My godfather was a Chicago policeman, and I've always looked at law enforcement as a challenging and interesting job. There are so many decisions that law enforcement officers have to make, and the incident or situation changes so much from moment to moment and day to day. I have a lot of respect for officers and what they go through.
— Bob Odenkirk
I've spent most of my career in ensembles, and I'm good with that.
I love making wisecracks.
The '50s sucked for a lot of people on Earth.
I enjoy crude behaviour and language. I revel in it.
I'm hypersensitive to negativity and duplicity, and I want to push it away by writing comedy. Maybe that hypersensitivity comes across and allows me to play dastardly, multi-layered people.
I went to New York in '87 to write for 'Saturday Night Live.'
There's timing in drama. You have to have a sense of rhythm. But the real thing that lends yourself to drama as opposed to comedy is a sense from the audience of whether there's more to it than you can see.
In America, we can reinvent ourselves - we're encouraged to.
The alternative scene, for a couple years now, has been taken seriously and that's a cool thing. I don't think it's exploded or anything, but I think it's pretty cool that it still exists, it's still affecting people.
I think independent movies are actually very challenging right now, because it was this huge scene and it was great for a few years. Then, it was totally co-opted by the studios. Now, it's become very corporate, the independent scene.
David and I got cut out the editing process on that. We were able to affect it more than not. We sent in our notes, we were able to see cuts. We weren't allowed to see dailies and we weren't allowed to sit in the editing room and just work.
Drama is more focused, and it reveals itself to you, whereas comedy is just right there when you first read it.
I probably do better when I'm in charge. But it's good to be able to be a part of something and be a supporter and help make a project work.
I have a lot of opinions. I express them in 'Mr. Show' very clearly, I think. I feel like both David Cross and I felt like that show reflected each of us pretty wholly.
To me, great writing - and when you can really make something wonderful out of it as an actor - is when your character has a sense of self-awareness. It doesn't necessarily have to arc. It doesn't have to grow.
I always wrote risque comedy and crude comedy.
All people are sad clowns. That's the key to comedy - and it's a buffer against reality.
You make you work for yourself. It's the feeling of, 'If nobody ever saw it, that'd be fine, too.'
I love writing comedy and being a part of it, but as a visual, physical presence in a story, I probably am more impactful in drama. It's not really a tribute to my dexterity and wide-ranging talent so much as it is a person finally getting to where they should've been from the start.
It is so weird to be on this side of that, because when you're starting out, and it seems like you're starting out for so long, you look up to the people who have made their mark. And you sort of want to be that.
It's nice that the independent scene is taken seriously, and has been.
I actually think there's a potential, a crazy potential, that network TV could become something valuable and worthwhile, just because of fear on the part of the networks.
I can't really say how big the cult is. But I'm proud of it. I'm proud that it has a life.
My experience - and it might be just the kind of comedy that I do, which is usually sketch comedy - is that there's a lot more texture and subplot in drama than in comedy.
All those Bob Hope specials made me cringe when I was a kid.
I didn't do so well at 'Saturday Night Live.' It was a very hard experience for me, for a lot of reasons that have to do with the kind of person I am and the personal issues I had at the time. I was very alone in New York, and the show has a lot of stress related to it.
Vince Gilligan is a wizard - and a fantastically hard-working wizard.
Humans are ridiculous. We're all pathetic strivers who will fall short. If you can accept that, it's optimistic because you can shoot for the moon and know you're never going to get there, and that's OK.
'Monty Python' became my religion when I was 10. It led me out of the depths of darkness. I loved 'The Goodies,' too, and 'The Two Ronnies.' I watched those shows on the public television station in Chicago.
I remember making 'Mr. Show,' thinking, 'Man this stuff is really funny to me.' I don't know if anyone else will love it, but I know I'm going to still watch it in 15 years if I'm still alive and laugh really hard. Even though we had very high standards, we were trying to excite and please ourselves.
I did often wonder how relatable of a story it was when we started 'Better Call Saul.' It's such a unique character with a unique journey. But the universal drive of trying to earn respect from the people you love and not being able to do that is a common struggle for a lot of people.
When I go to M Bar there's all kinds of agents there, looking for people who doing good stuff.
I'm about to go to Sundance for my 3rd year, and Sundance has never felt like a real independent festival at all. On the other hand, it might to start feel that way.
I think that cable TV is a great venue to do something interesting.
I pretty much live about 10 minutes from my office. I have two kids, and I have about 8 projects that I'm working on, so I basically just get up and go to work, and go home every night and play with my kids, so I don't really know.
