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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
