I recently read “It’s Always Something” by Gilda Radner. Here’s the quotes I found interesting:
“The news never meant anything to us on “SNL” because w always looked at it just to see how to satirize it. Nothing in our personal lives was sacred. We used all of it for material on the show. The most important thing was those ninety minutes live on Saturday night. So what if your whole world was falling apart as long as you could find a joke in it and make up a scene.” (99)
“It’s such an act of optimism to get up every day and get through a day and enjoy it and laugh and do all that without thinking about death.” (101)
“There’s that joke about the optimist who says, “If the house is full of shit there must be a pony somewhere.” (145)
“In the early day of “Saturday Night Live” we had our innocence and we believed in making comedy and making each other laugh. We were just working together to entertain, like kids playing together.” (153)
“While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die – whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.” (153)
“All the material for our show came from improvisation. We wrote our sketches on our feet in front of the audience, and rewrote them by repeating performances… I was a wreck.. It was the most stressful thing you could ever imagine. But there’s no other training ground like it for comedy writers and performers.” (164)
“You feel completely in control when you hear a wave of laughter coming back at you that you have caused. Probably that’s why people in comedy can be so neurotic and have so many problems. Sometimes we talk about it as a need to be loved, but I think with me it was also a need to control. I’ll make the decision whether to come out in my underwear or not.” (183)
“People whimpering and hovering over me made me feel like I was dying. People yelling at me made me feel alive.” (199)
“I’ve learned what I can control is whether I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day, as wonderful day, as I can.” (200)
“Cancer is what you make of it. If you make it a horrible situation, so will everyone around you. I put humor into it and I opened the technicians up to their humor.” (206)
“People who know Bob, the head radiation technician, say he should be on television, but I said, “No, he should be in the radiation therapy department cause that is where his humor is needed most.” (207)
I recently re-read “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. It’s about the creative process and how to become more productive. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. Here are the quotes I found most useful.
“This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second, we can turn the tables on Resistance.” (22)
“What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead.” (30)
“Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed.” (34)
“Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.” (37)
“The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself.” (40)
“Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is, it means there’s tremendous love there too. If you didn’t love the project that is terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything. The opposite of love isn’t hate; it’s indifference.” (42)
“The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.” (43)
“Not only do I not feel alone with my characters; they are more vivid and interesting to me than the people in my real life. If you think about it, the case can’t be otherwise.” (46)
“In order for a book (or any project or enterprise) to hold our attention for the length of time it takes to unfold itself, it has to plug into some internal perplexity or passion that is of paramount importance to us.” (46)
“It’s one thing to study war and another to live the warrior’s life.” – Telamon of Arcadia (61)
“The amateur does not love the game enough. If he did, he would not pursue it as a sideline, distinct from his “real” vocation. (63)
“The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time.” (63)
“The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what’s important first.” (65)
“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.” (68)
“The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.” (68)
“We’re all pros already. 1) We show up every day 2) We show up no matter what 3) We stay on the job all day 4) We are committed over the long haul 5) The stakes for us are high and real 6) We accept renumeration for our labor 7) We do not overidentify with our jobs 8 ) We master the technique of our jobs 9) We have a sense of humor about our jobs 10) We receive praise or blame in the real world” (69-70)
“That’s when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.” (72)
“The professional, though he accepts money, does his work out of love. He has to love it. Otherwise he wouldn’t devote his life to it of his own free will.” (73)
“The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood.” (74)
“The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality.” (75)
“The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still.” (88)
“It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.” (90)
“Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working.” (92)
“The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.” (93)
“I have a status meeting with myself every Monday. I sit down and go over my assignments. Then I type it up and distribute it to myself.” (98)
“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” (108)
“This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insight accrete.” (108)
“Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.” (112)
The muses poem: “O Divine Poesy, goddess, daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song of the various-minded man who, after he had plundered the innermost citadel of hallowed Troy, was made to stay grievously about the coasts of men, the sport of their customs, good and bad, while his heart, through all the sea-faring, ached with an agony to redeem himself and bring his company safe home. Vain hope – for them. The fools! Their own witlessness cast them aside. To destroy for meat the oxen of the most exalted Sun, wherefore the Sun-god blotted out the day of their return. Make this tale live for us in all its many bearings, O Muse.” – from Homer’s Odyssey (119)
“We’re not born with unlimited choices. We can’t be anything we want ot be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it.” (146)
“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.” (146)
“If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business.” (146)
“At some point it maxes out. Our brains can’t file that many faces. We thrash around, flashing our badges of status (Hey, how do you like my Lincoln Navigator?) and wondering why nobody gives a shit.” (149)
“For the artist to define himself hierarchically is fatal… The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake.” (150-151)
“To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.” (151)
“A hack, Robert McKee says, is a writer who second-guesses his audience. When the hack sits down to work, he doesn’t ask himself what’s in his own heart. He asks what the market is looking for.” (152)
“The hack writes hierarchically. He writes what he imagines will play well in the eyes of others. He does not ask himself, “What do I myself want to write? What do I think is important? Instead he asks, What’s hot, what can I make a deal for?” (152)
“The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He’s a demagogue. He panders.” (152)
“It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you’ve sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from.” (153)
“The muse had me, I had to do it. To my amazement, the book succeeded critically and commercially better than anything I’d ever done, and others since have been lucky too. Why? My best guess is this: I trusted what I wanted, not what I thought would work. I did what I myself thought was interesting, and left its reception to the gods.” (153)
“Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?” (158)
“If we were the last person on earth, would we still show up at the studio, the rehearsal hall, the laboratory?” (159)
“Contempt for failure is our cardinal virtue.” (160)
“We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.” (161)
“That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.” (163)
“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.” (165)
I recently finished “The Art of Acting” by Stella Adler. This book focused a little too much on classical theatrical acting, which I’m not that interested in but there were still some quotes I found useful.
“The thing that makes you say, “I want to do something” – that is the beginning of talent.” (12)
“No actor is a success unless he feels inside himself, as long as he lives, that he is good. If you don’t feel you’re good, no money can give it to you! No applause can give it to you! No symbol of success can give it to you!” (12)
“When you stand on stage you must have a sense that you are addressing the whole world, and that what you say is so important the whole world must listen.” (22)
“My husband used to say that in our time ten years had been added to life. But not at the end. We didn’t add the ten years to maturity. We added them to adolescence. We’re still “kids” when we’re 28.” (23)
“Take an idea, paraphrase it, write it out in your own words, then come back here, stand on the stage and give it to us.” (25)
“Truth in art is truth in circumstances, and the first circumstances, the circumstances that governs everything is, Where am I?” (35)
“You will only fail to learn if you do not learn from failing. Falling flat on your face will uplift you!” (38)
“One primary reason many actors feel uncomfortable on stage is that they don’t work from the circumstances. They start with the words. The words can tell you about the place, but it’s the place that will tell you how to act.” (80)
“Knowing what it’s like on the stage, you would never trade that to be in the audience.” (82)
“Whatever you reconstruct from your emotional memory is no substitute for putting your imagination to work.” (83)
“If you leave the house without putting your clothes on, you have every reason to be nervous. Going on stage without having built the circumstances is the same thing. You’re naked. You have no protection.” (84)
“When we study a script, we’re trying to find what actions it requires of us.” (86)
“If two people simply agree on the stage, then we’re finished. There’s no play and nothing more to say. The modern theatre is based on our ability to consider two points of view.” (97)
“You think your beauty will help you. It won’t help your art. It’ll help you get ahead, but your art comes from somewhere else. Either what we do matters or it doesn’t.” (100)
“You can’t go on the stage unless you’re filled with things that give you life all day long.” (102)
“There are no small stories, only the actor makes them small.” (116)
“Stanislavski said, “throw out 99 percent and you still have 100 per cent too much for the theatre.” (117)
“Once you feel your talent working, there is a good side and a bad side. The good side is the pleasure of knowing your talent. The bad side is that this knowledge will be the big experience of your lives and you’ll never be satisfied with anything else.” (124)
“In life, as on the stage, it’s not who I am but who I do that’s the measure of my worth and the secret of my success.” (131)
“If you don’t justify your actions, you’ll be caught acting.” (135)
“Actions are doable, and if you do them correctly, they prompt the feelings.” (139)
“Every action consists of many little actions. If your overall action is to leave for a holiday, the action of the scene will be to pack a suitcase.” (145)
“Sarcasm is a symptom of weakness, not strength. It’s shirking from confrontation and the very opposite of defiance.” (155)
“An actor is one who uncovers and incorporates the secrets of words.” (161)
“If you can find three interrelated ideas in a text you have a play that’s in control.” (167)
“Several factors in particular play a crucial role in shaping character. One is profession. The other is class. Let’s start with profession. Americans admit to professions. They don’t admit to classes.” (169)
“Even a daffodil does something, has a profession. It gives off scent, professionally.” (170)
“The technique for playing a profession is simple: Build up a believable past in that profession, and, through imagined biographical data, to know how you came to be in it and who you are in it.” (170)
“The more you’re playing to the audience, trying to impress them, the less successful you are.” (173)
“The more you do it for the audience, the less they want it. It’s what made Willy Loman a lousy salesman. He was too eager.” (174)
“Before you live convincingly in the present on the stage, you must have a fully realized past. It’s the first thing an actor should do when preparing a character.” (175)
“Acting is hard because it requires not just the study of books… but the constant study of human behavior.” (180)
“It’s not what a person says but your reaction to what he says that creates your attitude toward the person. Without this attitude you don’t exist on stage.” (181)
“When we put on the costumes of another time we’re not just “dressing up.” We not playing “make believe.” We’re assuming another way of thinking. We’re donning an inheritance, intellectual and spiritual.” (190)
“A man’s clothes represent his culture the way a soldier’s uniform displays his rank.” (191)
“Most of us are caught in this fruitless cycle of work, success, money. The artist has a way out. He’s compensated by his joy in his work. But he’s excluded from the middle-class.” (248)
“You will begin to act when you can forget your technique – when it is so securely inside you that you need not call upon it consciously. By opening up, you allow it to happen to you. “ (261)
“When you most succeed, you do so by seeming not to act at all.”
This 25 page book covers my decision to drop out of graduate school to pursue comedy and how you can use the lessons I’ve learned to find your passion before it’s too late.
If you find this useful, please pass it along to anyone else you think it might help. Comments, as always, are welcome.
If you like my eBook and have a group you think would want to hear me present this message as an hour long talk, book me. The talk is based on the book, but funnier and more interactive, as I’m a stand up comedian after all.
Last Friday I was able to attend a talk by Seth Godin about his new book, Linchpin. The book (and this post) isn’t directly related to comedy, but the talk was amazing and I feel the need to share my notes on it. I’ve added my two cents of commentary about most of the quotes, and since I’m obsessed with comedy most of my thoughts are about how to apply Seth’s ideas to comedy.
Regardless of what you do, you should be reading Seth’s blog. And check out two of his video presentations here and here.
Some of the “quotes” below aren’t exact, but they’re the general idea of what Seth said.
“I write because I have to, not because I want to.” My two cents: I love this statement. I’ve been reading George Carlin’s biography, and he mentions a similar process where he reads and reads about a given topic for a while, then when he can’t take it anymore he writes what he has to say.
“A genius solves a problem in a way no one has solved it before” My two cents: Every time you write a joke, you’ve solved the problem of how to make someone laugh in a way that it hasn’t been solved before (assuming they laughed).
“Corporations are factories and no longer working. The old model was factories are more important than the people in them. This is no longer true.” My two cents: Being unique is good. Comedy is about having your own perspective.
“First factories made interchangeable parts, then they started making interchangeable people. Modern society trained people to work in factories and trained people to buy stuff (obedience). School is a type of factory.” My two cents: When I heard this I was really happy that someone way smarter than me was giving me further justification for dropping out of a “top school.”
“Art = changing and moving people, not just entertainment” My two cents: My comedy is not at this level yet, but it’s where I want to take it. Right now I’m working on mastering the process of how to make an audience laugh. The next step is mastering how to change and move people through laughter.
“The first guy who puts in a urinal into a museum installation is an artist, the second is a plumber” My two cents: Be original.
“All value accrues to people who decide what to do next.” My two cents: The audience doesn’t decide what to say next, you do. That’s why you’re getting paid and they’re not.
”Don’t engage in any activity where the upper limit is already known. This is why there are no famous bowlers. You can’t do better than a 300.” My two cents: I don’t think there’s an upper limit to comedic success. Although Seinfeld has set a pretty high bar.
“The means of production (computers) are now owned by the workers.” My two cents: Get up off your butt and do something. There’s no excuses left for not taking life by the horns. You don’t need a manager or promoter anymore, you can do it yourself with a cheap laptop.
There’s a difference between learning and getting an A. You should give yourself a D. Then learn it for yourself. Same mindset as, “I’m gonna pant something and everyone will hate it.” My two cents: Would you do this joke even if nobody laughs? If so, it’s probably a good joke.
“Kulag’s law states that the most important people in an organization are the lowest in the hierarchy. Your company interacts with the street level team.” My two cents: Even when you become a well known comedian, your manager or agent won’t build your following nearly as well as you will at every show.
“A coffee shop in London has a disloyalty card. “If you go to ten of our competitors, we’ll give you a free cup of coffee.”” My two cents: The next time I print business cards, I will put a bunch of other comics on the back of it. “If you liked my comedy, you might also enjoy watching x, y and z.”
“Abundance and sharing lead to change. Generosity undoes the factory.” My two cents: I want to connect with my readers by providing free, useful information. Down with factories!
“Artists always take responsibility for their choices.” My two cents: If a joke doesn’t work, it’s my fault, not the audiences.
“In cross country skiing, if you lean more forward than anyone else, you’ll win. But the more you lean forward the greater the odds you fall on your face. Do it anyway.” My two cents: Take risks, some will pay off, some won’t. Learn from it and take more risks. (Don’t confuse this with taking a gamble.)
Avoid “Pulitzer Prize Fighting”. Having rankings or numbers brings in a whole other category of people who only want to win the prize (# of twitter followers, etc). My two cents: I can do a better job ignoring the number of facebook friends, RSS subscribers and twitter followers and focus on making meaningful connections.
Other Quotes from the talk (I’m out of change for these)
“If you can break a job into small enough bits, you can get it done for practically free”
“To succeed you must LEAD and SOLVE INTERESTING PROBLEMS”
On the current economy and opportunities: “Just because the tide is out doesn’t mean there’s less water in the ocean.”
“All value is created in moments when you have the most choices. So find situations with too many choices.”
Elizabeth Gilbert: “Nobody gets engineer’s block but they get artist’s block.”
“Anxiety = failure in advance”
“The place with no prize has the most opportunity.”
My friend was also in attendance (although I didn’t find out until after). Here are her thoughts.
