This morning Fred Armisen took the stage at MacWorld to discuss what technology he likes and how it helps him be creative. Armisen, of Saturday Night Live and more recently Portlandia fame, uses tech to promote not only himself but his work as well. He started out his talk about he prefer his iPod classic to listen to whole album. He is a punk rock drummer besides being a comedic actor.
Fred is a huge fan of GarageBand on the iPad. He uses it to make tracks and do some non serious recording. He also writes joke ideas and notes on the iPad. He treats the show Portlandia much like a band in the fact he works with his co star Carrie to riff on ideas as she is also a musician. They almost treat the show as a writing an album.
He jokes that SNL is like "10 full time jobs”. However, he loves working hard. He does SNL September through May and heads to Portland for the whole summer. Fred says that social media is a "distraction" to him that takes away from working. He admits there is a ton of support for Portlandia on social but he lets the network take care of it.
He loves to buy products, even without understanding what it does. He bought the first generation iPad without being sure of what it does or what he would use it for. He is a self professed technology geek who says he will watch TV with an iPad in one hand and iPhone in the other. They often feature Apple products in Portlandia and he mentioned that Apple often lends them products to use on and off camera.
Fred has portrayed Steve Jobs a few times on SNL. He met him in when the 5 avenue store opened. Apparently when Steve saw Fred, he posed as Fred did on his last impression of Steve. While the group of writers on Portlandia is 4 people (SNL is 20+), he puts the same amount of effort in to writing every sketch. Fred’s inspiration for comedy is Rick Moranis.
It was a very relaxed and informative talk from Fred Armisen. You can find Portlandia on IFC.