A Quote by Dan Chiasson
I was never trying to be funny. Being funny feels to me like an alternate form of confessionality - that is, a way of dismantling the distance between writer and reader, a way of saying, "come in a little closer."
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Now I'm just like everybody else, and it's so funny, the way monogamy is funny, the way someone falling down in the street is funny. I entered a revolving door and emerged as a human being. When you think of me is my face electronically blurred?
Reading, therefore, is a co-production between writer and reader. The simplicity of this tool is astounding. So little, yet out of it whole worlds, eras, characters, continents, people never encountered before, people you wouldn’t care to sit next to in a train, people that don’t exist, places you’ve never visited, enigmatic fates, all come to life in the mind, painted into existence by the reader’s creative powers. In this way the creativity of the writer calls up the creativity of the reader. Reading is never passive.
Rapping can be repetition sometimes. Sometimes you gotta highlight your words in a certain kind of way. So I always was a fan of sing-rapping. It was always funny to me a little bit, and I think that being funny and being able to laugh, even at yourself, is a form of flattery.
One second here and there will make all the difference between something being funny and not being funny. That's why I like going, 'Well, we wrote that six months ago, and it was funny one time we read it, but it's not funny anymore. So what? Just dump it.'
That word 'funny' always makes me feel uncomfortable. Because if I were trying to be funny, I would be something like Bill Wegman - he really tries to be funny. I don't try to be funny. It's just that I feel the world is a little bit absurd and off-kilter, and I'm sort of reporting.
Usually I'm trying to turn something around or turn it inside out and see what's underneath. I know that probably sounds incredibly vague but I never set out to be likeable or funny or anything like that. I'm just trying to tell the story in the best way that I can and serve the writer because it's really about the writer.
I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.
For me, one of the reasons I love this form - the personal essay form - is because it's a way of forming an intimacy with the reader. What I'm saying to the reader is: I'm going to tell you something; I'm going to be generous; I'm going to offer. The confession, on the other hand, is sort of an imposition because you're asking the reader to forgive you or somehow exonerate you or say, "Hey, I'm even worse." But what I'm interested in doing is being generous and offering a perspective or suggesting a way of thinking about something.
On 'The Simpsons,' I will say that we definitely like to comment on what's going on in the world, and we try to be funny. If we can figure out a way of being funny about it, then we've gone part of the way of accomplishing our task.
I think it's funny that nobody wants to be liked by Washington. All the politicians go, 'I don't like Washington. They don't like me.' I always find it funny that people are trying to distance themselves from Washington as much as they can, even though they're all in Washington.
I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.
In a funny way, acting, to me, is all make-believe, even if the film has unicorns in it or is a normal movie that can be set in real-life time. I'm still imagining that I'm a different character, so it's all, in a funny way, like fantasy.
They are people who, by and large, think the Administration's policy - and the Iranian case is a classic one - is very stupid. They can't get that view in, and so by talking to me, they accomplish something. It's a way of saying, this ought to be discussed, we got to get this out. That's a form of patriotism, in a funny way.
For me, funny is funny, and what's unfortunate is these comedians aren't being allowed to operate in rooms for everybody and that everybody can laugh and say, 'Okay, I find that person funny, and I don't just have to find them funny because they look like me.'
Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
[My mom's] funny that way, celebrating special occasions with blue food. I think it's her way of saying anything is possible. Percy can pass seventh grade. Waffles can be blue. Little miracles like that.
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