If you look at some shows that have an ugly feel to them, or a nihilistic sort of feel to them, you'll usually find a group of cynical, unhappy, miserable people behind the production. If you see a show that's rather boring, or a cookie-cutter factor...
Although my stories are all very different on the surface, I like to write stories about characters struggling with big problems. I'm always reminded, no matter how different from me one of my characters is from me on the surface, how we're all prett...
Stephen King, by far, is the standard-bearer. I think anyone who writes suspense fiction and says that King isn't an influence is either lying or being foolish. I read his book 'On Writing' before I read pretty much any of his fiction.
I wanted to quit the industry when I was eighteen and finish '70s', finish my contract on the show and go to college because I was pretty convinced that after '70s' and after being on a show for eight years that I would be very much pigeonholed for s...
There is nothing positive about being fat. And there is nothing positive about loving yourself. We all need to conform to society's expectations of who we are, because if we don't, who will? Life is more enjoyable when you are thin and pretty. I was ...
It's a well-known fact that the TV camera adds 10 pounds. I don't want to say that I've been calling my Jenny Craig consultant a lot, but I'm pretty sure I'm the first spokesperson whom they've considered filing a restraining order against.
Afterward, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends kept waiting for us to come up, but hey-when you are the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry. And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all tim...
If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could b...
I remember living in a pretty small neighborhood where you could play in the streets and run around like crazy. My friends and I would ride our bikes around, but instead of just riding our bikes, we were solving crimes and going out in the woods to s...
So I went out and bought myself a copy of the Writer and Artist Yearbook, bought lots of magazines and got on the phone and talked to editors about ideas for stories. Pretty soon I found myself hired to do interviews and articles and went off and did...
I'm pretty well-rounded. I can do most of my tricks left and right, in both directions. I try to be smooth and confident. But it's still developing. I'm still trying to find my own personal touch in the way I ski.
I'm pretty crazy about the Yankees. When I can't actually watch a game, I TiVo it. I am also a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan. I don't tell many people that because I will get made fun on because I'm from New Jersey!
For me, I was literally trying to stay afloat. I never actually thought I would get my own sketch show. So the idea that one day I would have my own show is pretty wild. But once I got it, I thought, 'Yeah, this is exactly what I always wanted to do....
I've read a lot of fiction from writers just starting out, and the dialogue is a little bit forced, or it's almost too teenager-y, or too slang-y or putting too much technology or trends in there. I try to stay pretty trend-neutral. I try not to ment...
Back in I want to say 2011, Taylor Swift was on her 'Speak Now' tour. She was kind enough to bring me out as one of the openers on that tour. Between her and Miranda Lambert, who also helped me out that year, I got a pretty non-typical first tour as ...
As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient s...
I grew up Southern Baptist, so my experience was fairly conservative. Not archly so, but I think Memphis - when you get to certain parts of Memphis - are more liberal for sure. But I grew up, until I was about 13 or 14, in a section called Whitehaven...
Doubting what you see is a very odd experience. And doubting what you remember is a little less odd than doubting what you see. But it's also a pretty odd experience, because some memories come with a very compelling sense of truth about them, and th...
The first record I bought was a Carl Perkins record, because I saw him at The Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. I loved Elvis and I found out that he wrote 'Blue Suede Shoes'... so connecting that experience of going to see him play was pretty awesome. T...
The Yale group was doing the Harold. So by our senior year we were trying to do the Harold. Again, we had no idea what we were doing. We had one guy in the group who was pretty experimental; he would kind of push us to do weird things. It was really ...
Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing p...
