Story – Robert McKee's Creative Storytelling Magazine Issue 005 – Drew Carey | Page 62

MCKEE
INTERVIEWS
DREW CAREY
Of all the people that are guaranteed to go to heaven, why is the
Pope worried about taking a bullet? What does he know that we
don’t know? Why does he get the
special protection? He’s the Pope,
right? He’s clear. He should be walking down the street with his shirt
off with no armor. We’re the ones
that need the bulletproof glass until we make a good decision in our
lives, but he’s got all this bulletproof
glass.
There’s a lot of stuff that about religion that bugs me. On a desert
island, I would take religion. If we
were in a city somewhere, in an
apartment, I could go against the
local government.

DC: My whole life, I’ve always hated rich people. Now that I’m rich…
RM: You see the other side of it.
DC: Yeah. I still think, “What are
you complaining about?” When I
hear rich people complain about
something, I think, “What? Shut
up.” Every once in a while, I think,
“Oh, that jerk that does blah blah,”
and I realize I do the same thing all
the time. That jerk with the big car,
and I drive a Lexus. But my day-today car is a Mini Cooper, because
it’s easier to park in LA. The big car
just drives me crazy.
RM: But you’re still driving yourself, as you said.

really has to be jokes like you’re
against the other and it’s exclusionary, which you can do. My
friend Greg Proops makes fun
of NASCAR people all the time.
It’s great. But to get the bigger
audience, it’s better if it’s something that bugs everybody.
That brings me to this point
here. The key to comedy, or the
key to a comic character, is what
I call a blind obsession.
DC: Yeah.
RM: They’re driven toward
something, but they just don’t
see it in themselves.
DC: Yeah.

RM: Suppose I asked you to
work, like you were airing a sitcom, and we wanted to go after a certain kind of personality.
Not an institution, but an individual. Here’s a choice: rich people, rednecks, arrogant people,
dimwitted stupid people, and
wannabe intellectuals.
DC: Oh, you got me in there, that’s
good. Way to define Drew. Well,
rich people would be kind of easy.
But rich people aren’t always bad.
It would have to be rich and arrogant. You would have to give them
another trait. Some rich people do
a lot of good.
RM: Did you always think that
rich people…?

DC: Yeah, of course. The traffic
in this town sucks, but the Mini
Cooper makes it more bearable
because you can swing in and out
easier, and if somebody scratches
it, it’s no big deal.
If somebody cuts me off, I think,
“Who do you think you are with
your big car? You think you’re better than me because I have a Mini
Cooper?” I go right back to being
in Cleveland again with my crappy car when somebody would cut
me off. It’s great.
RM: Arrogance is good. The redneck would have to be redneck
and stupid. If it’s just a redneck
who is simple and has good values and likes NASCAR, then it

Story Magazine // Issue 005

RM: What you’re saying is that if
you’re going to nail one of these
personality traits, it’s got to be
combined with something that
is obsessive and…
DC: Yeah, like with the NASCAR
fan, if that’s all they care about and
they’re just spilling beer on you,
saying, “Get out of my way; I can’t
see my wife today because I’m
watching this sport.” You can do
the same thing with football fans
or any sport guy that just ignores
his family for the sport, and is really obnoxious about it.
RM: When you were doing The
Drew Carey Show for nine years,
did your character have a blind