Bob Odenkirk

Is your relation to sketch comedy different than it used to be?

Well, it is simply because I've spent the last 15 years doing drama and action, and I've had to think a lot about those things.

So, for instance, my friend David Cross and I are working on a project right now, and it's a play.

I did Glen Gary Glen Ross, and while I was doing that play, I was thinking a lot about the mechanics of a play, because that play is perfect.

That play is a machine.

It's a machine of drama.

It's a machine of laughter.

It's unbelievable.

It's tight as can be.

And so just being a part of it, thinking about it, I started to see, you know, some of the, you could say the mechanics of it and thinking about how great they were and how maybe I could try to steal some of those.

You know, and make something, too, in that world that might have some value and might work.

It's similar to when I was at Saturday Night Live for four years, and I didn't help all that much.

I pitched some jokes that Robert Smigel would use.

Occasionally, I had a sketch that would get on.

But basically, I sat around listening to Al Franken and Jim Downey and Robert Smigel and Conan O'Brien and Jack Handy and Bonnie and Terry Turner, and I watched these people play

write great sketches.

And my brain went, oh, I see what they did.

Oh, I see what you did.

And it kind of deconstructed it.

And then I used it to make Mr. Show.