I started by writing, with my partner Ed Simmons, a monologue for Danny Thomas, that he performed at Ciro's nightclub in Los Angeles.

So we gravitated to shows and issues and causes that made people care.

We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.

My dad called me meat head dead from the neck up.

I wanted to work with Bert Lahr [the 'Cowardly Lion' in 'The Wizard of Oz'], and I did.

But it also became the experience, or was the experience, of the writers who were attracted to this kind of humor. They're all men or women who come from the same kind of experience in their own lives.

If there is a reason to believe in God, it would be the Havana Leaf.