I don't think comedy necessarily comes from a dark place. But I do think what a lot of us have in common is that, growing up, being funny was a coping mechanism.
Lying is not only a defense mechanism; it's also a coping mechanism and a survival technique.
Music for me is not just being on a stage and singing. It's my coping mechanism.
The idea of evil is always subject to denial as a coping mechanism.
I've always had a quirky way of looking at things. It's my coping mechanism.
That was my earliest maladaptive coping mechanism I forged when I was a kid. I found that my fists weren't going to do any significant protective work for me, so my mouth was it. Making my father laugh was a way to control him.
I was always the new kid in school, I'm the kid from a broken family, I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.
In school I was always the funny-looking, tall, skinny kid that got made fun of because of my weird teeth.
I was just a goofy little funny kid, who was always getting sent to the principal. It wasn't serious because I was smart. I wasn't like a true troublemaker, just rambunctious - like, talkative and trying to be funny. That was me in middle-school.
I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism.
I don't really know. I think the first test is when you're very little and you fart, and you laugh at it and so do your friends and family. I knew before I was funny I was very annoying so I have that covered. I think it was because I was not very good in school I used humor as a defense mechanism. When I started doing plays and stuff at school I decided that I was going to keep doing it until someone tells me to stop and get a real job.
I think maybe I became funny because as a kid, I was a Jew in a town of no Jews, and being funny just instinctively came about as a way to put people at ease around me.
I moved around a lot as a kid, and was always the new kid in town. I was always having to confront someone wanting to pick on you the first day at school, wherever the new place you're going, and establish that pecking order.
I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.
Music in general, but really musical theater has always been a real coping mechanism for me.
The Doomsayers have always had their uses, since they trigger the coping mechanism that often prevents the events they forecast.