I grew up in Iowa, so I would go hunting. I took a hunter's safety course in eighth grade to get extra credit in school.
— Paul Rust
I came of age right around the time that the sort of priced-to-own VHS world began, and so the movies that you really enjoyed, you were able to kind of watch as many times as you wanted.
The thing I always liked about 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' was Pee-wee's, obviously, an oddball, but nobody in that universe points a finger at him and goes, 'Look at the weirdo!' I think that's why weirdo, arty kids like it so much: because it's sort of like a utopia.
It's funny; before I started writing professionally, I had a job logging video footage for behind-the-scenes footage for special features.
Every day, I thanked my lucky stars that I got to work with Gillian Jacobs, who is such an amazing actor and brings so much depth to everything that we do.
The first three times we met, I don't think I remembered anything. I was just in this daze like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm sitting here with Paul Reubens.' And I kept almost calling him Pee-wee.
I think it's sort of rare in TV shows or movies to see people being vulnerable. That's sort of scary to an audience.
I don't believe in love at first sight.
Me and my comedy writer friends talk a lot about how we love 'Die Hard,' but we'll never be able to write 'Die Hard.'
I would never turn down an invitation to co-write another Pee-wee Herman movie!
With so much of what I write, I'm just constantly wondering out loud, 'Do other people feel this way?'
I remember doing this little physical gesture of holding up my foot and having my foot wave around while I held my ankle. It got a big laugh, and when people started laughing, it dumped some chemicals on my brain. It just felt so good.
I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit.
I was such a fan of Quentin's growing up. I remembered I wanted to see 'Pulp Fiction' so badly, but my mom had seen it, and even though she loved it, she just thought it wasn't appropriate for a 13-year-old.
I'm sure that it's a universal experience, but I wonder if it gets exacerbated more in Los Angeles, where people are constantly looking over at the other people, going, 'Why don't I have that? I want that. Their table looks warmer.'
Love takes a lot of work.
I don't really like the term 'honest.'
I've noticed, as a comedy fan, that I really like Paul Thomas Anderson or Quentin Tarantino because when they're funny, they're actually funny. It's not like when other dramatic writers have comedy, and I'm just like, 'Well, that's not funny. Why are you even trying to make a joke here?'
I grew up in Le Mars, Iowa, and even though it's a great place to grow up and be raised as a kid, there wasn't a lot to do. It was fairly boring, and I think the way I either escaped the boredom or found a way to keep myself occupied was through movies and TV shows.
The thing that I like about Pee-wee is it can exist on the level of midnight college cult movies that the hip kids are into and, at the same time, it could be something a kid and his family watch together. Being able to straddle both lines of being subversive and, at the same time, very inclusive - I love that about the character.
Conflict comes from a person's own actions, not what someone else does to them.
It's been a challenge for me my whole life in that my insides don't necessarily match my outsides... People try to strike up a conversation with me about Dungeons & Dragons or comic books, and I'm like, 'I can't. I'm sorry.'
I was going to go to a midnight screening of 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure' in college, and it's the sort of thing where people dress up. So I got dressed up, and then I got lost. I was speeding, and a cop pulled me over while I was wearing a Pee-wee suit. That's a hard ticket to get out of.
I love watching movies. That's, like, my favorite thing to do with friends.
In high school, I was crazy in love, and I would make handmade construction paper valentines every month for our monthly anniversaries. Then I'd go early in the morning and tape one to her car. It sounds sweet, but let's be honest: it was a little weird. I was probably crossing some lines.
A lot of the time, a comedy script is just dialogue, and that's the main thing you have to worry about.
I want to give every single character the dimensions and complexity of a main character.
If you watch most of the stuff on TV and in movies, it's usually put-down humor. It's like somebody being mean or cynical or thoughtless to another person. I never wanted to be that type of comedian.
In your 20s, you're checking your bank account to make sure you're not broke. In your 30s, you're looking at yourself and realizing you're broken.
Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic - those are sort of three layers of repression.
I want to be liked. Everybody wants to be liked.
Certainly on a date, I've been over-focused on, 'Is this person comfortable or not?' and then deciding for them that they are not comfortable and I will help them, which is death for a first date.
It's tough - and I'm not the first person to say this - but cliches exist because they actually happen in real life.
If you read scripts, you would see people rarely speak like that in real life, in complete sentences.
I try not to rely on pop culture references as a crutch for jokes, because then, I think, that's when the timelessness quality is lost.
I'm not the first person to talk about this, but L.A. is just sort of a weird city because it's just a bunch of little towns put together under the umbrella of L.A. So people feel disconnected from each other and far apart, and in a relationship, that can also be a thing.
I watched 'Freaks and Geeks,' and I was like, 'Oh, if you write about your own personal experiences, and if you're specific about it both in what happened and how you felt about it, it can make for scenes that are really compelling.' For the rest of college, I was basically ripping off 'Freaks and Geeks' with plays I wrote and stuff like that.
The challenge in writing a show that's about people and their flaws is that it can easily tip over - okay, I'll sometimes watch something, and there will be characters that are written in a way that I'll know that the writer just hates human beings. They're expressing this misanthropic point of view with these detestable characters.
The Magic Castle is not a place that people know nationally, but as soon as you move to L.A., you hear people talk about it.
Judd Apatow and Paul Reubens are two people who I'd be more than happy to learn from because I think they're geniuses at what they do.
Most relationships probably start with people going, 'Meh, it's probably best not to be embarking in this relationship.' We do it, though, because our brains are wired to make babies or whatever.
Writing on 'Love' is so steeped in self-analysis. The writer's room can feel like therapy.
I grew up loving Pee-wee Herman. I was obsessed. I was the kid at school who everyone knew was obsessed with Pee-Wee.
Growing up in Iowa, there weren't many people who looked like me. And then when I moved out to L.A., every guy in comedy looked like me.
It would be easy for someone to think growing up in a small town would be like 'Footloose' or something, that it would be, 'No dancing allowed!' all the time, but it was quite the opposite. People always got excited for me and my successes and supported me even though I was a little weirdo goofball.
I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great!
My mom did this really cool thing: when 'Pulp Fiction' came out on video, she made, like, a 'mommy edit.' She took two VCRs and dubbed 'Pulp Fiction' from one tape to the next and edited out all the parts she thought were unsuitable for a kid. It was basically, like, the opening and ending credits.
The first text I ever got was somebody breaking plans on a first date. That was, like, the worst way to be introduced to a new technology is with rejection.
It's such a thrill in a relationship to be able to collaborate creatively. It's very romantic, and I like it.
Some people have interpreted the title of the show - 'Love' - as ironic. For me, it's sincere. The idea that we have to agree with love is a genuine statement about love.
