As a kid I was short and only weighed 95 pounds. And though I was active in a lot of Sports and got along with most of the guys, I think I used comedy as a defense mechanism. You know making someone laugh is a much better way to solve a problem than by using your fists.
At first I wanted to be a jockey. I rode horses in Cleveland but I kept falling off and I was afraid of horses. So there wasn't much of a future in it.
Harvey never had an original idea or thought in his life. I was out wandering around the country doing charity benefits, mainly, when I asked him to come along.
I don't watch a lot of TV anymore. A lot of it isn't the kind of thing you can feel comfortable with watching with your kids. And I still feel that way even though, now, my kids are in their 30s.
I figure you're only here for a matter of moments. Ever since I was a kid watching movies I've always wanted to make people laugh or have some sort of emotional reaction.
I've known Harvey for over 40 years and I worked with him on the Burnett show for 11 years. I guess you could say we're about as close as you can get to being a comedy team.
Nowadays they have 12 directors and 15 producers and 30 writers. And all the writers want their lines said a certain way-which isn't necessarily funny. I mean the lines aren't necessarily so funny to begin with.
We kept a broad audience, and we didn't make fun of people who had necessarily made mistakes in their life and burned them to the ground. We made fun of a commercial or a movie or ourselves.
You can't TV surf without coming across an Andy of Mayberry episode where you've just got to watch Don as Barney. That's why I put Don in several of my movies.
