On 'Late Night,' it's like we're all in on the joke. That's what I wanted it to be. I'm not doing something sneaky. Inside jokes, I don't like those. We can all ride together, and everyone's on the same thing going, 'Aha, I know where you're going here.'
'St. Elmo's Fire' is one of my favorite films. I like the storytelling of those teenage American films. You don't get that now. Teenage American movies are all about sick jokes, puking a lot, arse jokes.
I really like dramas that have a tone of comedy in them or the opposite, and those are done by people like Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman but also Spike Jonze and David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen Brothers.
The way Disney characters move, they're very kind of slow and fluid and flowing; one pose kind of eases into the next. If you look at a show like 'The Simpsons' and subsequently a show like 'Family Guy' - the characters will jerk from pose to pose a lot, a bit more snappy. Which sort of goes along with the writing tone of the show.
At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny.
A lot of comedy on television has a reserve to it, and it's a little too cool for school.
I love mixing horror with comedy.
I've never been a shirt-off, pants-off kind of comedy guy.
You can make a movie that's more focused on the jokes, but Young Adult was not that kind of movie.
'War on Everyone,' I think... the script was hilarious to me, but it's very dark, dark humor. It's super dark.
When you're leading Marines, you don't screw around, so the comedy is limited in uniform. And when you're a comedian, you can't be heavy handed and come across with tales of gore or material that people won't understand, so I try to keep them separate.
'Old School' is so breezy it could be a late-night talk show, especially when Craig Kilborn, of 'The Late Late Show,' sidles into camera range as a particularly loathsome competitor to Mitch.
I'd like to have a drink with Bill Maher and see how he feels. We were too conservative coming over to Fox from fX, and got ourselves off our best game.
It's not about trying to be funny all the time. It's more of a document that hopefully is funny.
I believe comedy should be free to go anywhere. I believe that there is tasteful and untasteful, I think they're very close to each other, and it's how you handle it tonally. But I'm an equal opportunity offender.
Maybe there's a sort of veneer of optimism about U.S. comedy, whereas perhaps in England, we don't mind ending it on a sourer note.
I don't have a caustic sense of humor. What I find funny, that humor comes from a much gentler place.
The movies that I love and model after, like 'Annie Hall,' 'When Harry Met Sally,' and in particular for me, 'Broadcast News,' are the tone of life, which isn't a setup punch-line every two minutes.
I loved 'Weekend,' and it meant a lot to me when I saw it in the movie theater. I think 'Looking' feels more like that movie than any of those other shows, with a little more comedy thrown in than 'Weekend.' But it's certainly got the vibe and look and feeling of that movie.
I believe comedy should be free to go anywhere. I believe that there is tasteful and untasteful, I think they're very close to each other, and it's how you handle it tonally. But I'm an equal opportunity offender. I'm happy to go at anything that has a cause to be laughed at.
Comedy is all about rhythm and context, and there's all types of comedies, and it's about finding that right brand, that consistency in tone.
If you like quick put-downs and aggressive interactions with the audience, you will probably not enjoy the rambles of an unusual character act making jokes about cats for an hour.
You have to know you are in a comedy. You have to know that you are actually allowing the audience to participate on some level. When you go dark and mean it, then you don't let them in.
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.
A lot of Christmas episodes of comedies are comedies trying to be dramas.
