The Studio 60 star on why he wants to be the McDonald's of comedy
Studio 60 tends to see comedy in two lights: creating a kind of temporary escape from the world and also making you think.
You know what? Most of the time when I've heard a comic that is "being smart," then he's not that funny. It's like content is the enemy of funny. I don't necessarily think that's true, and I think that's what the show does a great job at. We are tougher for some people to understand rhythmically and sometimes thematically, but we do a show we're proud of.
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Has your style or what you define as humor has changed?
Right now the social stakes, the world stakes, the environmental stakes, have never been higher. In the '60s and early '70s there was all the social upheaval, a war, and we didn't know where we were as a country. Then the '80s and '90s were just kind of junk bonds and partying. And now you have the same kind of paradigm as the '60s, when there were all those great artists, and you knew they were influenced by what was going on around them. I think that's the same for us. I would hate to have somebody look at an album I've done and not know what the world looked like.
Is there an overriding goal you hope to achieve as an entertainer?
I used to watch the [McDonald's] signs as a kid that said, "Over a hundred million served, over a billion served"; that's what I want to be in stand-up. I want to not only tell jokes, but do other things and people will go with me on something else. And I think that is really it for me. I am doing what I always wanted to do, and I don't know that a man has ever loved anything as much as I love stand-up. Don't tell my wife that.