Benny Goodman plays the clarinet. I play music.
Good comedy doesn't have to be a comedy idea.
It's very hard to write humor.
I actually do like playing off-beat people. I think it's more fun.
I did a few movies, but the word 'star'... I cannot compare to a star like Clint Eastwood. I used to call Clint 'Larry Dickman' when he would come to my show; then, he started using the name when he would go under cover in a 'Dirty Harry' movie. That's why he's a movie star... he's so creative.
Anyone who has the kind of inventive and inspired comic sensibility to be able to do that kind of work must be pretty talented.
To me, the highest expression of life is art with jokes. It's very rarified, very difficult to accomplish if you want to be more than just funny and more than just jokes about human gaseousness.
To me, the trick is not how can I make people laugh. It is, how can I make people laugh in a different way.
I'd like to explore the more abstract side of people's minds, as opposed to the usual sitcom stuff. I don't want to do the typical sitcom-type humor. I'd want to do stuff like go bowling with pineapples.
Do what? Come up with a clever pun referencing Jerome's demonic status? The truth is, I usually keep a stash of them on hand and—
Everybody is different. Some comedy is more musical like Steven Wright. His is a pillar of comedy to me. He invented a whole form and all his jokes are poems. So it's different. I wanted to do it like George Carlin. Now I do it like me.
The first piece of 'long' fiction I wrote was a novella parody of Stephen King's 'Christine.' I was in high school, and my version was about a kid with a possessed locker instead of a possessed car. It was also my first attempt at humour, which fell completely flat because no one who read it realized it was a parody!
A gorilla with a cellphone riding a bicycle is bound to generate some clever captions.
Some of those more out-there jokes were written in the wee hours of the morning. Somehow, they remained funny the next day.
To me, the best comedians are the ones that take everyday, normal, boring stuff that no one thinks is funny, and they make it funny. That's the same style I go for.
Writing humor is not something every single person can do.
When I turned about 12 or 13, I realised that being funny wasn't about remembering jokes. It was about creating them.
It was this weird confrontation of these two delicious flavors that got me consciously or subconsciously combining Lincoln and vampires as an observational in-joke with myself.
I'll think of the idea and then I'll write something down, then within that there will be a joke or two which is the original thing which I thought was funny.
I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.
A lot of times, comedy writers will go for the gay joke, and I've been vocal about saying, 'Go for the smart joke.'
Everyone has been in a social situation where you say something and it goes unnoticed, then someone else says the same thing and everyone laughs a lot. You learn how to be more creative and whacky and amusing.
I'm really interested in the link between creativity and humor because humor is a type of creativity, and I do think that humorous people and humorous health helps creativity.
