It was always the most fun thing in the world to think of a joke area and talk about it with someone like Jim Carrey, and then he would get on stage fearlessly and tear the house down. That's something I always enjoyed. It also allowed me to not be terrified.
People ask me what it was like working with Jim Carrey. Well, I never really saw too much of him. I would talk to him on the set, but I was looking at a Grinch facade. It was his voice and all, but... Jim is amazing to watch in front of the camera. I learned a lot from him. He was also always very nice and generous to me.
Jim Carrey and my dad were best friends. He would always be in my house and stuff like that.
There was a thing in the Andy Kaufman movie that Jim Carrey [Man On The Moon] about how he would do it. I didn't even see the movie. I read the script. But someone asked me, "Do you know what the best part of the Jim Carrey/Andy Kaufman movie is?" And I said, "me lee see ree bee." I just knew that would be the best part.
Every now and then you think about your life, what you would like to be, you start at Number 1 and you go down to 100. And down at the bottom, 100, was - Stage. Go figure. That would be the last thing. It terrified me, man. But I had to do it.
I'd say people that really inspired me at first were like, Dustin Hoffman, Jim Carrey... serious Jim Carrey though.
I don't know what would be antithetical to do on the other side, maybe a Tyler Perry movie or something. No, there are very few comedies that live in between that. Or you're doing some kid thing like a Jim Carrey movie with animated something that's like that. Yeah, I've wanted to do them. I like doing them. I did Talk to Me. That was pretty much a comedy.
That's where humour lives for me. In the body. The Steve Martin kind of stuff or Jim Carrey, that's what I like. I've always felt that's what I would like to do.
I like making fun of myself a lot. I like being made fun of, too. I've always enjoyed it. There's just something really, really funny about someone tearing into me.
I would like to do comedy. I can be a bit of a Jim Carrey. I was always the class clown.
I don't choose something unless I think I have a personal understanding and something I can offer. It's not always thematic. I wanted to do 'The Grinch' because I wanted to direct Jim Carrey creating that kind of comic fantasy character live. I just thought that would be a mind-blowing experience, and it creatively was.
The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.
I would have to say the most challenging thing about directing is the sheer stamina because... as a director, you're always doing something. Someone always needs to talk to you. There are always decisions to be made and every day for as long as the movie goes on. So it's a marathon... You don't have to look nice, but it's all day every day.
My style has allowed me to tear down barriers in day-to-day life with people who would otherwise have a negative stereotype of someone who wears a turban, but also to speak to people on Bay Street, professionals who don't really think of New Democrats as an option.
The hardest thing in the world is to write something critical about someone and then show up the next day in the locker room. I mean, that is not fun, and that takes an awful lot of guts. And I never enjoyed that.
It would be easy for someone to think growing up in a small town would be like 'Footloose' or something, that it would be, 'No dancing allowed!' all the time, but it was quite the opposite. People always got excited for me and my successes and supported me even though I was a little weirdo goofball.
I'm lucky because the most dangerous thing that could happen to me is that someone will say something mean on a computer screen miles away, and so I feel like if that's all that I'm facing, then why would I not use my platform to talk about things?