A Quote by Fred Armisen

I was in a band and it wasn't working out the way I wanted. Then somehow, little by little, I started doing a couple comedy things. All of a sudden I was being asked to do more and more comedy things. There was this message from the world saying, "Maybe you should go this direction."
Comedy is lively, comedy is joy, and that's what keeps us [people] going, we've got to look forward to little, little happiness's. Little, little joys, and comedy is very, very important, it's a vital. We underestimate its value, but we should see more comedies. Comedy is life giving, it's invigorating. I really believe it.
I love comedy. I suppose comedy is my first love, in a way. I did a lot of acting, funnily enough, unprofessionally, as a kid. From when I was 10 years old until I was about 19, I was always doing little sketches with my friends, and doing different accents and voices. Probably about 3/4 of those were comedic, in some way, and the other 1/4 was more serious stuff or more action or more dramatic little pieces that I would make. But, I tend to lean towards comedy.
I started doing comedy just as myself, because I thought, "This is what's expected, you're meant to tell stories and do observations." And then I started to realize that I wanted to mix it up a bit, so I started to doing songs, and I had a little keyboard onstage and would bring in little props. Then I thought about the idea of talking about a character and becoming the character onstage. So, it sort of morphed into being stand-up that was more character based, and I found that's the stuff I got the better reaction from and was more exciting for me.
When I was a little kid, I was a huge fan of 'The Kids in the Hall.' They were like my boy band. I was obsessed with sketch comedy. Being raised Christian, I was somewhat sheltered from the more radical high-art world. So to me, comedy was where people got to express themselves in an abstract way. It was a big part of my growing up.
I really wanted to do a comedy. I've done a lot of drama, and comedy was the one genre I was not being offered. So I became obsessive about getting one. I tried with two little parts in comedies that were more mainstream, I was kind of fumbling around, and then I read The Brothers Bloom and knew it was the one I wanted to jump into. Did it take adjusting? Actually, it's not really any different from doing drama.
For the last year and a half, I went from being a crazy workout girl to sort of saying, "My body wants a little bit a of break." So I kind of stay with more simple stuff and taking walks and not being neurotic about working out and eating right. I started to enjoy life a little bit more. The only downside to that is there's that couple extra pounds and about 4,000 pregnancy rumors, but you know, other than that, it feels great.
To be honest, I'm probably more of a comedy person, actually. I really enjoy the comedy stuff, and I've got some things I'll be working on that I think are just different ways of combining genres in comedy and drama and action.
Doing comedy stuff is maybe more fun, but maybe the serious stuff is a little bit more rewarding.
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
I always did music, but music is an easier thing for me. Making videos and doing comedy things was more of a challenge, so I was more interested in that. Music is a little bit more automatic.
We always wanted to make a comedy that was a little bit more than that, which had tragic elements to it... that people engaged with - an intelligent comedy essentially.
When you get big special effects pictures, sci-fi and things, there's little or no comedy. Or it's a domestic comedy and there's not one special effect. But very rarely do these things fuse and come out right.
I never wanted to be a model. I never wanted to be a serious actress. I started off doing comedy. I did a stand-up comedy camp at the Laugh Factory, and I started out on Nickelodeon.
Every time you show something to somebody they're going in one direction, when they see that thing you did they're going to go off track - maybe towards a direction that you think is more important. They'll be more discerning, they'll probably see things a little bit more profoundly, they'll spend more time trying to understand what's in front of them.
As a designer, I'm supposed to be provoking people's reactions, and getting people to see things differently. I think more of us should be doing this. Because yeah, maybe guys are not gonna want to wear my stuff, but they'll think that they can maybe wear something a little bit more than what they've been wearing. That's the only way things move forward.
It's not the '80s any more. We're not all riding around in limousines and snorting coke off of hookers' tits. We still have to keep working and touring. We're definitely still very much a working band. If we stopped doing this tomorrow, we'd have a little bit of cash to last us a couple of months, and then we'd have to go and get other jobs.
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