Bob Odenkirk may be best known for playing Saul Goodman, a criminal lawyer in the television series Breaking Bad. But long before he was a dramatic actor, Odenkirk was a comedy writer and performer with acclaimed troupes such as The Second City, Saturday Night Live, and cult comedy favorite Mr. Show. He returns to comedic writing in his new book, A Load of Hooey. In this conversation, Odenkirk talks about the differences between writing comedy and performing it, his favorite moment as a writer, and comedy as an act of destruction.
Interview Highlights
On writing comedy versus performing comedy
I totally indulge myself in this book… I overwrote stuff in here. I did not hesitate to make myself laugh… If I perform stuff, I tend to perform these pieces shorter than they’re written. I did that on purpose — I said, “This book is going be a place for me to just go past my lengths of silliness, and just dig in deeper on more silliness.”
On defining comedy
When Odenkirk’s daughter was seven or eight years old, she asked him, “What is comedy?” He told her, “Comedy is about being honest. It can be a brutal honesty, but it’s some way of telling a truth about people.” Even when satirizing famous people, he says, “There is something in taking icons and reminding ourselves that they’re people. It almost make them more valuable, because they did something amazing with just the same tools that you or I have.”
On his favorite job
I was lucky enough to write a scene for Second City called “The Motivational Speaker” that Chris Farley did. And to be clear, it was based on a voice Chris did already, that I had seen him do in an improv set. I just gave it a story and structure. But I got to do that sketch eight times a week on the Second City stage with Chris doing Matt Foley two feet from my face, and that was just the purest joy I’ve ever experienced – over and over and over, every single time. That was crazy.
On comedy as destruction
I’ve thought about this a lot lately… it makes me feel a little bad, to be honest with you, because destruction is easier than construction, and it’s easier to tear things down than it is to build them up… [but] it helps to tear it down. It can encourage you to built it up more properly, or it can encourage you to continue to try to fix things, when you see their faults. There is ultimately, maybe, a constructive value to it… but in the end it is easier to destroy stuff. And funnier.