"I just feel like that’s a movie that I saw when I was a kid, and you watch it over and over and over again, and you’re like, “Oh, Steve Martin’s doing bits, but they fit a story.” And it’s beautifully shot and directed by Carl Reiner, which some people don’t realize, and I just can’t think of a movie that informed my comedic personality more than The Jerk. It’s also a dumb character… it breaks all these stupid rules that Hollywood has for the sake of humor, and for the sake of jokes, and it’s a feel-good movie. Oh, man. I watch it over and over and over again. It’s got bits of Woody Allen’s kind of mysticalism, but it’s not. It’s jokey but the jokes don’t have punchlines. It’s like a Steve Martin album live, and they did a good job with making it a story. In a lot of ways you have no Borat without The Jerk, you have no anything, Lebowski; all those characters are Jerk-inspired. I play dumb quite a bit; I’ll say that right now. I don’t know if you call it a crutch, or what, but I tend to lean dumb… I don’t think I would have been able to get away with that had it not been for that movie."

"It’s a mad movie. It’s just insane. This was the first movie I remember having so many stars that I loved. My favorite scene is when the older woman realizes that her son-in-law lives close to the treasure, so she calls him up. I remember the phone ringing and ringing, and when they cut to her son, he’s with a girl in a bikini doing the twist to some song. And she has this disaffected look on her face, just staring into nothing. The son is in a ’50s-style bathing suit just jumping around her going, “Yeah. Go.” That moment is something I’ve put in theater pieces, and even when I go out and I’m on the dance floor, I think of that scene. So if that movie gave me anything, aside from the excitement of seeing all these awesome comedic actors, it was that moment. I love that old-style humor, you know, like Some Like It Hot, just over the top. I think comedy was done with a lot more class back then. And that was a crossover period. It’s hard to get that these days. Now it has to be cool. Back then it just had to be crazy and zany. That movie should be listed next to the definition of “zany” in the dictionary. “What is zany?” “Watch this movie.”"