Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy

thought she was the coolest person and I hated Bobby Riggs because my mom was a single, working mother. They toured together and did these interviews together, and he was always going, like, women should just go back, put on a tight shirt, and make me a steak. He said this amazing shit and she’s just sitting there with a smile on her face. And they

I also make a point of not watching too much of his stand-up, because he’s so prolific and covers so much ground. Watching him makes me feel like there’s nothing left to talk about, and that everything has already been done, as well as it can be done, by Louis. He has raised the bar for all of us.

Judd: I wanted to do commercials as a kid, too. I got head shots made like in seventh grade but I got the chicken pox and had these terrible scars, and they refused to heal. They were red and full of pus and then I actually shoved poison ivy up my nose to make my friends laugh— Peele: Oh, fuck. Judd: So I got poison ivy all over my face, plus the c

During junior high, my parents got divorced and things got a little messy. It was the early eighties, and after my dad read the self-help book Your Erroneous Zones, by Wayne Dyer, I think he suddenly realized how unhappy he was

That’s when you feel the shittiest and so, in those moments, you just have to think like a baseball player: Okay, if I’m not hitting, at the very least I’m going to run out every ground ball as hard as I can. Or I’m going to do the best I can in the field. I’m going to try and make up for my lack of creativity until, hopefully, I hustle my way out

Translating experience to paper. That’s so hard to teach, isn’t

That’s probably from childhood trauma—from being hypervigilant. But I think it makes you a good producer and performer and writer. The thing that ruined your life makes you good at your work. And then you get rewarded at work, so you don’t bother to fix it in your life.

Spike: Yeah. I feel ridiculous to complain about it but I’m just giving myself time to recuperate. Making a movie takes so much out of you, but it also gives you so much. When I lock picture—it’s like a relationship ending, and there’s something bittersweet about it, too. It’s a love relationship in one way, in terms of negotiating what you need fr

In fact, if you look at Knocked Up, a lot of it is the same kind of comedic idea of something happening that’s unexpected and having to figure out if you’re man enough to handle it correctly.

Albert: The biggest influence was Jack Benny. Because of his minimalism. And the way he got laughs. He was at the center of a storm, he let his players do the work, and just by being there made it funny. That was mind-boggling to me.