A Quote by Seth MacFarlane
There was no joke I could make that was too offensive. I can actually remember at least one time where my mother told me something that, I was like, 'whoa!'
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I remember thinking that Janis Joplin sang like Mae West talked. When I
first heard the primal scream in 'Piece Of My Heart,' I was hooked. 'Cheap
Thrills,' Janis 'Live' with Big Brother And The Holding Company, was one of
my all time faves. During the 'whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa's' in 'Combination Of
Two,' I couldn't help but go to the mirror and pretend I was a wild woman
like Janis, in a rock band.
You just witnessed something I've never seen in my entire life. They just called that team (Tennessee) the winner. They said whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, (whistles) come back here. Then they called us the winner. I'm a tell you right now as an experience, dammit, I'm going to enjoy that one as much as I hate to admit it.
I remember yelling at my mother one time, horribly. I was in tenth grade or something like that, and I hadn't done something, and she misunderstood because my stepfather told her something that was wrong that I hadn't done.
It's really surreal when I play shows, I'll have three or four people who are in the front row who are singing every word to my songs. The first time I experienced that I was like,"Are they mocking me? Is this a joke?" But it's not a joke. They actually identify with my music and that is something that I'm getting used to.
If I make a joke about black people or Asian people or whatever, and then an Asian comes up to me afterwards and says, "That joke offended me," I'm still more or less not going to listen, but at least it makes sense, like I said something that was about them.
I actually remember getting asked when we were at the Cannes Film Festival, what I expected to do next. I remember feeling like there was no way I could've imagined that something like Tetro would have happened to me.
I like silly things. I think that "silly-stupid" or "stupid-smart" might be my philosophy, which is to combine a veneer of intelligence with an undercurrent of crass stupidity. Sometimes that stupidity is in the form of the actual joke that's being told, or it could be in the way the joke is told. Like, repetition is really stupid, but it's really funny. Or it could be that the punchline itself is stupid.
The U.K. and Europe in general seem to be a lot more patient. The U.S. are expecting 'joke joke joke joke joke joke joke.' They don't actually sit and listen to you.
I keep on repeating something told to me by an American psychologist: "When you are making a joke about someone and you are the only one to laugh, it is not a joke. It is a joke only for yourself." If people are making a joke they have the right to laugh at me but I will ignore them. Ignoring doesn't mean that you don't understand. You understand it so much that you don't want to react.
The values my mother taught me were like, if you're going to do something, don't half-ass it. I remember her literally saying that to me. Like the first time I ever heard the term half-ass was coming from my mother's lips. I was probably 8 or 9. If you're going to do something, go ahead and throw 115 percent at it, and if you get 100 percent back, well, there you go - you're perfect.
I remember something Clint Eastwood told me early on. I don't remember how old I was when you told me this, Dad. But you said, "As an actor, I never went back to my trailer. I always hung out on set and learned." That stuck with me.
I had to keep myself in check. Like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa.' I'd never sat in a room, five feet away from a Klansman putting on his damn robe. That's what freaked me out a little bit. But I wanted to see a Klansman.
I remember when my daddy gave me that gun. He told me that I should never point it at anything in the house; and that he'd rather I'd shoot at tin cans in the backyard. But he said that sooner or later he supposed the temptation to go after birds would be too much, and that I could shoot all the blue jays I wanted - if I could hit 'em; but to remember it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.
One time I picked it up and a voice goes, 'Hi, it's Sinatra. Can you play me a record?' I was like, 'Oh yeah, very funny,' and hung up. I thought someone was having a joke, but it was actually Frank. My manager told me there aren't many people who put the phone down on Sinatra.
I'm not a big note-taker, so I think that the way I decide is that whatever I remember I always consider something that's important. If I remember a joke then I know it's a good joke, if I remember a story then I know it's a good story, and so that's how I curate what stories I'm going to write for the book. And I go over them again, make sure there's a theme and all that stuff, but mostly, it is intuition.
I have been told too much - to talk less, to keep my opinions to myself, to not sound intelligent - all this was told to me so that I could fit in. But I never thought I fit in anyway. So if you don't fit in, at least stand out.
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