A Quote by Michael Carbonaro

I first started doing hidden-camera segments on 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.' He was the coolest guy in the world to work for because he understands the creative process, and he had total trust. And he just let me make up whatever I wanted; I experimented and tried and played. We had a lot of fun over there.
My first acting gig was a skit for Jay Leno on 'The Tonight Show.' It was this Barbie commercial where I got to pour mud all over Barbie dolls and watch the heads pop off. It was so exciting, a lot of fun.
I had a couple albums out that sold well for who I was at the time and the type of music I played. People started recognizing my name and face and it helped sell bigger venues. I had a bigger spotlight and I had to live up to it but I thrived under that challenge. It expedited the creative process. If I was on stage in front of 300 people instead of 30, I had to work harder at my performances because I had a greater responsibility. It was very exciting, but creative too.
A lot of people have experimented with hidden cameras and magic before. What I do, which I think is different from any other style of prank or hidden camera, is that it's all fun. It's back to that kind of fun that 'Candid Camera' was. It's not mean-spirited at all. It's a joyful kind of play with people.
One of the most painful things for me was Jay Leno, Jay Leno going back on the air and saying to people that it was a choice between his writing staff and his crew, I think that really hurt a lot of show runners, because it was never a choice between our writers and our crew.
Being a harsh, dirty comic, the last person on earth I ever expected to help my career was Jay Leno. I had always thought of performing on 'The Tonight Show' as an unachievable goal, because I bought into the myth that only squeaky clean, family-friendly material would be welcome there.
I saw an early cut of 'The Disaster Artist,' and I thought it was inspiring in a lot of ways, and it made me realize it had been so long since I had tried to make a film or to try to - you know, the book was obviously my first kind of big creative pursuit I had control over.
I've always wanted to do a segment on a talk show. Jay Leno has been such a good friend, and if he would allow me, I'd have to get it all together, but I'd like to go on 'The Tonight Show' and do a set with no props. Or come out with a trunk and never touch it. Or come out with a clear trunk with nothing in it.
You know I grew up on the Batman movies, and they had some terrific actors in, but you know a lot of the other ones - it wasn't always the case that you had people the caliber of Jeff Bridges or Robert Downey, so to kind of show up and work with Jeremy Renner or Robert or with Mark Ruffalo, any of them, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, the caliber of people you're acting with, to me, is really fun. From the first day I started doing scenes with Robert, it's been one of the funnest experiences I've ever had.
I had just been doing graffiti around New York and this real estate investor guy had walked through meat packing in New York and saw some of my graffiti. He was impressed and asked if I sold canvases. I really had not made any canvases of my graffiti work yet, but told him I could make one for him. He then commissioned me to make ten paintings and put on my first art show. Between the sold out show and the cops chasing after me it created a lot of media and I've been doing really well since then.
I've performed on 'The Tonight Show' with both Johnny Carson and Jay Leno, but not at the same time.
I'm so excited. Jay Leno is on the show tonight. He brought some really funny jokes and some great stories. Although I'm a little concerned he also brought his old desk and Kevin Eubanks. I just want Jay to be comfortable, but not too comfortable.
Scott and I had just worked with Jimmy Pardo doing a live show over the summer. And it was a lot of fun and we wanted to keep doing a live show. And as Scott said, we knew a lot of funny young people who needed a place to do stand-up. And we were in a place, where we were writing so much that we weren't around live comedy so much, so we kind of missed it.
When I did 'The Tonight Show' and Jay Leno was still there, he was very nice but it was surreal. It's like you can't believe you're standing there talking to that person. If you've seen them in a lot of movies or on TV you feel like you know them, just like my fans feel like they know me.
A lot of people think if you just had more process and more compliance -- checks and doublechecks and so forth -- you could create a better result in the world. Well, Berkshire has had practically no process. We had hardly any internal auditing until they forced it on us. We just try to operate in a seamless web of deserved trust and be careful whom we trust.
SportsCenter' is the legacy brand at ESPN, I had a great year doing the show. But it was not a fit for me because ultimately I had a lot of things that I really wanted to say and wanted to express, and the 'SportsCenter' vehicle is not necessarily set up for that.
It was amazing how much their [Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Shauna Robertson] process seemed familiar to me, translating that into the work that I had done and giving actors a lot of freedom and doing a lot of improvisation and a total respect and collaboration with all the department heads and all the crews, and just really making it an enjoyable industry rather than just clocking in and doing a job which a lot of movies are.
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