My 3rd birthday party was 'Funny Girl' themed.
I don't have that kind of Southern experience of the fire-and-brimstone preacher type of thing. Certainly not in my comedy.
I find it incredibly boring when people are mean about some individuals, especially if the individual has no power. I can understand how someone deems it necessary if somebody is in power to tear them down - I think that's really crucial. I make a lot of mean jokes about myself; as a theme, suffering seems to me a very interesting thing for comedy, but not the suffering of a particular individual.
'Boo & Hiss' has been a passion project of mine for a couple of years. I was intrigued with the idea of what would happen in a classic cartoon predator/prey relationship if the predator - in this case, a cat - got to finally do in his adversary only to have the mouse return as a ghost and bedevil the cat.
What I loved about 'The Beverly Hillbillies' was that it was about family love and growth and understanding. The riches-to-rags premise is just the wallpaper.
It's something that has informed quite a lot of my comedy - that idea of someone who is always trying to get in there with the right crowd, always trying to be a certain type of person and never managing it.
To me, most comedy is dark comedy.
There are only so many ways to get people to go see stand-up, that it really is about the product; it's not so much about the theme of the show.
And what's great is, you know, while 'Mike and Molly' are working on their health, that's their flaw, the people that surround them are actually- that's the mess. Those two have it together the most.
None of the cartoons that I ever did are basically, if they're about sex, they're about sex in sort of this, you know, this ironic way, or the way that people actually treat it.
