You want to be excited about what you're doing. So whenever I get tired, I think, 'Would ten-year-old Adam be pretty stoked on what I'm doing and what's happening?' So I just live my life as if I'm using my ten-year-old brain.
— Adam DeVine
I tend to have a lot of jokes about ex-girlfriends. They always ask me if they will be the subject of a joke, and I always tell them they won't. Unless they do something crazy. They all tend to, so you know where that goes. There are no closed doors. The 'art' will suffer.
When I was a teenager, I was an umpire for a competitive league for 8- to 9-year-olds. I was really bad at it because I didn't know all the rules, and all these kids were better athletes than me. I made a bad call, and this dad snapped on me. Then he dumped his trash from his cooler, and I had to kick him out of the stands.
I did telemarketing for years, starting at the age of 16, just selling steak knives to old people. Old people go through a weird amount of steak knives. I also sold straight meat over the telephone.
What happened to me is I gained a little weight so I could be more accessible to people. They're not like, 'Oh my God, he's, like, a male model comedian; yuck, ugh.' It's like, 'Oh, he's a little squishy; He's like me. He's accessible.' And girls are like, 'Look how cuddly he is. I just want to cuddle up in his neck fat and go to sleep.'
The thing that I think a lot of guys need to know how to do is not take your mother's advice about honesty being the best policy. Listen to your cool, drunk uncle who tells you to lie. Those are the relationships that last.
I always wanted to be a comedic actor - that's what I wanted from the job - to do comedy and to create my own comedy. But I still love doing stand-up and will probably be doing it forever. I'd love to be an old guy who can't really walk, can't really stand-up, and I have to sit on the stool and tell jokes.
I don't want any competition; I've finally made it! I don't want any young bucks knocking me off and taking my job, so stay in school! Stay in school and get a nice job working in an office!
The American school system's a little warped, so anyone can get a degree if they have a little money.
As far as stand-ups go, I always loved Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, and Sinbad. Basically, I love black comedians because they're the funniest. I wish I were a black comedian, actually.
When I auditioned for 'Pitch Perfect,' I didn't know it was a singing movie. I didn't read the script. I go to the audition, and I'm like, 'Oh, it's a baseball movie.' But then I'm reading the lines, and I'm like, 'This doesn't seem like a baseball movie.'
After 'Pitch Perfect,' I only want to be in sequels. No. 2 of whatever.
My parents are very cool and wildly supportive - maybe almost too much. I want to tell them to chill out.
I think making friends is not being afraid to look stupid, because everyone wants a friend who is willing to be stupid and fun. If you try and be too cool, it only works in high school. After that, being uncool is a very cool thing to do. So just have fun, and don't worry what other people think of you and people will want to be your friends.
Be yourself. I had this three-week period where I wore this straw fedora. I thought it was what chicks wanted. And then it dawned on me that I was trying to be something that I wasn't, so I took the fedora off. So be yourself.
I don't really write jokes down. I tend to have a premise that I work out and test on stage.
Even as a kid, I was a businessman. I figured out that if you plucked all the berries off my neighbor's tree and smashed them up, they made a Nickelodeon Gak-type consistency. I sold them to all the neighborhood kids and made stacks of quarters. Of course, the berries were poisonous, and I got in all types of trouble.
I'm not a good rapper. For whatever reason, my brain does not work that way. I just do the beginning, like, 'Yeah, yeah! Ha ha! Woo! What up? Come on! Get at me!' I'm Captain Hook.
Jealousy is the worst trait in any person.
When telemarketers call me now, I won't get the blow-horn. I'm more polite than the average person.
Some celebrities like to get behind water conservation or helping the homeless get back on their feet. Me? Body grooming control: that's what I like to step behind 100 percent.
I like Louis C.K., Chris Rock. Old schools like Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.
What's so cool about movies is once you're done with the movie, you put it away and come up with a whole new different idea with different characters and a different world. But in TV, you build these characters, and you build this world, and then you're there for however long you do the show.
I loved Adam Sandler's early stuff. I thought it was so cool how irreverent and weird he would get.
If you like standup and decide that it's overtaking your life and want to hate it, watch 1,000 standup comedians who are trying to get on a TV show.
That's another piece of advice: Don't go to college; follow your dreams. Unless you're a doctor - then go to college.
I tried out for my basketball team every year and I never made it. You had to buy the shoes before you knew if you were on the team because it took a few weeks for them to ship. I bought the shoes every year, never once made the team, had a ton of high school basketball shoes.
I sold steaks over the phone in Omaha, Nebraska. Marbling, fantastic. That's what makes a great steak; a lot of people don't know.
I still haven't found the humor in getting hit by a cement truck. My knees still hurt when I think about it, so no jokes about that yet.
I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, even as a kid. Me and my dad would watch 'Evening at the Improv' on A&E.
When I was 15, I worked as a bag boy in a grocery store. I also needed to walk old ladies to their car and put their bags in the car, and they would give me two dollars. I felt like the richest man in the world.
Naked dudes are inherently funny.
Hot girls have so many options. Sitting at home alone any night of the week and searching the Internet for a dude is on zero hot girls' agendas. So they're definitely not coming after you.
I sold a bunch of stuff. I sold Omaha Steaks, vacation packages... the worst, though, was Time Life Books, because no one wants Time Life Books. No one wants an 'Encyclopedia Brittanica' showing up at their house.
I'm such a huge 'Arrested Development' fan.
I sang the National Anthem at Dodger Stadium - at a baseball game - which was crazy; there was, like, 60,000 people there, which is a huge deal in America - singing the National Anthem.
There's not one thing that inspires me the most. Me and my friends joke around with each other and hang out so much that whatever makes us laugh really hard makes it into 'Workaholics.' But the characters that I think are funny are guys that are confidently stupid.
I like the guys who wrote their own stuff and were able to perform it, like Seth Rogen. He popped off so young. When he did 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,' and he was a co-producer on the movie, I was like, 'Oh my God: that's exactly what I want to do.'
My favorite sequels are basically all Mike Myers films - 'Wayne's World 2,' 'Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,' 'Shrek 2.' Anything he does, it's best the second time around. He needs to do 'So I Married an Axe Murderer 2.'
My senior year of high school, I got into UCLA, but my family couldn't afford it.
People want to be friends with someone who likes to have a good time.
