I loved Stephen Wright, and I loved Mitch Hedberg, but they seemed like geniuses you could never emulate. You'd just be ripping them off.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I'd say people that really inspired me at first were like, Dustin Hoffman, Jim Carrey... serious Jim Carrey though.
Guys like Philip Seymour Hoffman or Sam Rockwell are the guys I look up to and have the kind of career I'd like to emulate.
When I was a kid, I was a fan of comedy. I always loved Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Dave Letterman - not an actor, obviously, but I'm still impressed by his wit. I wanted to emulate them because they made me laugh.
And I loved Frank Lloyd Wright. I think he was the greatest man I have ever met in my life.
I think Dustin Hoffman's career I would love to emulate just because it's so diversified.
I get inspired when I look at Tom Lennon, who did 'Reno 911!' for six seasons while writing huge movies and directing and also doing other pilots; he did that FX pilot, the 'Star Trek' thing.
Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins.
Greg Berlanti, David Nutter, Andrew Kreisberg and Marc Guggenheim are the people I wanted to work with. They're smart, they're funny, they're cool, they're edgy.
I grew up on Harold Lloyd, Charles Chaplin, and Buster Keaton, and those were the ones who inspired me.
I've always loved Don Cheadle and Jeffery Wright and even Sam Jackson.