Latest Michael Showalter Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Maybe in 10 years,I'll only be doing "classical" comedy. Or crashing my car into trees.

  Michael Showalter

  Car, Tree, Comedy

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Will Ferrell is probably the funniest comic actor, certainly of my generation. I am a huge, huge Will Ferrell fan. I'm not a huge comedy buff, truthfully. What I find funny is either something unbelievably stupid, like Dumb And Dumber or Airplane!, where the jokes are just so stupid and pointless, or something like The Office or The Comeback, where the humor is in the excruciating awkwardness of a situation. Stella kind of explores both of those, stupidity and awkwardness.

  Michael Showalter

  Stupid, Airplane, Office

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, tv.avclub.com. January 28, 2008.

• I like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.

  Michael Showalter

  Philosophy, Stupid, Silly

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm not big on fat jokes. That's a little beneath me. I'm not a huge fan of making a joke completely at someone else's expense. Even though I think he does it better than anyone else, I don't love... Well, it's different with Sacha Baron Cohen, but that whole thing where you're "punking" people? I don't like that. I don't like doing it, and I don't particularly find it funny when the joke is on a person who doesn't know they're being set up.

  Michael Showalter

  Thinking, People, Different

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I know more about sports than I know about any other subject, unfortunately. I'm embarrassed to admit that.

  Michael Showalter

  Sports, Embarrassed

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I am very athletic, actually, and I'm good at most sports. But I was never a successful athlete, because I have a lot of trouble with authority. To be a good athlete, you have to have sort of a military attitude. You have to enjoy being coached, and that was not something I ever liked. But more than that, I don't like practice, and coaches hate anybody that doesn't like practice. If you saw me throwing a football, you'd say, "Wow, he knows how to throw a football." But put me on a field, I'm not gonna stand out.

  Michael Showalter

  Sports, Football, Attitude

  Source: www.avclub.com

• The only Train song I like is the one that I play in my act "Drops Of Jupiter". Sheryl Crow has three or four songs that I like; also Dave Matthews Band. With those particular musicians, it's more that there are a few songs that I like rather than their entire body of work. There are a lot of indie bands that I like too. I'm not a snob about music. Does the fact that I like Stephen Sondheim and Broadway musicals make me a fake? Does the fact that I'm "the Billy Joel of comedy" mean that I don't have indie-rock credibility?

  Michael Showalter

  Song, Mean, Fake

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I'm writing a memoir. I'm four pages in. I start with my first memory, which is kicking my uncle in the balls. I was four.

  Michael Showalter

  Memories, Writing, Memoir

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, tv.avclub.com. January 28, 2008.

• A big reason why we were able to and have been able to continue to succeed is that we had a very intense work ethic, right from the beginning. There was a do-or-die attitude toward the work. It wasn't seen as a little "club." It was like, "This is your life." We would spend hours and hours rehearsing and endlessly rewriting. We took it very seriously right off the bat. And we were also extremely critical of each other, which was another thing that was unique. A lot of comedy ensembles have a hard time being critical of each other, because they don't want to hurt each other's feelings.

  Michael Showalter

  Hurt, Attitude, Hard Times

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I don't audition for "on-air" commercials - the ones where your face can be seen. I've auditioned for voiceover campaigns that I haven't gotten, but I don't really want to be seen in a commercial unless it's a product that I really love. Like, if Adidas asked me, I would do it in a heartbeat. But I did a Reebok commercial, one for Pep Boys, one for Dunkin' Donuts. I auditioned for commercials, but I really couldn't stomach it. It just didn't feel right.

  Michael Showalter

  Boys, Heartbeat, Your Face

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I was kind of in an experimental phase with The Disposable Rappers. This is boring to me, because it's true, but when I was a sophomore in high school, I visited my sister in college and saw an improv troupe, and that was a genuine moment for me. It was an actual "Aha!" moment. After I saw that, I said, "I want to do comedy." So The Disposable Rappers started doing improv in addition to rapping, and when I went to college, I very specifically went saying "I want to join a comedy group."

  Michael Showalter

  Rap, School, College

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I don't personally feel comfortable performing in a comedy club, mainly because as an audience member, I've never enjoyed that experience. It feels a little bit theme-park-ish to me, in that it's a club whose product is comedy. I find that weird. It's like those specialty chocolate stores, where everything is chocolate. It's too specific. I like going somewhere that specializes in variety.

  Michael Showalter

  Chocolate, Comedy, Performing

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I like doing all different types of comedy - stand-up, sketch, movies, TV. I like to try everything.

  Michael Showalter

  Trying, Different, Comedy

  Interview with Sean O'Neal, tv.avclub.com. January 28, 2008.

• I feel like marriage is a sacred institution that should only be between a man and a woman. If a gay couple wants to be married, why can't they just be satisfied with a civil union? Why do they have to get "married"?

  Michael Showalter

  Couple, Gay, Men

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

• Cats are unpredictable because they're wild and domestic at the same time. Watching a cat's behavior is like a small window into the wild.

  Michael Showalter

  Cat, Window, Behavior

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

• I think gay people deserve all the same rights as everybody else, it's just that marriage is specifically for a man and a woman.

  Michael Showalter

  Gay, Men, Thinking

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

• I think narcissists are endlessly watchable. The way they view the world and the way they interact within the world. They have no concept of their behavior or how it might be affecting other people. So comedically, it's a very fun type of character to play. They are bulls in a china shop, twenty-four seven.

  Michael Showalter

  Fun, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

• That's the thing that most people don't realize. In real life, comedians aren't funny. They save it. They save it up.

  Michael Showalter

  Real, People, Comedian

  Source: www.ericspitznagel.com

• One of the things that is always difficult about a collaboration is that you don't necessarily find the same thing funny. And so the challenge becomes, how do you tell the other person that you don't think something's funny? The best collaborations tend to be when you are willing to be told that. But there's also ego involved, and so there's a lot of frustration in knowing that you're writing something, and the other person, on some level, needs to think that it's funny.

  Michael Showalter

  Writing, Thinking, Frustration

  "Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter have issues". Interview with Steve Heisler, www.avclub.com. October 16, 2009.