I've been looking at that in myself lately. Often, joking for me is a way of diffusing the awkwardness of a situation, so it's kind of exhilarating to be a part of projects where there's nothing funny or lighthearted.
But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.