Calling Steven Spielberg during the filming of Schindler's List

I think I only called him once, maybe twice. I called him when I was representing People for the Valdheimers Association. A society devoted to helping raise money to help older Germans who had forgotten everything before 1945. I remember him laughing and going "thank you."

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My favorite part of working on Community was getting to work with Chris McKenna, and learning from him (and from Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan) how to start transitioning from sealed-off, alienated writer guy into connected collaborator guy. Talking to other writers about how to tell a story the best way possible, sharing personal experiences and mining them for premises, and just generally being holed up in a room somewhere on a movie lot with a bunch of smart, funny people working together to try to make a perfect show, I always miss that feeling and it changed my life.
You could never do it. You could never recreate these guys [The Marx Brothers]. Remember they did that Three Stooges movie? My manager, George Shapiro, says trying to get someone to act like a comedian is like trying to get them to act like a baseball player. It’s almost impossible. There’s so many tiny polished movements they have that the best actors struggle to replicate. I mean, Dustin Hoffman is a wonderful actor, I love him. But he can’t do stand-up. Because actors are acting. Comedians are talking to a group of people as if they are an individual. They are locked in on those people. They’re not really thinking about performing. The focus is who they’re talking to. There’s a certain ob...
The Joe Dirt wig was itchy. And one time, I walked away from the set at a TV studio when we were doing some Dennis Miller stuff, and I got lost, and I had my janitor's uniform on, and the security guard wouldn't let me back into where I was supposed to go, and I didn't have a cell phone, so I had to sit there for 15 minutes until some PA came to look for me, and I had to explain to them that I was dressed as a janitor with a wig on, and that was an actual story, that sounds fake but it was funny to me. Long story short: I loved the wig, I thought it was hilarious, it was hard to wear all summer but it cracks me up. I think it's in some vault somewhere in the Smithsonian right now, surrounded...
It might be surprising but keeping a straight face in many of the situations we get into on the show is quite difficult for me. I began to realize that I'll sometimes do this thing where I act like I'm picking a piece of food out of my back teeth to cover the fact that I'm smiling. Then if I can't get it together within a few seconds, I might ask for some dental floss or something because I've clearly been picking at this tooth for 20 seconds or so. Some moments that stand out off the top of my head would be the Gas Station episode where the owner told me that he drinks his grandson's urine to ward off fear. I often laugh when I feel uncomfortable too, so I remember having to turn my head a...
Q: Would you agree that this is the best time to be a nerd as the nerds are rising up while the jocks and bullies are pumping our gas? A: i think nerds are on their way to greatness. im SUCH a nerd myself. #hollywoodhandbookref
Technically the debacle started before season 4 because one of the primary things I had intended to do was have Jeff Winger reunite with his Dad in season 3. The beginning of my firing, I think, was when I got a call from one of the compulsively unenjoyable personalities at NBC who just wanted to let me know that he had just had lunch with someone "very, very high up" [by the way, this is the kind of shit I will not miss about network television, why are you WITHHOLDING THE NAME of someone you're about to give me a note from] that was "concerned" because they had recently seen a little bit of Community and it had been Joel McHale attacking the study room table with an axe and so this anonymo...
When you do a movie, and you use a song, or a band, or an image on a t-shirt of a band, there's a quiet clause stating that you can't say anything negative about them. And it's sort of just understood if they're selling you a song, or letting you use a t-shirt, you're going to be respectful. So that line was not in the script, but I asked Kid Rock to yell it to me when I ran off, so I could make an extra whimper, like that was a real dagger. And so when we did it, we couldn't put it in the movie yet until I talked to Def Leppard's manager to make sure that was okay. So I called someone, cuz we originally couldn't put it in, and said "hey, is there any way we can do this" and i had to explain...

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You need to steal things at work. People are going to think I don’t mean them, but I do. This is addressed to you. If there are people you hate at work go into the break room, find their lunch in the refrigerator and put it in the freezer.
Question: Hi Petey Pants! First, I wanted to say thank you for the amount of joy you bring to my existence. Nothing makes me laugh more than re-listening to you and Bert Kreisher belt out some Celine and Kesha. I actually signed my divorce papers this Friday and watching Crashing last night, well, it put everything into perspective. I just wanted to know how you stayed positive after the big D? Answer: that's a big one. you have to allow yourself to grieve and process that heartbreak. and it may be quick and it may be long. but allow it and love yourself through it. it's normal and you'll be okay. dive in. then, slowly you'll see that every moment is a new opportunity to start again. we ar...
Him being such a great friend to me at Juillard, literally feeding me because I don't think I literally had money for food or my student loan hadn't come in yet, and he would share his food with me. And then later after the accident, just seeing him beaming and just, seeing what he meant to so many people.
Snoop Dogg is one of my main men. You don't have to smoke pot to be in his presence. I love him, he's bright, he's fun, he's a good father, and a good man. Snoop is my man.
To keep things fresh, have sex in as many different places as you can. Role-playing is always fun. And you know what turns a girl on more than anything? Take out the trash sometimes!
Well, we didn't part well. I was sort of ambitious thinking that I could hire someone that had the intelligence to do a job but didn't have necessarily speech or couldn't quite hear or spoke in sign language. She was a bright person and witty but she had never been away from her home before and even though I tried to accommodate more than I understood when I first hired her, she was very young in her emotional self and the emotional component of being away from her home was lacking. I tried my best, but I was working all day. She was lovely and very smart, but there's a lot of frustration when you meet people who can't speak well. Being completely disabled in that area causes a great amount ...