After my father passed away in 1989, I fell pretty hard for theater as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon. Before he died, he planted the seed that maybe I should look into performing.

Ty Burrell

Categorized in : Look Seed Father University

You know, I used to think I was a foodie, and then my wife went to culinary school and basically explained to me that I was just a guy that likes to eat.

wife school thinking

And I watch Saturday Night Live religiously, I have since I was a little boy. I watch it basically like one of my favorite sports teams.

team sports boys

There's lots of problem solving in any marriage, but when you have this collective goal that is a human being, it's an inspiring rally point.

collectives problem goal

If you're trying to make something funny, and it doesn't feel like you're always getting something, it doesn't have quite a lot of joy.

like-you joy trying

I had no real direction at all in my 20's and so I did what a lot of people without direction do: I took an acting class. In one of those first days of the class, I did this weird, silly improv, and it got laughs. It was such a blissful moment. I've never gotten over that love of hearing laughter. As a people pleaser, it's the drug of choice for me.

laughter real silly

My younger brother and I have been writing together, mainly for fun, for years, but we've been improvising together since we were kids. Literally.

brother writing fun

The truth is I've just never had any kind of plan at all for my career, which is probably not a very flattering thing to admit. I don't know that I'd ever planned to be in this situation. I'm still just an idiot, really really stupid. It's not like I'm now a genius because this has happened. I just got hugely lucky.

lucky careers stupid

Comedy can be fun no matter what you're playing small or big comedy part. It always has the potential to be a blast.

comedy fun

I've played a lot of really smarmy people in film, and it can be real fun, don't get me wrong. But it can be characters I'm not as excited to explore.

real fun character

I got a little bit of a sense for the subculture, which is the equivalent of any subculture, really. The stakes are high, even if you live in a small town. It's like the annual bass fishing contests, or whatever it is. The stakes are always absurdly high, and this is no different. The competition at this butter carving things, from what I understand, is not that far off from what we're depicting in the movie.

competition towns fishing

I'm not a technical person, at all, but you get a little bit more of a sense for how to get something done a little bit more efficiently. I think everybody is in that place where it's a little bit more efficient, but the process is still the same, which is still loose and collaborative.

done littles thinking

I think once I fail enough as a dad, I'll be looking for help wherever I can get it. I just need enough time to screw things up and then I'll start looking to TV dads for advice.

fathers-day dad thinking

Well, that's the great thing about indie film, in general. If it's not subject to the constraints of too much pressure from the studio or marketing, and all of that, you get to actually present fuller characters and you get to have the dark side of the characters. That's usually what gets cut out.

cutting dark character

My father passed away before he saw me perform. I can't help but wonder what he would think of all this. I go to a job in full makeup.

jobs father thinking

My wife handles all of our technology. So if something goes wrong with the computer, I throw up my arms and step aside while the IT gal figures it out.

arms wife technology

A lot of modern comedies are difficult to watch too, because they're so ironic and so detached and so quote-unquote clever. They kind of keep you at arm's length. They can be really funny, but they're not really nourishing.

ironic clever watches

I just like comedy in general. My film work, which has been at times more dramatic, has been satisfying. But I never feel quite as good and as light and blissful as when I'm doing comedy.

comedy film light

I'm not saying this just to be self-deprecating, but I have always taken delight in playing people who are oblivious, because I do think I have giant, giant blind spots. It's a very comfortable place to be.

taken self thinking

I've done animated TV stuff, but I'd never done animated film work, which is much more involved and much more labor intensive. The animators are much more meticulous and detailed. It's just been really fun and really satisfyingly creative.

tvs creative fun

When you don't have crazy ambitions, you're always happy just kind of getting by. Our expectations were always kept low. And so I feel like we appreciate it all the more to have all this good fortune come our way, which we hadn't really been planning.

appreciate crazy ambition