I'm not trying to walk away from responsibility or anything like that, but I think there's a bunch of people on TV who get trust simply for being on TV.
What's sad is that we can have a reality-television performer for president without incorporating the other aspects of reality television - like voting and voter engagement.
Monsters aren't as scary if you start shining lights on them.
After I left the 'Daily Show,' I was kind of sitting out for five years. I know what it's like to not be able to have that platform for my voice the way I want it.
I think, a lot of times when you do a comedy show, people will turn out for a name they know. So, they get excited when they see Patton Oswalt is going to be on the show, but they kind of cross their arms until Patton Oswalt shows up.
For me, funny is funny, and what's unfortunate is these comedians aren't being allowed to operate in rooms for everybody and that everybody can laugh and say, 'Okay, I find that person funny, and I don't just have to find them funny because they look like me.'
When we simply write a place off as, like, 'Well, it's just Trump country,' for the people who are there, we do them a disservice on some level. It's their country, too.
The role of a comedian is to go in and make something funny. That might be a situation where I'm writing, a situation where I'm in control, like standup or something of my own that I'm making, or it might be something like being an actor in someone else's project.
I feel like I've always thought of myself as a comedian.
I enjoy doing standup, but when I'm 50, I don't know if I'll still enjoy doing standup. It might be one of those things where I find other palettes that I want to paint on and make comedic.
I don't do enough movies that I can call it a career. It really is sort of like summer jobs or something like that. It's very much like holiday work as far as, okay, I do it, and I'm there for two weeks and hopefully am working really hard, and then it's done, and I kind of go back to what I was doing before.
I feel like you can't trust a cat. I feel like a cat's got an ulterior motive. The moment you show any weakness to a cat, the cat is gonna take over.
When I came up in L.A., a lot of comics produced their own shows, and so if you wanted to have a show in the city, you produced it yourself.
When I'm on the road, museums end up being a place I go to in different cities that is always interesting. Museums and independent record stores.
So much about getting onstage is creating a connection with an audience that allows you to go different places and try different things.
When you put comedy in the room it's supposed to be in, you start learning it's a process. Not everything is a home run. You have singles, and you ground a few out. But ultimately, it's the journey you have with that comedian, whether it's ten minutes or an hour.
I did a movie a few years back, 'Medicine for Melancholy.' People will come up to me after a set and say, 'I really love that movie. When are you going to do another one?' Or 'I loved you on 'The Daily Show.' Why did you leave?' It's kind of the same as saying, 'I loved you in high school. You should have never left.'
I think when you write something as standup material, it forces you to think about how you're gonna tell that story in one way, and then, when you get the opportunity to shoot it, you almost have to reframe how you go about it and rethink the entire process.
Whenever I've done jobs, whether it's an acting job or writing job, there's an aspect of it that feels like you help build your piece of it, and then you watch as someone takes it, and they finish building it.
I think there's a lesson in everything.
