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I think Batman Returns is right for riffs. I love it but it's the ultimate Tim Burton movie. There is so much that happens that's crazy and there are a ton of things to riff.
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Every laugh is not equal. They come from different places. That's sort of the challenge I go towards, making sure the laughs are for the reasons I want. It becomes a back and forth dance with the audience.
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There are a bunch of different movies I feel that way about. However, there is a debate because as you may know after MST3K ended there have been things like Cinematic Titanic that are the children and the grandchildren of this way of dissecting movies and making fun of them and in a way celebrating the absurdity of those movies as well. There are certain movies that sort of fit into the MST3K paradigm which is hidden gems, these weird horror/sci-fi/fantasy movies.
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Lily Tomlin...I used to watch reruns of Laugh-In and she was always my favorite part. She's this very unique talent and the way she does things has been a very big influence on me.
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When you do comedy, the audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say. Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough. I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in.
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One time I was really close to Steve Martin. I was too afraid to actually go talk to him, but I'll count that as meeting.
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I remember reading in a comedy book very long ago when I first started, a person said there's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.
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When you're a young comedian the first thing you want to do is get a laugh.
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When it was announced that Michael Keaton was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When they announced that Val Kilmer was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When it was announced that George Clooney was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. When it was announced that Christian Bale was going to be Batman, everyone was mad. And everyone was mad about Ben Affleck. So every single incarnation, people are going to be mad; you just can't do anything about it.
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There's a difference between a sense of humor and a sense of funny. A sense of humor is knowing what makes you laugh and a sense of funny is knowing what makes other people laugh. The journey of comedy, in a sense, is negotiating those two worlds.
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Netflix is very protective with their information.
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You're the hero of your own story. So it's interesting for historical revisionism to happen. I had let go of my own story from my own childhood and whatever anger I had and I began to see it from a very different place. It's really easy to be like "This thing happened to me! Look what they did to me or are doing to me." These are such powerful ideas and it's so easy to hold onto them forever.
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As you go on you realize "Okay I know how to get laughs but am I saying things I want to say? Am I writing jokes that I like?" You get to a point that is that so you move on.
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I am a big fan of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He's the voice of science and scientific thinking in the United States and the world. He's the most visible proponent of scientific thinking, and he's very unflinching about it. He knows that it's correct and vouches for it in a very intelligent and very firm way, which I really appreciate.
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First of all I love Empire Records and That Thing You Do and all the movies he did from that era. He hates when I bring that up.
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I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in. I don't mean to get too deep into comedy here.
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I can't do Christopher Walken impressions anymore, thanks Barack Obama.