What sparks your creativity?

The New Yorker's Joseph Mitchell has always been an inspiration of craft; Peter De Vries has been an inspiration for humor.

Question: Where do you look for inspiration?
Josh Lieb: I have favorite ... I ... I certainly was a fan of Mad magazine growing up, especially the Mad comics -- the Harvey Kurtzman ones before it became a magazine. Like you know I had the little re-print digest of those when I was a kid. And I didn't know what they were, the history or whatever; but they were so funny and weird. And I ... I would say of anything, like those were my biggest, say, comedic influences. I'd ... I'd reread those stories over and over again and ... and sort of scour the background jokes -- all the crazy background jokes. I ... You know, I think Animal House is a nearly perfect movie. It has an incredibly ... it ... It's like 98 percent of its jokes are successful, you know what I mean? It's a perfectly pleasant movie to watch, and with a lot of funny jokes. My family is really not that funny. My family doesn't really write. As a matter of fact, my mother always ... Her advice to me as a child was, "Never put anything in writing," which was strange; but ... Now there's no one ... There was no, you know, kooky uncle who inspired me.
 
 
Recorded on: 9/4/07