I’d say Jon Stewart has remained funny the entire time. Jon always makes it funny first. And he’s just, he’s talking about serious things, but in a funny way. Other comedians will talk about serious things in a serious way, and then you don’t know what’s going on.
I think I would say ‘The King’s Speech’ is surprisingly funny, in fact the audiences in London, Toronto, LA, New York commented there’s more laughter in this film than in most comedies, while it is also a moving tear-jerker with an uplifting ending.
People are often surprised that I am so upbeat. I’m always hearing, ‘You’re so light and funny, and your books are so dark and twisted.’ There’s a dichotomy. I like books that are dark and creepy. I don’t control it – it’s just what I gravitate toward.
It’s a funny show. The characters are surprisingly likable, given how ugly they are. We’ve got this huge cast of characters that we can move around. And over the last few seasons, we’ve explored some of the secondary characters’ personal lives a bit more.
Try to find someone with a sense of humor. That’s an important thing to have because when you get into an argument, one of the best ways to diffuse it is to be funny. You don’t want to hide away from a point, because some points are serious, but you’d rather have a discussion that was a discussion, rather than an argument.
The funny thing is I’m not even Latin. I was constantly getting Latin roles, and I was like, I even was nominated for an award, and I was like, ‘Let them know at the NAACP, the first white woman. Let them know I’m totally grateful, but I’m not Latin. I can’t do that. I play Latin.’
My take on ‘Lucifer’ was pretty much laid down by Tom Kapinos when he wrote the original pilot script for it. I remember reading it for the first time, and I was about four or five pages in, thinking this is so funny, and I know how I would want to do this if I was going to do it.
Over the years, I learned that in my career, unlike in life, sometimes my wheelchair is its own automatic door opener. I was able to win the OWN competition by applying one simple principle: be funny, and admit you suck before anyone else can call you out on it. In other words, make the narrative of your failure a comedy.
Someone said to me at a party once, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re a comedian? Then how come you’re not funny now?’ And I just wanted to say, ‘Well, I’m just going to take this conversation we’re having and then repeat that to strangers, and then that’s the joke. You’re the joke later.’
It just so happens that people aren’t doing comedy about abortion or cannibalism or waterboarding. And that to me doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t aspects of those subjects that are funny, it just means that people are too uptight.
It’s funny to think that when you get done with an acting job, you’re considered unemployed. There are definitely times when those checks don’t last forever. I went to college at a private school, and I racked up quite a bit of debt. I was very slow to pay them back.
Weird Al was something that kids would listen to. It’s funny, super funny, smart. It’s just kind of jokey. I remember hearing ‘Smells Like Nirvana’ before hearing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit.’ That’s how it really worked. I think it’s just such a cool thing how he introduced us to so many cool bands. Even Queen – ‘Another One Rides the Bus.’
I listened to this interview once with Jerry Seinfeld that really influenced my comedy and all of my writing, which is that when you’re starting out in comedy, it’s the audience that tells you what’s funny about you. And you need to listen to that and make a note of that.
Fame is a funny thing. I like doing normal things. I like going to fairs. I like going to ball games. I like going to Disney World or a big field on the Fourth of July and having picnics with friends. The problem is you’re either worried you’re going to be recognized, or you’re thankful you’re not. It’s always there.
At home, he’s a 100-percent softie; that’s who he is. I just blew his cover. When Howard has a really stressful day at work or he feels overwhelmed, it’s funny, I point to the foster room. After 30 seconds of being there with these baby kittens or these special needs cats, it just changes your whole mood.
I like doing comedy, I like doing drama. Naturally I like to do, I like doing dramas, I like conflict, and when I do a comedy, you know, I’ve found that, like, romantic comedy is the trickiest one, because often it’s neither: it’s not romantic and it’s not funny. So, like, I like a comedy that’s biting. It’s biting humor or really quirky humor.
Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child’s tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It’s not funny and it’s not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn’t the least bit funny.
Ignoring fame was my rebellion, in a funny way. I was insistent on being normal and doing normal things. It probably wasn’t advisable to go to college in America and room with a complete stranger. And it probably wasn’t wise to share a bathroom with eight other people in a coed dorm. Looking back, that was crazy.
I don’t know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We’re very rigid. It’s funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can’t we take little parts of history and mix it together?
I loved being in the film called ‘Carnal Knowledge’ – the one with Jack Nicholson, which was very dark but a really brilliant movie. I loved being in ‘The Ritz.’ ‘The Ritz’ I think is just hilarious. I just saw it again recently and by God, it’s still funny!
Maori get pigeonholed into the idea they’re spiritual and telling stories like ‘Whale Rider’ and ‘Once Were Warriors,’ quite serious stuff, but we’re pretty funny people, and we never really have had an opportunity to show that side of ourselves, the clumsy, nerdy side of ourselves, which is something I am.
Funny thing about the volatile and biased French crowds. While they’d prefer to be cheering a countryman and giving his foreign opponent merry hell, if there was no Frenchman in the game, they’d always support a Continental player over an Englishman, an American, or an Australian.
It’s funny: I put money into short films, and I put really good actors in it, and I write some stuff that’s really funny, and I’ll get, like, a million views. But to the right of me, there will be a video of a kitten that falls into a toilet bowl, and it’s three seconds long, and it will get 25 million views.
People are getting careers from YouTube and uploading videos. And they’re totally different – you can’t necessarily be funny on a video, and then all of a sudden you’re live in a theater. You don’t have the tools yet. It’s a lot more involved to go from being funny on a little iPhone screen to being live in front of people and being funny.
I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.
