![]() ![]() Sometimes I just produce things because of my baggage. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you’ve gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them. Of all the hats you wear - writing, directing, producing, acting, even promoting, I guess - which one gives you the most pleasure? So it’s just amazing that it’s still functioning when half of America thinks that the other half, the PBS half, or the people on unemployment should be, I don’t know, dismissed or gotten rid of. I mean if Romney had won, there would have been no more Big Bird, no more PBS. I have to salute the producer, Susan Lacy, who does a great job with “American Masters,” and Robert Trachtenberg, and let’s not forget PBS. He found so many different people - it was like a diamond there’s so many different facets. He also did an amazing job getting people like Tracey Ullman, Joan Rivers, Rob Reiner. So just for vanity and ego and looks alone I wouldn’t have been as simple and as honest as Trachtenberg. I don’t know, but I became, like, a baked potato. I was really a good-looking guy, I think between the ages of 18 and 23. Yeah, not so bad, but there was a shot of me earlier in it where I was on a beach where I was just an Adonis. And I was dismayed to see this crazy, shrunken little wrinkly old man. My only comment I have is I should have taken another 20 minutes for makeup. He went wherever he thought it was interesting and funny. It didn’t go particularly chronologically there were no rules. ![]() I don’t think it would be as good! I think what I liked about it is it kind of reflected the comic anarchy that’s me. If you had directed this “American Masters” episode instead of Robert Trachtenberg, how would it be different? Fourth wall breaking is literally telling the truth. So I’ve found that to be a very important tool in my comedy arsenal. Like with a camera that’s slowly moving into the beginning of a scene in a dining room outside of a garden and there’s these French windows - if you crash into the windows, you’re, like, telling the truth in a literally shattering way. You go on, and you do a play and you do characters, and you do kind of a make believe and then all you’ve got to do is just partially, brilliantly, tell the truth. It worked for Pirandello and it works for me. ![]() And you accidentally broke a glass, and to cover the mistake you walked to the front of the stage and said, “I’ve never done this before! I’m 15 years old!” From your very first gig, you were breaking the fourth wall, which has remained one of your trademarks through your entire career. In “Make a Noise,” you tell this story about the first time you performed on stage, at the age of 15, at a place called The Butler Lodge. You know who did it so brilliantly, and I guess as a result I stayed away from it? Rob Reiner, with “This Is Spinal Tap.” That movie’s brilliant. ![]()
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