Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had been asking the universe and God to send me a way for me to help me. Show business has been so wonderful to me, and it came in the form of that. It's just so funny how things come into your life, and if you take a chance on them, it might give you a brand new life.
My mom was a garage sale person, save money. Come on in to the garage sale, you might find a shirt. She'd get in that garage sale and point stuff out to you. There's a good fork for a nickel. Yeah, that's beautiful. It's a little high. If it were three cents I'd snap it up.
I have a cousin Ernie who buys stuff. He's got a big snowblower that's actually the biggest snowblower you can buy, with a remote control, so he doesn't even have to go outside. He's got the microwave and a satellite dish, it's all in one. He cooks and watches at the same time.
I think what people were trying with me was to figure out who I was. They thought I was funny, but they were like, "How can we use this guy so he can regularly do this?" Does that make any sense? I think people were trying to figure out if my fat peg would fit in their square hole.
One time, I came off stage and a guy named Roman Decare, God rest his soul, he was a comic. 'Louie, if you do that family stuff, and you're a clean comic on stage, you'll become famous.' And, for some reason, a switch clicked, and I started doing the family stuff, and it became a giant part of my life.
Playing Mrs.Baskets was an interesting experience for me. It was the most rewarding thing I've done since Life With Louie. So you never know: If somebody asks you to put a wig and a dress on, you shouldn't just say "no" right away.You should at least see if there's money, fame, and satisfaction involved.
At Thanksgiving, my mom always makes too much food, especially one item, like 700 or 800 pounds of sweet potatoes. She's got to push it during the meal. "Did you get some sweet potatoes? There's sweet potatoes. They're hot. There's more in the oven, some more in the garage. The rest are at the Johnson's."
Real people are good and grumpy. They're nice and mean. And I come from a nice and mean family. My mom was nice, and my dad was mean. So I would've served myself a lot better if Louie Lundgren would've blown up at some of the people he was talking to. I think it would've really served everybody better. We'd probably still be on the air!
I was a terrible actor. But John Hughes liked me, and he encouraged me. I made him laugh, I guess is the bottom line, and then he gave me that part in Ferris Bueller's Day Off as the flower man. It's just a nothing part in one sense, but it's such an iconic movie that people will ask me from time to time, "Are you in Ferris Bueller's Day Off?" "Yeah."
Filming in Cloak & Dagger I was trying to get my Screen Actors Guild card. Everybody tries to get their SAG card if they want to be an actor. People might say that it was their dream to be an actor, but for me, I was a comedian. I already had a job. But I felt like there could be money there, and comedians don't make very much money, or they didn't in 1984.
We tried to make it more than just a cartoon. It was a cartoon, but we tried to make it more than it was to begin with. And I have 300,000 followers from Turkey, Romania, Poland, and places over there that love Life With Louie, where it was translated into their language. They love it. They are absolutely in love with it. And it just goes to show you: no matter where you go, it's always about family.
It might be one thing to think about putting on a dress, but when you're actually putting on a dress, it's a weird thing, because you're going, "Huh. I'm putting on a dress. Do I leave my underwear on? Do I get some other underwear? Is there something special I should wear?" All that dumb stuff. I'd never had any interest in putting on my mom's clothes, except to think, "Well, they are nice clothes..."
I really made the cartoon Life with Louie with one reason in mind: I didn't have a very good relationship with my dad, and we didn't all watch TV together like we should've, like you hope for, like you've seen on TV, and I wanted to make it for moms and dads and their kids. That was always my goal. And then I wanted to put real things in it. We did a thing about the homeless and won a Humanitas award for that.
I think Splash made people realize that I was still alive, and I think I inspired a lot of people. I have people coming up to me all the time in the airport saying, "Hey, you inspired me to learn how to swim!" "You inspired me to start moving around more." "You inspired me to start doing more for myself." So that was good. But mostly I took it because nobody had given me a job. And you know what really matters in life, right?
Many people are laughing when they see me, but I'm playing Mrs.Baskets all pristine. I'm playing it not-Louie. I'm not being Louie. I'm just being the character that I think it should be. I had to make a decision as to whether I was going to change my voice or not, but we decided for me not to change my voice, and I think that was the best thing ever, because I think it would've made a big difference in the character. I don't think it would've been as good.
I'll tell you how you know when you're on something good: when everybody starts to tear up when they're leaving, when they're wrapping for the season. You know, when you say, "All right, we're done with McGillicuddy. That's a wrap for McGillicuddy!" And everybody applauds, but everybody's sad, because McGillicuddy's going to be gone! You know, it's like family going off to college or war. You have this intimate relationship with these people, and then - bam! - they're gone.
Your agent or manager tells you. They go, "You're out. They're gonna get a new guy." But then I didn't feel bad. I didn't take it personally. Not that I'm competitive at all. But you have pride in that, you know? You want your ratings to be good. But now that I'm 62, I don't really care about the ratings. I don't care about the reviews. I care about the work, and I care about the people that I'm working with, and I try to make the experience for them and myself as good as it can be.
I'm a kid from Minnesota. I like seeing movie stars! So I'm there at The ivy, I've got my shrimp, Eddie Murphy comes in with his gang. I said to the waiter, as any good Midwestern boy would, "Hey, put Eddie's check on my American Express card, but don't tell him that I did it 'til I'm gone." Next day I got a call from manager who said, "Eddie's doing a movie, he was very impressed that you bought him lunch." So remember: sometimes buying people lunch can really work out well for you.
God and the universe said to me one day, "You're only going to get what's good for you." That's kind of how I try to look at things. Isn't that true, when you look back at things? "Ooh, I'm glad I didn't get that!" You get more philosophical when you get older, with the more life experiences you have. But I don't have any bad feelings towards anybody that was ever involved in any of that stuff, because I don't think that people usually set out to hurt you. I think that hurt is all manufactured by yourself and your expectations.