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His love for impersonations. Why he majored in puppetry. Whether or not he thinks horror and comedy are the same genres. Here's the truth about Jordan Peele.
Transcript
00:00I watch reality television, like a fiend.
00:05And yes, I hate it.
00:16Yes, that is true.
00:18I put together a bunch of classes,
00:21and my favorite was the puppetry class.
00:23And I was like, look, let's build a curriculum around this
00:27because, you know, maybe I can be the best puppeteer around.
00:43No, I can't call myself a master of impersonation.
00:46I would call myself an old, retired impersonator.
00:52I'm a ham, and if you bring up impressions,
00:55you're only going to be counting the seconds before you get one,
01:00because I'm a glutton for the attention.
01:06No, I started earlier than that,
01:09but I think I had an awakening at 12,
01:12where from that point forward,
01:15sequence of movies, Glory, Edward Scissorhands,
01:19Elman Louise, Aliens.
01:22I knew I wanted to be a director.
01:27Okay, complicated.
01:30I watch reality television, like a fiend.
01:35And yes, I hate it.
01:38Love Island.
01:40Just the worst.
01:42I'm just a sucker for the spectacle, just like all of us.
01:46Much prop to the people who give up their souls
01:50so that we vultures can picket the remains in front of the world,
01:57do a service.
01:58I don't know how you do it.
02:03Yes, that is how I work.
02:06I'll never turn down an opportunity to make the script better
02:12if it presents itself.
02:14Part of this comes from my many years on Sketch, on TMPO,
02:18where you really are having to make so many decisions all the day
02:21and be really scrappy.
02:23But basically, what I find is good ideas don't stop coming.
02:32Yeah, nah, nah, nah.
02:34You only stop trying to attain them at a certain point
02:38if you get too comfortable.
02:44You know, I think horror and comedy are so connected.
02:47The same moment can play a very different way
02:49depending on what music is involved.
02:52And to be honest, with the types of movies that I make,
02:56I need both things to be able to play off of each other.
03:00Oh, my girl.
03:02Oh, they get you every time.
03:06So I really think of them as the same thing
03:11with slightly different flavor.
03:15No, no, no, no, no, no.
03:18See, I don't know where people are getting it,
03:21but I want to play it now.
03:23If you took out some dice
03:27and talked about drawing up a character,
03:29we'd be doing that right now.
03:33For the Haywood Ranch,
03:35as the only Black-owned horse trainers in Hollywood,
03:37we like to say, since the moment pitches could move...
03:40Yeah, skin in a game.
03:43True.
03:44It's kind of like a meta allegory, I guess you could put it,
03:48because it's so much about the act of making the film,
03:52but it's also about the industry of spectacle.
04:02No.
04:03I've been 100% honest.
04:06You can tell because there's absolutely nothing...
04:10No, I haven't looked good at any juncture,
04:13at any point in the year.
04:15I haven't come off well.
04:16So you know I'm telling the truth.

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