I ended up going to NYU for film school - close to Pennsylvania - but we talked about what if I went to UCLA or USC, and my mom's whole world was caving in.
Adam F. Goldberg
For me, I went to NYU, and at that point, it was 1995, and everyone wanted to be Tarantino. I was writing these stupid comedies, and I felt lost.
Convincing Robert Englund to come out of retirement to play Freddy Krueger one last time is a true bucket-list moment for me as a writer. I've been a longtime obsessive fan, collecting Freddy artwork and action figures.
My rap name as a kid was Big Tasty.
When you hire directors, you're most concerned about whether or not someone from the outside will get the jokes.
Copyright law is too confusing.
When I was nine, I got my head stuck in a bucket trying to be Darth Vader.
I never saw my parents kiss.
I wasn't a sweet kid. I was an instigator and provoked everyone with my goofy hyena cackle, loving every minute of the drama I could create.
'Breaking In' is a very different office comedy and a caper comedy. Aside from 'Chuck,' there is no half-hour comedy that does stuff like that.
If I don't call my mom back, she'll go on Twitter and say, 'Adam hasn't called me. I'm worried about him,' and strangers will say, 'You're horrible. You go call your mom right now!' It's very complicated.
Negative attention was better than no attention.
The way I'm raising my kids is so different than the way I was raised.
I have many of the Rock Lords; Magmar, I'm obsessed with. That's a sign of how versatile the Rock Lords were, that they could come out with toys that turned into rocks.
My mom was a shopaholic. She can literally never wear the same thing twice. That's fine with me.
I was definitely more of a movie/cartoon guy than comics, but I really do like graphic novels - I don't have the time to sit down and read Stephen King like I used to, so I find picking up 'Saga' every now and then and just diving back into it is a great way to stay reading.
Do I think technology is bad? No. I think it's wonderful that the world is so connected now. But I think, as a result, childhood ends a little earlier.
The only interaction I had with my brothers is like negative attention where I'd basically egg them on into beating me up - which was delightful! Otherwise, it was me with a video camera jumping on a bed pretending to be the Ultimate Warrior or setting up my robots making a Transformers movie because I was a lonely kid.
I love 'AP Bio' - I think it's so funny - it's just not the show I want to do.
I was so obsessed with 'The Princess Bride.' I loved it so much that I even have a re-enactment I did of a radio play of the iocane powder scene.
My brother Barry was into all sports, and so was my late father. For me, hockey was the one sport I loved and played. I didn't really pay much attention to the other sports.
I've been with my wife since I was 16.
'The Wonder Years' family was the kind where everything seemed to be bubbling and simmering with the occasional explosion. There were a lot of things that went unsaid in that family. In my family, everything is said - on the surface, you scream and yell about it, and three minutes later, you're all friends.
I'm terrible with titles.
For me, every show that's about teachers - and there's been a number of them - they're like misfits who hate the kids and don't want to be there and hate their jobs. For me, having crazy parents, my teachers were the sane people who raised me, and they liked being there.
For me, 'The Goldbergs' was about surviving a crazy family - and believe me, the show is a sanitized version!
Because my home life was nuts, I didn't look to my parents for help. I looked to my teachers. They made me who I am. They took on a parental role. They're like celebrities or heroes to me.
On TV, teachers are comedically jaded. That's not how I saw them.
I've never made a show that goes right on the air and is perfect. People don't remember, but the original 'Goldbergs' pilot was poorly received, and I had to retool that for ABC, where it eventually became a hit.
Prior to 'The Goldbergs,' I rarely got good reviews on anything I've done.
Some of my movies hold the bottom rankings on Rotten Tomatoes.
My favorite thing to do as a kid was pretend I was in the opening credits of a sitcom. As the theme song would play, I'd look up at the imaginary camera and smile as my name would flash on the screen.
Singing karaoke is my worst nightmare. But in the car, I rock out to anything Bon Jovi or Beastie Boys.
Being from Philadelphia, 'Parents Just Don't Understand' was a big deal - I have audio of my brother and me singing that song.
I'm envious of 'Glee' - artists turned their libraries over for free because they knew it would lead to album sales.
It's very complicated to literally put your family on TV.
All of my family members have had moments where they're upset with me because I'll cavalierly write a story just to be funny.
'Afterlife With Archie' - they're doing a great job.
If I called my kids a moron, I think it would traumatize them. I don't think they even know what the word is.
There was kind of a no-nonsense parenting style that my parents had that was true of the time. Everything now... there are books, and there are websites, and there are blogs, and you're reading, and there's research. We're such an interconnected world now, and half the stuff they did was pretty terrible, but we somehow turned out fine.
I am a Gobot junkie, and I pitched the Gobots movie as an animated movie a few years ago, and we're trying to work something out now that the rights are cleared. But that's my dream project, besides 'The Goldbergs' - doing a Gobots movie.
One of my favorite things was I got to work with Avi Arad on a movie for Sony, and we don't realize this, but he's the reason toys were sold off of cartoons, more or less. He created the Gobots!
In our house, there was a lot of yelling. It was everyone walking in on each other and very few boundaries.
Queen is my all-time favorite band in history. I was an obsessive growing up after I discovered them at 10 at summer camp.
My middle school years were defined by memorizing every single word off 'License to Ill' and 'Paul's Boutique.'
My mom was always writing me notes to get me out of stuff.
My mom is not typical in any way.
I think the '80s works for a TV show because it's the last time the world was simple. It was before the Internet really changed everything and made the world really small.
I always say that even though my dad was alive during Woodstock, he was just not invited. He just seemed like he was from a different generation.
My dad felt old school.
