A comedian is sort of like a wild animal. It really just depends on where you catch them. Sometimes they want to cuddle up, and sometimes they'll snap at you. But for me, more often than not, if I'm talking to somebody who makes their living in comedy, it'll be a very thoughtful conversation driven from an emotionally honest place.
Go ahead and make up a ton of lies about me. That's way more interesting than pretending Wikipedia has any real information.
Although I'm a comedian, I'm also an amateur survivalist.
My experience in TV is that it takes time for shows to find their way.
I tend to play sort of douchey.
A lot of times, you're circling around a lot of things, and then you find that one person, or that little piece of dialogue, and it doesn't always have to be in person.
What business would judged on the first week that it's in business?
In New York, you are forced into having very public lives and observing all types of people, what they sound like, what they're reading, what they smell like, what they are listening to, how they talk to their friends.
Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it.
For me, the best characters are the ones that feel fully formed inside and out, so I try to have a very clear vision of exactly what they would wear, top to bottom, who they are, what their backstory is, what their family situation is, who are their friends, just creating as much of a three-dimensional character [as possible]. Because I think you could do a very broad character, but as long as there's some emotional truth to them you can get away with really crazy things.
My first concert isn't that cool or ironic. I wish it had been like, "My first concert was the Backstreet Boys," but the first concert I went to, I think, was this band called The Samples.
I think Trump thinks of himself as pretty important, and now rightfully so - because he's the President of the United States. You gotta dream big, and we're all so proud of what the Donald has been able to accomplish... following through on his dreams of taking fast food dumps on a plane.
The thing that's the biggest bummer about any live show is a hot, sober room. So if it's during the day and people are a little buzzed, great.
Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner are the funniest dudes ever, and they have great careers on their own. They made great art in the '90s, and they still have dinner three times a week.
For me, the goal wasn't to turn the stand-up special on its head, but to do what I do specifically, and hopefully that reads as something new.
I was going to have Brian La Croix do a cameo on Degrassi. But, unfortunately, the scheduling didn't work out. When I was in Toronto, they weren't shooting. To me, that would've been a pretty crazy meta experience.
I like an otter. I like a sea lion. I like a walrus. That's my favorite version of a sea creature.
My best friend, Andrew Goldberg - and this is genuinely not me trying to cross-promote, but this new Netflix show I'm doing called Big Mouth is about me and my best friend, Andrew Goldberg, from childhood - but there was a year when I went to his house after school every day and we watched Wayne's World and ate Doritos.
I had PubLIZity, I had Oh, Hello, I had Bobby and Farley - all of these sketches that were really these duo sketches, but the relationship between them is really what catapulted them forward. A lot of that, I think, came from Wayne and Garth, these two similar guys - they're Midwestern metal guys - but in the end, they're quite different because there's an alpha and a beta. And I think that model became very present for me on Kroll Show.
It's a real democratic time for comedy, and I think my special is a sign for that. You don't have to just be a classic stand-up to get a special, or you don't just have to be on Saturday Night Live to do characters and sketch on TV. The web has allowed me to show that there are different ways to make people laugh, and the special is a combination of those things.
It's not that weird, but when I was in Peru, I ate a guinea pig. If you're going to eat guinea pig, you call it cuy. Cute word for such a cute little animal that I ate a few times.
It's always weird to eat something that is a pet elsewhere.
Robert Altman made that movie Kansas City about the jazz scene in the city, and we saw that band all together, and that was an amazing show. That's what I got into. I like jazz.
Music was not a big deal to me when I was in middle school. And then I slowly became a big jazz fan. Even more than concerts, a lot of my high school time was spent going to jazz clubs in the city.
It was sort of in the jam-band era and it was at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester [New York], right where I grew up. I actually went back there a couple years ago when I was on tour for Kroll Show. I performed at that theater, which was really cool to go back to the first place I'd gone to a concert.
