I am huge fan of Australian comedy. ‘Strictly Ballroom’ is one of my favorite movies. Definitely the British Commonwealth’s sensibility is where I draw a lot of my influences. – Jonathan Krisel
Certain shows, when it’s all comedy, it’s like when you eat something that’s too sweet and it just tastes gross. You need that salted caramel. – Jonathan Krisel
As the director, you have it in your mind how you want the part done, how you want someone to do it, and so sometimes you just say, ‘Why don’t I do it myself?’ So for a little role, I’ll just do it. – Jonathan Krisel
I know, especially in my family, people’s feelings get hurt over the tiniest things. I’m sure that’s true in every family. But, for instance, one year, I came a little bit late to Thanksgiving, and I was supposed to bring a salad. And I just brought a bag of lettuce, and put it in a bowl. Five years later, I heard that my mom was incensed. – Jonathan Krisel
I like dry-to-the-bone stuff. I don’t know what it is. I was raised on PBS showing weird British comedies. – Jonathan Krisel
Comedy is like horror – you have to shock something in the viewer’s system to make them feel it. – Jonathan Krisel
Portland is utopia. My favorite thing would be it’s earnestness. I am earnest, too. – Jonathan Krisel
My brand of comedy is taking a serious approach to silliness. Small moments of modern life and human behavior make me laugh. At least that’s where everything starts, and then my other through line would be a dry absurdity that exponentially spirals out of reality. – Jonathan Krisel
Louie Anderson thinks my thing is the absurdness of reality. That’s what we do on ‘Portlandia’ all the time. I try to bring that absurdness of reality to everything. – Jonathan Krisel
I went to film school, and I came in when video art was king, weird stuff was king, and there, you don’t have a script as your bible. – Jonathan Krisel
Portland is a place where everyone closes their eyes and crosses their fingers and hopes for a better community. They keep it small and local, and usually they think if they just make great coffee, it’s the best thing for the neighborhood. – Jonathan Krisel
Things that people are doing constantly but aren’t thinking about. That’s the ultimate ‘Portlandia’ concept. – Jonathan Krisel
I always look at ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ They talked about how they wrote this movie with horses, and then they realized that horses are super-expensive and time-consuming. ‘Why don’t we just change it to coconuts?’ That’s part of my process. – Jonathan Krisel
My dad did show me interesting movies at a young age. I remember he showed me ‘A Clockwork Orange,’ and my mom said, ‘I never want to see this movie in my house again.’ – Jonathan Krisel
I loved ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse.’ That was one of the most influential movies ever. You know that genre with the nerdy girl, and she redeems herself in the end. Like ‘Napoleon Dynamite.’ And in ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse,’ she doesn’t. She sucks. It’s like, that’s what’s real. That’s what’s heartbreaking. – Jonathan Krisel
A huge part of making something work is getting along with people you work with. You want them to succeed; you want them to bring their ideas to life as much as possible. – Jonathan Krisel
A lot of the ‘Portlandia’ characters and a lot of the moments aren’t really TV-worthy, but that’s what is so refreshing about seeing them. – Jonathan Krisel
There’s a good family of actors in ‘Portlandia.’ It’s a small community with people who pop up again and again. The show’s a little weird show, and you want to grow with the people who are in it, like Dana who plays the chicken waitress, and Ellen who was the adult babysitter. – Jonathan Krisel
‘Fawlty Towers’ was a huge influence on me. I mean, it was so slapstick, too. ‘Are You Being Served?’ was on 15 times a day, it seemed like, and I loved it. – Jonathan Krisel
