It used to be that when somebody wanted to make a children’s show, all they had to do was take a disheveled old man off the street and force him to mingle with a few retarded puppets for a half an hour. Mr. Rogers, Mr. Dress-up, Mr. Wizard—all of these shows were about senile men who hung out with puppets in their living rooms, except for Mr. Wizard, which was about a senile man who made rockets out of baking soda and milk cartons. But you could definitely tell that Mr. Wizard wanted a puppet.

I imagine that these shows were first created with loftier goals, but then the producers were always just like, “Well, we ran out of money, so instead of that awesome cartoon we were going to make, all we can afford is an old man and a few socks.” And kids bought that shit up. We were all, “An old man and some puppets? Well, fuck, I’m only four years old, I don’t care what the hell I watch.” We were so lame.

On another topic, I think every movie should be like The Princess Bride in that they should all be interrupted every fifteen minutes by Fred Savage telling his grandfather what he thinks of the story. Imagine how much greater Jurassic Park 3 would have been if, right when a dinosaur was about to eat somebody, the scene suddenly switched to Fred Savage sitting on his bed and saying, “But the dinosaur won’t eat them, grandpa, I just know it!” Then his grandfather would say, “Do you want me to continue telling the story or not? Now, as I was saying, the tyrannosaurus was chasing after them, when all of a sudden …” And then it would switch back to the action. This would make any movie way more interesting—in fact, I now find it difficult to watch a movie that isn’t being told to Fred Savage by an old man. And that’s a hell of a lot of movies.