In which way did the director of sonic ask you to contribute to ideas for your character and he did ask you to bring from your past elasticity in your characters for this one? And did you also have to go through all the changes when the character had changed?
Well first of all, I never look back. So, there’s a giant cake wedge of my brain that is silly and likes to have fun. So when I get an opportunity, when a script finds me, when I have the opportunity and the license to do that, it’s like somebody opening up the corral and letting the Mustang run. So, I love doing it, but I always live in the moment. So, there was a script and there was guidance and sometimes there was just, “Jim does something here.” (Laugh) And what ended up invariably happening day-to-day is that I would get there and I would have 20 ideas from the night before and I would dream up a few and then I had something over breakfast happen. And if I can’t remember them, then I would tag them up all over the studio on little cards and whatever. And it really is just kind of potpourri of constant creativity. So I think if you drilled down, if you looked at the original script, there’s probably not too many words that ended up in the movie that were there to begin with. So, it was a creative place and Jeff let me just run.
YOU HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT SOON.
I do.
WHAT WILL WE DISCOVER IN THE BOOK THAT WE STILL DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU THAT IS VERY PERSONAL, BECAUSE YOU TOLD ME IT’S A MIX OF FICTION AND REALITY.
Yes.
SO WHY IS THAT AND WHAT IS IN THE BOOK THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR READERS? I believe all memoirs are a mixture of fiction and reality. I think at the very least, they are a reordering of the events of someone’s life in order to make them entertaining, palatable and in most cases, to expand their brand. That is not what this book is about. I’m fairly sure that when you read this book you will be absolutely positive that I was not attempting to expand my brand. In fact, if anything, the book ends the world for people if only for a moment. And I think ultimately at the kind of, somewhere in the basement of our consciousness, all of us yearn for our own absence and to free from concern for this individual, this little thing that’s fighting in the world. So, it’s about wholeness, it’s about absurd treatment of celebrity and persona and I rip myself to pieces. And I think you’ll learn more about me by reading this book than you could ever learn about me by an accounting of the facts and the events.
IS THE BOOK OUT? The book is available to pre-order; it’s going to be out for real in May. It’s a wild one. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
I AM GOING TO ASK YOU ABOUT CENSORSHIP.BECAUSE WE LIVE IN THESE DAYS WHERE YOU ALMOST HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU SAY WHEN YOU TALK AND MOST PEOPLE DON’T THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY TALK AND THIS FINE LINE THAT WE HAVE TO WALK THROUGH.
Especially with a comedian, we shoot from the hip. You don’t want to hurt anybody, you want to send people up, you want to have fun with their little bugaboos. But you are going to, if you are a kidder especially which I am, I kid 100 times a day. So sometimes depending on whether I was tired at the time or I didn’t fully think about what I was going to say, who it would affect, there’s collectives everywhere. If you saw the Super Bowl, there’s Facebook collectives being celebrated. There’s a feeling on the internet of power that people didn’t
have before and now they have it, so they want to speak their mind and it’s sometimes right and it’s sometimes wrong, depending, sometimes it’s fair and sometimes it’s not.
YOU WERE REFERENCING JERRY LEWIS AS ONE OF THE GREATEST MOVIE FILM CLOWNS. AND YOUR CHARACTER IN “KIDDING” IS NOT REALLY A CLOWN I GUESS BUT HE DOES HAVE SOME SORT OF THERAPEUTIC AFFECT ON HIS AUDIENCE. SO, WHAT DO YOU THINK A CLOWN’S GOAL IS, ESPECIALLY TODAY WHEN THE WORLD IS HAVING A PSYCHOTIC EPISODE? IS THERE STILL AN IMPORTANT ROLE THAT CLOWNS PLAY? I don’t know about clowns; people seem to be pretty freaked out about clowns. (laugh) I think basically yeah, anybody who covers their face is thought of as a threat these days in anyway. But clowning is always important, it will never be not important. It’s important to, in my vision sometimes, to debase myself and my own weaknesses, make fun of my own weaknesses and sometimes make fun of weaknesses in other people. But I would never do that if I didn’t think I was the same. So, it’s hugely important, we have got to laugh. If you don’t laugh, it’s over, we are done, we are done here as a species when we stop laughing at ourselves
TR
