Quotes
The starvation that led to opportunity was - I was studying acting in New York. and I was doing some summer stock Shakespeare plays, but for all intents and purposes, I wasn't getting any jobs.
Sometimes it's in a job that I really care about and am very proud of and very pleased with and have a great time with a bunch of terrific actors that turns out to be excellent.
So, for my acting training and trying to get cast in plays, I just started showing up at comedy clubs every night.
So people like the way I work, others don't. I wish them all well, but I don't care what they think.
So I got to watch the great comedians perform every night. And the greatest of those was Richard Pryor.
Now in this middle part of my life, I've got to tell you, winds come, storms blow, and I have problems, but I feel pretty rock solid.
Now I'm a comedy dinosaur, but at the time, it was a much more free form thing.
Learning value, color, drawing. I thought in order to - no matter what kind of painting I wanted to do - I had to go, like so many generations before me, to a school and start drawing the figure.
Keep your head on straight, do the work and be who you are and you'll be the happiest guy in the end.
It's not like I'm the bitter guy who wants to turn his back on this thing.
It's just a matter of getting a young enough person who wants it enough and they'll do it.
If you going to live by a certain code - as Bob Dylan said, you gotta serve somebody.
I've worked hard in it and I take pride in the work that I've done as an artist, in many different fields.
I'm just truly out of things to say. I'm on the record about everything.
I'm both saying things that hopefully are funny, but mostly I'm acting out scenes both from my past, my present, as a father, I'm doing material on having kids, going to restaurants.
I'm a strong person with a strong foundation.
I was studying acting in New York, and wasn't being hired by anyone to do anything other than to work in an Oriental rug warehouse.
I was an artistic dilettante for a while, in photography and collage and the visual arts.
I think with the studies I've done I could describe myself as a painter as well as an actor.
I think maybe I'm too much of a wise guy or too independent and I just kind of end up doing whatever I feel like.