Rob Huebel
I have two brothers, and we used to always laugh at oblivious people. People who are so cocky and full of themselves that they just don't realize how stupid they are. And those kind of idiots really make me laugh.
I grew up in the D.C. area, and I used to wear a Redskins jersey just walking around. I just had kind of a bowl haircut for a long time and no sense of style or personal hygiene. But the main thing was the haircut. You know, when you see a haircut of yourself from around 12 or 13, it's rough. I also had really bad acne.
'Axe Cop' is an animated show that just started on Fox that is based off the comic book series. And here's the hook: it's written by a 5-year-old. This 5-year-old has a brother who's, like, 28 and is in the business, and the little brother kept coming up with all these awesome stories for this character he dreamed up called Axe Cop.
Sarah Silverman makes me laugh out loud every time I see her.
Can I play a southern character? You betcha. Can I do the voice of Tourist Dad and Carnival Barker? Ya betcha. Can I do Fix-It Felix? Ya betcha. But I don't want to just play southern characters, so I hide it; I bury it. I tamp it down like a secret. Like a dirty little secret.
Every other show that I'm on, they're always rushed, and you feel this pressure to hurry up and get out of the scene, but I don't feel that way on 'Transparent.' They like to linger in these scenes.
We're going for the joke on 'Children's Hospital,' and we're going for the joke on 'The League.' It's fun to go between shows, but you have to mentally remind yourself what show you're on.
I kind of got really lucky a couple of years ago: I got to do a part in 'The Descendants,' in Alexander Payne's movie. I just had a small part, but I got to do a few scenes with my best friend George Clooney.
I think there are a lot of really funny things in 'The Descendants,' but there're a lot of different tones in that movie, in the same way that 'Transparent' has a lot of different tones.
The first concert I ever went to was the Bee Gees.
I have a thing that I do when I meet famous people, where I try to play it really cool. Sometimes I pretend like I don't know them.
There's no way to play it cool when you meet Paul McCartney. You just start sweating; you trip over your words. Everyone kind of reverts back to being a 10-year-old girl. You can't help it. He's one of the only people on planet Earth that everyone knows who he is. Everyone.
The comedy world is like a small pond; we all know each other.
'Human Giant' was a kind of lightning in a bottle. A rare opportunity for us to write and create our own sort of thing, with very few restrictions.
During the first season of 'Human Giant,' I remember the people at MTV were all over us. They hadn't really done a live-action short-film comedy show, so they didn't know what it was going to be, and they were worried. But after that, they let us do whatever we wanted.
I have done so many stupid commercials and terrible other little projects that never went anywhere and just ended up being terrible.
When I first started out, I kinda just wanted to do comedy stuff, and thankfully, I had a fair amount of success. I've been able to be on, I think, almost virtually every American sitcom.
The cool thing about 'Transparent' is that the show is funny but not like a sitcom is funny. It all comes down to the writing... The writers on that show are so good that you don't have to worry about anything. There are so many things that can go wrong making a TV show or a movie, but if the writing's good, that's, like, 95 percent of it.
I have a real problem now when I go onto Netflix: it takes me a half hour to pick something out. They've got to figure something out, whether it's their algorithm... Maybe if they had it curated like a video store: 'Will Ferrell recommends this movie' or 'Jennifer Lawrence recommends these 10 movies.'
The world's so big, it's hard to pick one best friend. I like everyone in Venezuela, but in L.A., I hang out mostly with my comedy friends. Guys like Paul Scheer, Rob Riggle, Owen Burke, Ed Helms, Seth Morris - we all kind of came up together doing comedy in New York.
Conan O'Brien's the best. I'm glad he's in L.A. because I want to move in with him. I was a guest on that show one time to promote 'Human Giant,' and he was the coolest, funniest guy. I was really impressed. He's also eight feet tall and can shoot lightning from his fingertips.
Comedy people like other comedy people. People hang out and are friends and do shows together, and when you get something going like a TV show or a movie, you want your friends to be in it and make it funnier. That's just the way it should be.
I look up so much to those movies, 'Airplane!' and 'Naked Gun.' I think that stuff is so funny. I grew up just loving all that stuff and sort of idolizing Leslie Nielsen.
Alexander Payne is one of those directors who is completely in charge and knows exactly what he wants, which is really fun. It's fun when a director is very specific. He knows totally the tone that he's going for. It makes it easier than if everyone's just guessing and trying to figure it out.
George Clooney is exactly what you would expect. He's annoyingly good looking, insanely funny, and super smart. So you just feel really inferior around him all the time. You end up feeling really bad about yourself, but you walk away feeling really great about George Clooney.
A comedy scene can't really have two weirdoes in it. It doesn't make any sense that way, so you need someone to ground it and call out what's unusual about this person and this scene. Early on, I got pretty good at doing that, and I felt pretty comfortable doing that.
My mom has this thing where if I'm doing anything doing dirty or crazy, she sniffs it out and yells at me. But the good thing is my mom doesn't have cable, and so much of the stuff I've done was on cable, so many times she'll miss it. I tend to gloss over the crazier things I shoot.
I hate hospitals. Even if it's a joyful occasion when a friend gave birth. It's like, 'Oh, look at the beautiful baby.... and all the disease on the walls...'
Even though the show is called 'Childrens Hospital,' we don't use kids a lot. They always want a juice box or a fruit roll up or a nap.
There's no way to play it cool when you meet Paul McCartney. You just start sweating, you trip over your words. Everyone kind of reverts back to being a 10-year-old girl. You can't help it. He's one of the only people on planet Earth that everyone knows who he is. Everyone.Collection: Girl
That's a weird way to torture yourself. Just watch a movie, over and over, that you hate. That's really funny - that's probably exactly what hell is like.Collection: Hate
I've had and probably still have a lot of bad haircuts. My mom just sent me some pictures - I don't know why she did this - but she sent me some pictures of me when I was probably like 12. I grew up in the D.C. area and I used to wear a Redskins jersey just walking around. I just had kind of a bowl haircut for a long time and no sense of style or personal hygiene.Collection: Mom
When you're expecting a baby, there's a lot you can plan for, but when it happens early you just have to jump into it. Whatever plans you had, everything goes out the window.Collection: Baby
You know, when you see a haircut of yourself from around 12 or 13, it's rough. I also had really bad acne. Where I had to take this medicine - serious medicine - with warning on the label, like, "Do NOT take this if you are pregnant." Thank God I wasn't pregnant at the time. But yeah, I just had bad haircuts, bad acne, and bad clothes for a long time. And probably still right now.Collection: Medicine
You know the awkward class photo when you're sitting there for your school picture and you're 14 or something and you've got braces, and you don't know how to smile, and you've got a hard-on.Collection: School
One of the coolest things was that, in 2007, I got to go to Iraq with Rob Riggle, Paul Scheer, and Horatio Sanz. We went over there to do some comedy shows with the U.S.O.Collection: Iraq
I've gotten to go to a lot of places that I never would have been able to go and been able to meet a lot of people. And every now and then you'll be doing something and you're like, "I can't believe I get to do this."Collection: Believe
The first concert I ever went to was the Bee Gees. I don't know if you remember the Bee Gees. My mom took me. I was little. But my mom was a big disco fan, and - my mom took me to the Bee Gees. Looking back now, it's pretty embarrassing if your first concert was with your mom.Collection: Mom
I got a parking ticket one time in L.A. and I was furious about it. I was trying to prove a point to the guy who gave it to me and I put it in my mouth and chewed it up. And the guy just kept watching me, like, "Yeah?" He didn't think I was going to finish the job. So then I swallowed it. The good news is that paper is not a big deal if you eat it.You'd be full, but you could eat the phone book. So that was the weirdest thing: a parking ticket.Collection: Jobs
Most monuments are not something you're going to keep me out of. And I go to a lot of monuments.Collection: Monument
One of the first TV shows that I did was this prank show. And we did a prank where we took a Michael Jackson impersonator and I played his publisher.I was just really good at my job.We were just about to go onto the field to throw out the first pitch just two weeks after 9\11. It was a huge security breach, and we made a lot of cops look really dumb. Producers of the show thought it would be really funny and I didn't think about it because I was a young dumb comedian. So I got arrested and went to jail in the Bronx, and now I can never go back to Yankee Stadium.Collection: Jobs
People always say, "When did you know you were funny?" They don't mean that in a bad way - this already makes me sound like such a jerk.Collection: Mean
I didn't believe in Bigfoot.I just thought, "No, that would be impossible. You know, we would have found Bigfoot by now. We would've found some skeletons, we would've found some sort of proof of Bigfoot." So, I didn't believe for a long time, but obviously this is the year we find Bigfoot. And obviously all scientists agree that there's definitely Bigfoot.There's no reason to debate it. It's like debating climate change. There's no reason to debate climate change anymore. There's no reason to debate whether there's Bigfoot. Clearly, the yeti exists.Collection: Believe
We just haven't found Bigfoot because the world is big. And the woods are deep. The more TV shows that we can get where people go out looking for Bigfoot, the better our chances are. So let's get more of those shows going.Collection: Tv Shows
Bigfoot loves celebrities. You just have to bring celebrities that Bigfoot loves. It would probably be just gorgeous women.Collection: Gorgeous
I read one time that I am permanently banned from Yankee Stadium and that I could never ever go back. This article mentioned, supposedly, that I did something in the early 2000s at Yankee Stadium, and I got arrested, and supposedly, allegedly, I went to jail for something that I did. I read that about myself one time and I thought that was pretty fascinating.Collection: Yankees
I would host a show where I take famous people out into the woods every week to find Bigfoot. I would do that. And you know what? We would find him in like a week.Collection: People
Don't ever use duct tape on your privates. That's what I always tell people.Collection: People
Paul McCartney chit-chats with you, he makes eye contact with you, he seems really interested in what you're saying. He really puts everyone else at ease and makes them feel good so they're not nervous, which I think is really cool.Collection: Eye
That's a very nice, generic-sounding question: "When did you know you were funny?" But it pre-supposes that I think I'm really hilarious. So that's kind of a loaded question.Collection: Nice