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People just associate me with comedy - not that I mind. I don't mind that at all.
Scott Adsit
Generally, I've found that a heckler in an improv audience is just enjoying the show so much that they want to be in it.
I did a bunch of commercial voiceovers in Chicago before I left. For Balducci's pizza, I did a whole series. Actually I was making a good living with voiceover before I left.
New York is almost as important as Chicago, improv-wise.
I would be onstage all the time if I could.
I got an agent when I needed one, when I had a contract negotiation for the first time. I was doing the Second City E.T.C., and I got invited to audition for the last season, it turns out, of 'In Living Color.'
I think most of my tastes were British, as far as comedy went, when I was growing up.
What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They're a hunching, quaking, unshaven lot.
Every time that you do a play or a show of any kind, really you have this family that you really build something with for a while, and then we all dissipate, but you always have that connection, that eternal kind of intimacy, you'll always have.
I think it's all the same animal for me. There are actors who sing, and there are actors who direct, and I also improvise. That's one thing I do as part of my acting. I don't really separate the two.
A nightmare would be when somebody is trying to be funnier than everyone else. And you've got a group scene or two-person scene, and one person decides, 'I'm the funny in this', and bulldozes everyone else, and they make sure they're the reason everyone loves the scene.
I might've been witty, but I didn't have a shtick. So, I never considered myself a comedian.
I feel like I've done Pete Hornberger, and that is a painting I have signed, and I don't need to play that character anymore. So I'll get offers for panicky, pathetic guys, and while it's a great compliment to get them, I feel like I don't need to play that again.
I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
I never planned to be a comedian. I don't consider myself one now.
The rules of improvisation apply beautifully to life. Never say no - you have to be interested to be interesting, and your job is to support your partners.
I think the longer a sitcom is on the air, by necessity, the dumber the characters have to get: otherwise, they would be learning and growing, and they won't be funny, so they have to get more and more extremely whatever they are.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that. I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.
The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.
I came up through Second City, so I'm used to playing 20 characters every night who are very different from each other. I wouldn't want my career to be any different.
The way I was brought up in improv was that any idea you have is not as good as your partner's idea, so if I see someone else initiating at the same time I am, I just defer to them because I assume their idea is going be better. And hopefully, they're doing the same with me.
It's hard to tell what is even mainstream anymore because there's so many platforms now. And they're all topics of conversation.
I enjoy doing physical comedy.
Wikipedia gets a lot of things wrong.
I still feel very close to the people I wrote shows with and some of the people I toured with. I feel very close to them, like a family or like college friends who you know and who have seen you at your worst and you spend 14 hours driving a van all piled on top of each other.
Networks like Adult Swim allow artists to be artists and allow their vision to come through without a lot of tinkering. I worked on 'Moral Orel' and 'Mary Shelley's Frankenhole', and they bothered us very little. They very, very seldom came to us and said 'Change this', or 'You can't do that', or 'We'd like to see this.'
I see my share of loons. I just performed with someone who had a meltdown on stage. He needed focus, and he was 'stealing it' and just being crazy and selfish and childish and having a great time doing it - to the detriment of everybody else.
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor, financially, emotionally, egotistically. I still don't think I'm in comedy.
I've heard New York actors say Chicago actors intimidate them because apparently we're the real nitty-gritty actors who're in a town where being onstage doesn't necessarily get you anything except your craft.
I'm afraid of my mother's paranoia. The more she watches Fox News, the more afraid she gets.
'Baymax' is quite different. I think when Don Hall found the title and didn't know it, he researched and saw great potential in the relationship between a boy and a robot.
'Monty Python' and 'The Simpsons' have ruined comedy for writers for the rest of our lives.
I was doing a show in L.A. called 'Celebrity Autobiography', where celebrities read excerpts from other celebrities' books and hang themselves with their own rope.
I've been doing improv since high school, and I've been getting paid for it since I was 20.
Most sitcoms and cartoons, especially, you can rely on, because they go back to square one at the beginning of every episode.
My first car was a Buick Skyhawk from, like, '78, I think. I ran that thing into the gutter. It was shaped like an egg; it was cool.
You know you're an actor in New York when you're on 'SVU.'
I put my foot in my mouth more than I speak properly.
New York has surprised me a couple of times. I was a snob about pizza, but I've found one or two places that allow me to forget deep dish for a while.
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