<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Published in the January 2012 issue Monday night, late dinner at Quality Meats, a steakhouse in midtown Manhattan. SCOTT RAAB: One of the wonderful things about Portlandia \u2014 and I&amp;#039;m not just blowing smoke, although I can blow smoke, but I&amp;#039;m not \u2014 is that there is an expansive feeling to each segment. It&amp;#039;s not reductive. It doesn&amp;#039;t seem like sketch comedy. FRED ARMISEN: That&amp;#039;s nice of you. SR: How scripted is it? FA: It&amp;#039;s mostly improvised. We shoot on location at all these houses in Portland, so it doesn&amp;#039;t feel like it&amp;#039;s at a studio. And Carrie [Brownstein, cocreator, cowriter, and costar] and I try to keep things positive. Not cynical, not ironic. WAITRESS: What can I get for you, gentlemen? SR: Rib steak, medium rare.  WAITRESS: It&amp;#039;s gonna be warm and red inside. SR: The way I like to think of myself. FA: I&amp;#039;m gonna do the salmon.  SR: You&amp;#039;re in an interesting pocket right now. I don&amp;#039;t mean you&amp;#039;re on the cusp of something, because you&amp;#039;ve put in like decades of work at this point.  FA: I started comedy in like 1998. SR: Then you haven&amp;#039;t put in decades of work.  FA: But being in a band is part of it. That counts. Because it&amp;#039;s still being in front of people. SR: In terms of punk, how hard was your band, Trenchmouth? FA: It was a cacophony of noise.  SR: Johnny Rotten/Sid Vicious kind of punk? FA: It came from a generation of punk after that. We lived in Chicago, but the music we were inspired by was from D. C. SR: Like Bad Brains? FA: And Fugazi, Minor Threat. SR: Is your fame manageable at this point?  FA: People are always nice, so I can&amp;#039;t complain. My name used to be SNL! More and more, people call me by my name. SR: I can&amp;#039;t imagine having your divorce [from Mad Men actress Elisabeth Moss] play out in public.  FA: Very strange. But everyone goes through all kinds of relationship situations. I&amp;#039;m lucky that I get to be on two comedy shows. The moment that I start complaining that it&amp;#039;s not going exactly \u2014 then I&amp;#039;ve lost.  SR: You&amp;#039;re a mensch.  FA: I spent a lot of time lifting my drums into a van, playing to ten people night after night. I can&amp;#039;t complain about anything now. That stuff was heavy. SR: Are you gonna have to retire your Steve Jobs forever? FA: I guess so.  SR: It&amp;#039;s not worth one more sketch? iDead? FA: I felt very sad about him dying. Steve Jobs was a real rock star to me. I looked forward to his products like people look forward to albums. I met him once. In &amp;#039;06? He had a sense of humor.  SR: He&amp;#039;d already been diagnosed. FA: He looked healthy. I have a picture of it. [Shows the picture] That&amp;#039;s him and me being him. SR: Fred, that&amp;#039;s beautiful.  FA: That smile on his face ... My impersonation came from being a fan. SR: It&amp;#039;s always seemed like more of a parody.  FA: I hear you. But I like it when people are driven. I love that in any field of work, in architecture or whatever. Like Lorne Michaels \u2014 he pays attention to every detail.  SR: It&amp;#039;s actually a part of genius, I think. It&amp;#039;s a skill. It&amp;#039;s a talent. Would you describe yourself as driven that way?  FA: I see other cast members writing all day on Sunday. I wish I was one of those people who could write script after script and pages and pages. I can only aspire to do that.  SR: You know, your range is pretty amazing. You can really run the gamut, from the president of the U. S. to the president of Iran to ... FA: Got my parents to thank for that. My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father&amp;#039;s culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I&amp;#039;m not very familiar with Mississippi. SR: You were never aware of living in the Deep South? FA: We were gone right away. Someday maybe I&amp;#039;ll go back and see what it&amp;#039;s like. SR: You really wanna go back? FA: I guess I would have by now.  SR: Are your folks proud of what you do? FA: They are. They weren&amp;#039;t that encouraging, though. Especially when I was in a band. And only now do I appreciate that it wasn&amp;#039;t their job to be encouraging. I don&amp;#039;t know that encouragement is a good thing, you know? The fact that they didn&amp;#039;t encourage me might have driven me to try and prove myself to them. So in their own way they made it clear that being in a band was not ideal, that not finishing college was not ideal, so I have a suspicion that that kind of kept me going. I think I&amp;#039;m still trying to prove something to them. SR: I think that&amp;#039;s huge: proving to those who doubted you, for all the right reasons.  FA: Only now do I realize it, though. SR: You dropped out of the School of Visual Arts? FA: I went three years barely.  SR: You didn&amp;#039;t like it or it didn&amp;#039;t like you? FA: I went so I could meet other musicians. I wasn&amp;#039;t prepared to do the work.  SR: Did punk choose you or did you choose punk?  FA: When punk came along, it made perfect sense to me. I found it melodic. The Clash, Buzzcocks. SR: Now we&amp;#039;re talking. The Clash, in particular, transcends any category.  FA: I believed in them like a religion. Sandinista! is a masterpiece. Then I got into Prince. I just recently got into Harry Nilsson. SR: A slender but brilliant body of work. And a sad guy. I mean, a very sad guy. FA: Yeah, but genius. Beautiful voice. SR: Again, I&amp;#039;m not trying to blow smoke, but you could play Peter Sellers in a biopic. FA: Jeez, thanks. HBO did one already. SR: How long ago? FA: Seven years ago? I&amp;#039;m gonna take the compliment anyway. You know who is even more unsung for being a chameleon? Alec Guinness. There&amp;#039;s a movie called Kind Hearts and Coronets. SR: A classic. Does it ever weigh heavy on you that you&amp;#039;re carrying on the tradition of SNL, a show that has had some of the greats of two generations of comedy?  FA: At SNL, there&amp;#039;s framed pictures of all the cast members, and it starts with Dan Aykroyd. It&amp;#039;s linear. It just keeps going through all these people, and then you&amp;#039;re at the end of it. That&amp;#039;s not lost on me. But we&amp;#039;ve gotta make the show work this week.  SR: Do you think about writing movies? FA: Yeah, I wanna do it all, absolutely. I love film. I haven&amp;#039;t completed a script, but that&amp;#039;s the next step. I wanna do that. I wanna write something with Carrie possibly. She&amp;#039;s brilliant. SR: Why is Native American comedian Billy Smith my favorite Armisen character on SNL?  FA: That&amp;#039;s a matter of taste. That sketch comes from a Native American dictionary that I happened upon. I was like, Why did a word exist for &amp;quot;oil from the bones of a deer&amp;quot;? I thought, There&amp;#039;s gotta be a way to do these words. So I had Billy Smith use those words for his punchlines. SR: I don&amp;#039;t know why, but there&amp;#039;s just something about him. He wants to kill. He&amp;#039;s so into the punchline. FA: I&amp;#039;m glad you like it. SR: You can&amp;#039;t break this stuff down, can you?  FA: No, just like you can&amp;#039;t break songs down. SR: So I assume today is the lightest day of your week.  FA: Yes. We have pitch meetings on Monday with Lorne and the host. The cast and the writers get together and start fleshing out ideas. Tomorrow&amp;#039;s writing night. We&amp;#039;ll be there all night until the next morning.  SR: I can&amp;#039;t imagine the intensity you have to bring to bear on this stuff. It&amp;#039;s a competitive environment. You&amp;#039;re fighting for time. FA: Our cast doesn&amp;#039;t think of it that way. I know it&amp;#039;s been that way in the past, but this cast is supportive of each other. Airtime doesn&amp;#039;t matter. All that matters is that when you&amp;#039;re on, you&amp;#039;re good. So I know that if I&amp;#039;m not in a sketch but Kenan Thompson&amp;#039;s killing it, I have to go kill it. We&amp;#039;re all good, you know? And everyone loves what each other does. By the way, I don&amp;#039;t mean to negate what you&amp;#039;re saying. SR: You&amp;#039;re really a sensitive guy. I didn&amp;#039;t feel negated.  FA: The most pressure is at the table read on Wednesday. You never know what&amp;#039;s gonna be funny. There&amp;#039;s a stack this high of sketches. We go through every one. Stuff dies.  SR: As a viewer I came of age during a time when cast members were prone to fistfights. So I may be carrying a little of that kind of image in my head. FA: This is such a good group. Jason Sudeikis, Kristen Wiig. I&amp;#039;m around geniuses. Kristen Wiig. Forget it, you know? Forget it.  SR: I don&amp;#039;t know that you&amp;#039;re conscious of it, but \u2014 and I&amp;#039;m not accusing you of anything here \u2014 you seem like a sweetheart of a guy. FA: That&amp;#039;s nice of you. SR: Inside there there&amp;#039;s not a seething \u2014 ? FA: There&amp;#039;ll always be a little bit of punk in me. But I&amp;#039;m an optimist. SR: Thanks for showing up tonight. FA: Thanks for coming all the way up here. Thanks for your interest. Thanks for even mentioning Portlandia. SR: You&amp;#039;re that earnest?  FA: Come on! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a12111/fred-armisen-interview-0112/?click=main_sr>