor and a director, I actually felt it helped me tremendously to be in the scenes of The Hollars, because as you can see, they're very intimate, very intense scenes. You don't want to break the actor's character and you don't want to break their momentum, so as the actor, I tried not to call cut as much as I could, and almost make it feel like a play, just set this environment where these amazing actors could do what they wanted to do.
I don't think I've ever signed onto anything as quickly as I did The Hollars, because I come from a really loving, well-connected family, where we see each other all the time. And when I was done with this script, I was like, "Oh my god, that's my family!" This is obviously a very dysfunctional family, but there was something about it that was sort of universal. And I think that in this day and age in today's world - there's a lot of drama out there. It's nice to tell stories about things as simple and powerful as family.