When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.
A lot of my comic influences are distinctly American: Woody Allen and Bob Hope, for example. They were always the underdogs who were using wit to sort of battle their way through. And it seems to me that a lot of contemporary U.S. comedies are shot through with losers. None of the characters in 'The Big Bang Theory,' for instance, are studs.
Why would they have gone to the trouble to hire the best comedy writers in the business to write funny material for us to play straight, if the children in our audience were the only audience.
You don't service a big, fun premise comedy and then shoot yourself in the foot with too much irony. You need the audience to invest in the fun and the warmth and generally care about the characters.
Comedy in America is very serious. Either they laugh, or they don't.
There are lots of actors, and you need a way to stand out. Writing comedy sketches was a way of doing that.
Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.
When I started out in the late '80s, my act was pretty terrible, and for years, I kind of toiled in obscurity. I don't believe in a hierarchy in comedy; I feel that a person deserves respect the first time they get onstage, and after that, they just have to be funny and get more consistent.
American actresses have more problems than I do; I'm lucky to be able to play what I want for a smaller audience, because I have my own country to do that in.
Comedy is underrepresented in every actor's life, because it's so bloody difficult to write.