A Quote by Seth Gordon
I like to approach comedy from character, to have the stakes for the individuals in the story be very high.
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In his life, [Dalton] Trumbo uses wit and comedy to fight these very high-stakes battles.
For comedy reasons, any place we can have really big egos and very high stakes is a great thing to go for.
'Cloud 9' is an action/romantic comedy that focuses on the competitive world of snowboarding. We have glamorised it to so that all the players are on the cover of magazines, have all the interviews, and be on the television: so it is very high stakes.
The way I approach any role, whether it's comedy or drama, I like to look for the truth first. I think comedy for the sake of comedy wears dull pretty quickly. You have to ground the character in reality first and allow the audience to sympathize, emphasize and be more invested.
I believe people leave a theater bonding with characters. Story is the vessel that carries character. Comedy is a very important component of expressing character.
The stakes are so high because auditions are make or break. You get the job or you don't. The stakes are about as high as they get, for yourself and your own self-esteem.
I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie.
When you start digging into things like character, though, the notion that people have high character or low character is very strong. What's crazy is that my thinking is not a new insight. The very first large-scale study of character, still one of the largest ever, was done in the early 1900s by Hugh Hartshorne, an ordained minister and a scientist.
High stakes, low stakes, poor or rich - people will find a way to gamble.
My love is to tell a story but I like stories that evolve from character, from the nature of the individuals involved.
Most books that come out with a comedy label seem to be, Eric [Wareheim] and I could have written, "This is our story, and this is who we are," and sort of this navel-gazing, narcissistic approach to comedy we're seeing these days.
Comedy really is my bread and butter, even when I'm doing a serious character, with the exception of Outcast. I have found very little humor in this character. Most of the time, what I do, somewhere there is comedy in it.
I always prefer the character moments. For me, personally, whether I'm shooting the gun or not shooting the gun, I really don't care. I'm the guy who's like, "Whatever you want me to do." But, I really get excited about the character moments that are steeped in emotion when the stakes are high.
As far as I'm concerned, the stakes are always very high. Whether it's playing at the White House or playing for a group in my own house - you know, one of those soirees I play in. Once I start playing, the stakes are somehow higher, in a way, than any of the context.
The trick to making a story matter is that every now and then, somebody you care about has to go. If it's somebody that you don't care about, then it doesn't really have - the stakes aren't there. But if you do that every now and then, then the story matters to people. And there are actual stakes involved, emotional stakes.
For good or for bad, I'm a risk taker. I like high-stakes, high-reward type situations.
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