My works were not - and they still aren't - single panel gags with a punch line underneath them. I like a lot of those cartoons; I just don't draw them.
I don't write anything. It's all done onstage, which is why I always tell younger comics that they just have to go do it. You have to get up, talk, and take a thought or a word and just expound, and you find it in there. I don't sit down and write.
Garry Shandling in particular - really had the concept. He really knew it, and it was done so lovingly. He would go beyond the joke, and sort of go into the character. His "funny" was very different, and I really appreciated it.
I'm telling you, I could teach at a university, [George] Carlin, a whole semester. The construction and deconstruction of the words, the language, the order.
Comedy is so hard to do, so it was very cool to do dead pan humor.
I like my messiness on stage, though I watch comics who come at a joke from every angle and I think, 'Yeah! That's how it's done!' But for me it's the audience. If I feel connected to them, I have so much fun, and if not, it stinks.
Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor.
There are a lot of great jokes you can sit down and write, but that's just a written joke, versus the comedy of the situation. Ideally, you're pulling as much comedy out of the situation as you can.
I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.
I love Buster Keaton and I love physical comedy when it's done in an emotionally understated way. I just like to play it, and I need the attention.
