Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I enjoy doing physical comedy.
Improv is... gods creating worlds.
Wikipedia gets a lot of things wrong.
I would be onstage all the time if I could.
I put my foot in my mouth more than I speak properly.
New York is almost as important as Chicago, improv-wise.
In an infinite multiverse, there is no such thing as fiction.
I never planned to be a comedian. I don't consider myself one now.
People just associate me with comedy - not that I mind. I don't mind that at all.
I'm a basket case. Yeah, you know, I put my foot in my mouth more than I speak properly.
'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.
I've been doing improv since high school, and I've been getting paid for it since I was 20.
I might've been witty, but I didn't have a shtick. So, I never considered myself a comedian.
I'm afraid of my mother's paranoia. The more she watches Fox News, the more afraid she gets.
Generally, I've found that a heckler in an improv audience is just enjoying the show so much that they want to be in it.
Most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode.
It's hard to tell what is even mainstream anymore because there's so many platforms now. And they're all topics of conversation.
My first car was a Buick Skyhawk from, like, '78, I think. I ran that thing into the gutter. It was shaped like an egg; it was cool.
New York has surprised me a couple of times. I was a snob about pizza, but I've found one or two places that allow me to forget deep dish for a while.
The rules of improvisation apply beautifully to life. Never say no - you have to be interested to be interesting, and your job is to support your partners.
I was doing a show in L.A. called 'Celebrity Autobiography,' where celebrities read excerpts from other celebrities' books and hang themselves with their own rope.
I came up through Second City, so I'm used to playing 20 characters every night who are very different from each other. I wouldn't want my career to be any different.
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor financially, emotionally, egotistically.
'Baymax' is quite different. I think when Don Hall found the title and didn't know it, he researched and saw great potential in the relationship between a boy and a robot.
I did a bunch of commercial voiceovers in Chicago before I left. For Balducci's pizza, I did a whole series. Actually I was making a good living with voiceover before I left.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years, and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that.
I enjoy doing physical comedy. I'd love, you know, them to throw me some shtick that way. I'd love to do that, if they need physical comedy, if they'd let me display my wares that way.
I think it's all the same animal for me. There are actors who sing, and there are actors who direct, and I also improvise. That's one thing I do as part of my acting. I don't really separate the two.
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor, financially, emotionally, egotistically. I still don't think I'm in comedy.
I've heard New York actors say Chicago actors intimidate them because apparently we're the real nitty-gritty actors who're in a town where being onstage doesn't necessarily get you anything except your craft.
I got an agent when I needed one, when I had a contract negotiation for the first time. I was doing the Second City E.T.C., and I got invited to audition for the last season, it turns out, of 'In Living Color.'
I think the longer a sitcom is on the air, by necessity, the dumber the characters have to get: otherwise, they would be learning and growing, and they won't be funny, so they have to get more and more extremely whatever they are.
I see my share of loons. I just performed with someone who had a meltdown on stage. He needed focus, and he was 'stealing it' and just being crazy and selfish and childish and having a great time doing it - to the detriment of everybody else.
Every time that you do a play or a show of any kind, really you have this family that you really build something with for a while, and then we all dissipate, but you always have that connection, that eternal kind of intimacy, you'll always have.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.
I feel like I've done Pete Hornberger, and that is a painting I have signed, and I don't need to play that character anymore. So I'll get offers for panicky, pathetic guys, and while it's a great compliment to get them, I feel like I don't need to play that again.
A nightmare would be when somebody is trying to be funnier than everyone else. And you've got a group scene or two-person scene, and one person decides, 'I'm the funny in this,' and bulldozes everyone else, and they make sure they're the reason everyone loves the scene.
The way I was brought up in improv was that any idea you have is not as good as your partner's idea, so if I see someone else initiating at the same time I am, I just defer to them because I assume their idea is going be better. And hopefully, they're doing the same with me.
I still feel very close to the people I wrote shows with and some of the people I toured with. I feel very close to them, like a family or like college friends who you know and who have seen you at your worst and you spend 14 hours driving a van all piled on top of each other.
What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.
Networks like Adult Swim allow artists to be artists and allow their vision to come through without a lot of tinkering. I worked on 'Moral Orel' and 'Mary Shelley's Frankenhole,' and they bothered us very little. They very, very seldom came to us and said 'Change this,' or 'You can't do that,' or 'We'd like to see this.'