I love crazy names. It comes right from Monty Python and Woody Allen - nothing in the world makes me giggle more than a funny name. It became a thing I started doing when I wrote. If a person came into a store and said, "How much is this apple?" that person would have an insane name.

I would far rather add a character who generates strong feelings than someone who just kind of floats along, generating medium-warmth smiles of gentle affirmation.

Topical-sketch writing were incredibly rational and well reasoned: don't do a joke if the subject doesn't deserve it. An ad hominem attack on someone might get you a cheap laugh, but it doesn't earn you any long-term trust. The biggest rule was: you attack whoever's in power. Don't bring your personal bias to the table.

In high school, my friend and I discovered that your cable-access station had to let you do whatever you wanted - it was like the Wild West. We made a couple weird things, like a tribute to the Zucker brothers, where we had a panel discussion about the Naked Gun movies. We wrote a script and made jokes that I'm sure were terrible and showed clips of The Naked Gun without permission.

Rule number one for the writers when we committed to the jump was: no hoverboards. No one is allowed to pitch that everyone is on hoverboards. It's going to be very very gently sci-fi.

If the doors aren't open, just kick them in and keep walking.

The first joke I got on the air I remember clearly. Dennis McNicholas and Robert Carlock wrote a sketch where they were evacuating the Titanic, and the last two guys on the entire ship were the two black guys, Samuel L. Jackson and Tracy Morgan. So Will Ferrell was running back and forth, saying, "All first-class passengers get in the lifeboat. All second-class passengers and third-class passengers get in the lifeboat. Let's get all the animals in the lifeboat. Let's put all the empty luggage in the lifeboat."