The key to sitcom success is miserable people. If you see a happy couple it's just gone like when Sam and Diane got together on Cheers.
I think it is very sad that 'sitcom' has become a pejorative term.
The thing you can't let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom and the next wave isn't a reaction to the reality of that you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies they throw out the rules of life.
I can remember when I was a baby and my mother was there watching the show. I went and bought 100 episodes and watched them. I respect it so much that the sitcom itself and Ed Norton I'm not playing Ed Norton but my version of it cause I'm a black man.
I have hair that I audition with my sitcom hair which is a curly wig. I have my long chic hair that I wear to my son's school so they know I'm not playing around. I always tell people that my husband gets a different woman every night when I come home from 'The View.' Hair makes you feel a certain way like putting a power suit on.
I took acting classes in college and once I graduated I decided to give acting a shot when I couldn't really think of anything else to do. It took me a couple of years to get an agent and my first big break was The Fanelli Boys which was a sitcom on NBC. Then I did a few television movies.
When I came out of my mom's womb I had 'sitcom' stamped on my forehead.
I don't think I could ever do a network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite circumstance. I don't want to be a part of a show where it's mostly about coming up with the jokes.
I really hate sitcoms on television with canned laughter and stuff. What really makes me laugh is the real-life stuff. I've got a dry sense of humor.
Feature-length film comedy is harder to pull off than the episodic sitcom - it doesn't have the same factory machinery up and running teams of writers putting familiar characters through permutations - but that doesn't explain the widening quality gap that makes movie humor look like a genetic defective.
I'm not a movie guy I'm not a TV sitcom guy but whatever seems to fit and is funny is good for me.
The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor I'm just gonna tell her 'Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they'll have to hire you they can't really fire you and you don't have to produce that much. It'll be awesome.'
The humor is essentially dark for a cartoon and sophisticated. But at the same time being a cartoon gives the writers more freedom than in a normal sitcom. It always pushes the line that despite human failings the Simpsons are really decent people.
A lot of times I would go into a room and audition for whatever sitcom it was and they would expect me to do sort of what my dad was doing and I am not him so they would be disappointed and I would feel nervous and not know exactly how to do it.
Basically after an ABC sitcom I did I ended up with a holding deal with 20th Century Fox. Absolutely cool. It pays you to be unemployed. And the bigger the entity that gives you the deal the better.
I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go to form of communication.