I went to pick up my nephew from primary school, and one of the teachers there stopped me and said, 'My son listens to you.' That's quite an awkward thing.
Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.
My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotional truth.
If you don't have anything nice to say... dead silence creates a lot awkwardness.
I had been thinking about social awkwardness and about people you meet who are not bad people - there is nothing wrong with them, but they are just a little bit awkward, and it makes you feel uncomfortable, and it makes you want to bring the encounter to an end. I thought, 'Is there a reason for that? What has contributed to their demeanour?'
You learn timing on the road. You learn structure and how to read an audience. You learn so much about the business of laughter that you can't learn on a set, because it's all on you. Sometimes you bomb, and you know not to tell that joke again... You just hope people find the humor in the awkwardness.
I think fans are going to get everything you'd expect from 'The Office', from awkwardness, to a lot of humor and heart.
That's usually how I get to know strangers - get inappropriately touchy. Once they've experienced the awkwardness of you being way too close for comfort, after that, it all gets easy.
When it is perceived that a show has gone awry, the pressure is staggering, and as a writer caught in that storm, it feels like you are being attacked by jackals.
I almost chopped my thumb off once. Just before I left home, I was about ten or eleven years old, and I was trying to open a bone. Can you imagine that? A bone! I was trying to get the marrow out of a bone, and I took the ax, and I went to chop it, and something slipped, and the ax went right down there and damn near cut it off.
If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually the tree has to fall down.
Know your priorities and identify the five powerful action steps that you intend to take to move your initiatives forward each day. If you go to a tree with an ax and take five whacks at the tree every day, it doesn't matter if it's an oak or a redwood; eventually, the tree has to fall down.
I don't care how much hardware you throw at an audience. If they are not emotionally invested in the thing, it's zero. I can name a slew of films, but I have no ax to grind. I understand the commerce of Hollywood probably better than anyone.
My weirdest scent association is probably Axe Body Spray, because every boy I know wears that stuff, and the smell is so specific! And the loud noise when you spray it! My little brother used to wear it, and the whole house would reek of it for days.
I do have a Viking axe by the bed if I need to whack someone... My wife bought me a Viking axe - the axe side curls down so you can grab the adversary around the neck and you can use it to climb walls, as a grappling hook.
When you work in television, working for a big corporation, no matter who you are, you can always get cancelled. That sucks. Do you really want to work with an axe over your head for the rest of your life? Not me, not really, and not if you don't have to.
One of the things 'Minecraft' is most noted for is the freedom it gives the players to build and experiment with the tools. You start off with simple objects; axes, torches, helmets and swords. With a little time and experimentation, you move to switches, complex machines, mine carts, glass.
You want at least 5% of the population being serious. That five, 6% of the population carries the rest of the people. You've heard that old axiom: 5% of the people pull the wagon; 95% are in it.
There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.
I tell you the solemn truth, that the doctrine of the Trinity is not so difficult to accept for a working proposition as any one of the axioms of physics.
