The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
I was discovered, or mentored, by Norman Lear, who plucked me from the grinder of relative obscurity.
When I started out in the late '80s, my act was pretty terrible, and for years, I kind of toiled in obscurity. I don't believe in a hierarchy in comedy; I feel that a person deserves respect the first time they get onstage, and after that, they just have to be funny and get more consistent.
To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Republic should both go into obscurity and darkness together.
I was discovered out of nowhere. I didn't have family that was in the industry. I didn't know anyone in L.A.; I didn't have any reason to have been discovered. Nowadays, you have YouTube, and people are scouting more, but I really was plucked out of obscurity.
When you work with web design companies in San Francisco, you end up with a bunch of twenty-somethings who have their own cultural peculiarities, including obscurity for its own sake. You give those guys a website for a banking institution and they screw it up, because they are designing for themselves.
In our obscurity - in all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us.
I always knew that it was going to be an uphill climb to replace Letterman from complete obscurity with no experience, but I think I had to go through it to know exactly what a titanic effort that was going to be.
My first movie ever was 'Breaking Away.' I stumbled into an incredible part in a movie that was incredible to be a part of. Peter Yates, the director, became a lifelong friend. He sort of plucked me from obscurity and gave me a life.
For a long time, I didn't think I wanted to live in the Ozarks or write about the region. It seemed to be a sure recipe for obscurity, and to be obscure was not my conscious ambition.
