David Cross
David Cross
David Cross is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer, known primarily for his stand-up performances, the HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show, and his role as Tobias Fünke in the sitcom Arrested Development. Cross created, wrote, executive produced, and starred in The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret, developed and had a prominent role in Freak Show, appeared on Modern Family, portrayed Ian Hawke in the Alvin and the Chipmunks film franchise, and voiced Crane in the Kung Fu...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth4 April 1964
CityAtlanta, GA
CountryUnited States of America
I am truly passionate and concerned about the lack of empathy that people show towards one another.
Nobody is going to be as bad for free thinking, right-minded individuals than George Bush.
I'm going to keep talking about what I think is interesting for my entire career. If you want to hear about how women do a lot of shoe shopping or how being married sucks, go see the guy who does jokes about that. But if you come to see my live show, there's going to be 20 minutes on religion for the rest of my life, probably. If that makes me a caricature, so be it.
I was heavily influenced by Andy Kaufman and Steven Wright.
I read the New York Times, and if I'm in a different city, I'll skim that paper.
I've never thought of myself as a hoity-toity cultural critic.
I don't want to do 20 minutes on Donald Trump. I want to do 10 minutes and move on. I wouldn't even do that with a live show, because I don't want it to feel like "An Evening Of Political Comedy."
Because I think whenever you sit down with another human being who would absolutely disagree with you on every issue, you learn about them as a person and you relate, in human terms, and it's much more difficult for either side to dismiss out of hand, like that person's a freak, that person's a Nazi.
I think for a lot of people, it's just where their saturation point was. Once you get into the [Donald] Trump stuff and the Republican stuff and the Ayn Rand followers, it doesn't let up for about half an hour. It gets hard and stays hard for a while.
I have always tried to use humor to "help ever" and "hurt never," for I find that to laugh is like swallowing a secret that Santa Claus farted.
Go back and read Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here or Babbitt. For a guy or girl who's going to do an hour of political comedy, it might be a little rough, sure. But I think if you're spending 10 minutes or less, and you're talking about - not necessarily [Donald Trump] but his supporters and the media coverage, there's all kinds of angles to explore. It doesn't just have to be simply, "This guy is crazy!" It's more about the idea of that kind of guy rising to the prominence he has, to actually become the Republican candidate.
It's a lot of anti-gay, racist humor—which people like in America—all couched in 'I'm telling it like it is.' He's in the right place at the right time for that gee-shucks, proud-to-be-a-redneck, I'm-just-a-straight-shooter-multimillionaire-in-cutoff-flannel-selling-ring-tones act. That's where we are as a nation now. We're in a state of vague American values and anti-intellectual pride.
I grew up in that minority. I grew up in the South, in Roswell, Georgia, and it was heavily white, Baptist, conservative. And the idea that somebody would come there and say those things that I said created an atmosphere where some people would walk out, and suddenly they weren't in the minority. For an hour and a half, they were the majority. So I would argue that it does need to be said.
I'm concerned about organized religion getting away with what it gets away with.