To provide meaningful architecture is not to parody history but to articulate it.
When I was a kid, back in the '40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like 'All-American Comics' or 'Star-Spangled Comics' or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with 'American' as the first word.
If you aim for parody right off the bat and it misses, no offense to the filmmakers, but it is Meet the Spartans.
By the very nature of satire or parody, you have to love and respect your target and respect it enough to understand every aspect of it, so you can more effectively make fun of it.
I'd like to say that parody is a celebration of a person's specific characteristics, as opposed to mockery.
When I was young and it was someone's birthday, I didn't have the money to buy nice presents so I would take my mom's camera and make a movie parody for whoever's birthday it was. When I'd show it them, they'd die laughing. That reaction was a high for me, and I loved that feeling.
I'm parodied as being some right-wing fundamentalist extremist, it just isn't true. The parody doesn't reflect reality.
The first acting thing I ever did was my senior year I decided not to play a sport in the Spring and, in that Spring B.J. Novak who went to school with me, asked if I'd be in this show that was a parody of all the teachers in the school, 'sure!' That was the first acting thing I did.
There's a side that I want to do just like really retarded arty films like parody, pretentious art films that kind of are supposed to have some deep meaning.
At this point I've got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when 'Weird Al' wants to go parody, it's not meant to make them look bad... it's meant to be a tribute.