You know, I'm a big comedy fan.

I always thought it was important to overdeliver, and when I got one of my first jobs, writing jokes for Garry Shandling when he was hosting the Grammys, I stayed up all night and wrote a hundred jokes, and I thought, "I'm always going to be the person that gives them more than they requested, and that's why they'll want to keep me around."

It seems like magic is something kids start really young.

Back then, you seemed like a crazy person when you were trying to push the boundaries of network TV. People looked at you, and they were offended by the fact that you didn't follow the generic rules of what was expected on network TV.

The first comedians I became fascinated with were the Marx brothers. I couldn't get enough of them. Later in life, I thought, "Well, maybe it's because they were so rebellious and they were just flipping the bird to society and all the rules we're supposed to follow." They were saying that none of it is fair.

If you work on network TV, they want to pick your casts, dictate your story and how your show works. It just becomes creativity by committee, which is never good.

I've come to realize that people connect more when they know you're telling them the truth or some aspect of your story, some mutated version of how you are experiencing this life.