I’ve always wanted to be an actor. I didn’t get into this game to be the best improviser in the world. I didn’t choose improv as a stepping stone, it just happened to become one.
I don’t know how this company got the name National Shakespeare Company, because it was literally like retards employing retards.
I remember interviewing someone I actually felt bad for, and therefore didn’t want to take an ironic stance against him. It actually turned out to be a really funny piece.
This limited theatrical release was a nice little bonus that I never expected.
The show is a satire, which gives us freedom to do anything we want. Satire is the magic word that wipes away any culpability. The media is jealous of this freedom.
If people see me in some sort of niche, then that’s fine. As long as it’s not The Naked Guy, I don’t care.
Anything that you can do a tiny bit of research about, I’ll turn it into an obsession.
I was going out for absolutely everything that was in Backstage.
I didn’t really feel 100 percent comfortable until we started working on the 2004 election.
People want other people to know that they share our sensibility even if they’re not exactly sure what that sensibility is.
If it’s January, I’m dead in three hours. But in June, I’d be hungry, but I’d make it out. I’d find my way without a map or compass. I say that with confidence. I can build a fire without a match.
The first year or so on The Daily Show is pretty intense in terms of travel. You’re going to the worst places in the country, talking to the craziest people in the world.
I want to manufacture a feud.
I really think of it – acting and writing and producing, whatever – as shipping. You gotta ship. Put the widget together in the easiest, quickest way possible and ship the product.
I’ve always defined myself as a writer, I’ve never decided what it was I was gonna write. I always fancied myself one, but I’m not. I’m so far from a writer.
My mother was very, very Protestant. I grew up Presbyterian, and I went to church every Sunday until I was 18. I was forced to.
My job was basically to look at a good friend completely naked and rub lotion on her back. I was naked too, but I got to put a towel on almost immediately. So I was like, “Well, this is going to be embarrassing, but it’s also going to be kinda awesome.”
I don’t like gadgets for their own sake. I like gadgets that are tools. And I like simple gadgets that do one thing really well like a hammer.
I don’t feel rivalry. I’m the least competitive person you’ll meet ever, to a fault.
As a teenager, I was very much a people pleaser and that excludes being adventuresome at all. I was a Boy Scout though and so that’s as adventuresome as I got.