In comedy, you work with people so often that they just become familiar faces - it's like a fraternity.
I cannot stress enough that the answer to life's questions is often in people's faces. Try putting your iPhones down once in a while, and look in people's faces. People's faces will tell you amazing things. Like if they are angry, or nauseous or asleep.
I don't see myself as part of an acting fraternity or a comedy fraternity.
For me, my preference for comedy is grounding it in the psychology of the character, and not just kind of making faces. Even when it's a crazy character, grounded comedy resonates more with people because it doesn't look like you're watching someone do vaudeville. No offense to vaudeville.
I do a lot of comedy and I like that. I am happy doing funny films. I am often the straight person in a comedy, which is great as long as there are talented people to work with.
Although the rugby league fraternity probably don't like it, the rugby union fraternity probably doesn't like it, it's cool for sportsmen, for young kids coming up, to know that there's not just that one door.
I make work that tries to sort of connect with something really, really familiar. I don't try to make work that's original. I try to make work that's quintessential. That's what I mean about the familiar. It operates with stuff that people already know or information that they already have and I try to just use that. Quintessential means like the perfect minimalist sculptor.
As a man who tried to explain in his own way that people have to learn to get along with each other. I did it with comedy because that's what I'm familiar with, and I think it's more acceptable to tell it in comedy form. But that's how I'd like to be remembered.
Our comedy is just falling over, funny faces, arguments, all the comedy basics, really.
Me and Luke are fraternity brothers. Luke Bryan was already in Nashville when I got to college. He had come back to his old fraternity house, which was my new fraternity house. We met there and just kinda stayed in touch.
There's a way of doing comedy that feels true to the person doing it, that doesn't feel like clown-work or silly faces and antics, but that feels real - like you're playing a real person who has real thoughts and feelings, and it's very grounded. I started to watch all comedy through that prism.
There's magic in seeing slightly familiar faces become new neighborhood friends over ice cream and cold drinks.
I think you need to have the guts to not use comedy. Often, the people that work in comedy use a joke to avoid contemplation.
I grew up in a pretty strict household in the sense that we just didn't have cable, so I wasn't familiar with what stand-up comedy was. I remember telling my friends that I thought stand-up comedy was like the thing that happened before the episode of 'Seinfeld.'
My dad was in a fraternity back in the 1950s, and they sound really fun back then. Nowadays they sound like they can get a little heavy-duty in terms of the hazing and the drinking. Im not so much into the idea of being made to do a bunch of insane stuff just so I can have the privilege of hanging around certain people... Thats probably why I was never in a fraternity.
You can't micromanage. People who try to do that often fall on their faces. Incentivize those who work with you so you get the best work you can. Every career is a team effort, even if you're the one in front.