Category: Comedy Books

I recently re-read (without realizing it!) “When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories From A Persuasive Man” by Jerry Weintraub with Rich Cohen. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book here.

“A person is a kind of memory machine. You collect, and sort, and remember, then you tell.” (xi)

“It was the beginning of my life as a working man. I got the jacket, of course, wore it till I lost it, but, by then, the jobs I had taken to buy the jacket had become more important to me than the jacket itself had ever been. At some point, you forget the object, and the means becomes the end. You work for the joy of the work. My father must have known this would happen.” (16)

“Over time, the neighborhood took on a different aspect for me. I saw it with new eyes. It was no longer just streets and stores: It was needs and opportunities, money to be made. Once you see the world this way, things are never the same.” (19)

“This much I knew: As soon as you feel comfortable, that’s when it’s time to start over.” (27)

“These are people (artists and actors) who do not make a product, perform an essential service, or, as my father would say, have an inventory, so even the most successful of them are haunted by the following thought: “Who really needs what I’m making?”” (33)

“An artist who attempts to get into business – to do what I do, produce or deal or whatever – is an artist who has stopped being an artist.” (34)

“Do not get attached to the world as it is, because the world is changing, something new is coming, every ten years a big hand comes down and sweeps the dishes off the table.” (38)

“Grunt jobs are often the most instructive – they allow you to flow through an organization unnoticed.” (39)

“The job of an agent is, in part, anyway, to bullshit and schmooze: How better to find talent than by seeing who can talk his way into a career? From usher to mailroom to secretariat pool to my own office.” (42)

“I have a theory. If you act like you’re in charge, no one will stop you.” (59)

“I go up to this security guard with a piece of paper in my hand and ask him a bunch of questions – “How long is your present shift?” “Did you find your training adequate to the task?” say, “Thanks, you’re doing a great job,” pat him on the shoulder, then walk past him to the elevators.” (59)

“I asked Mr. Disney what he was drawing. It was not Micky hitting Goofy with a club. It was a design for the bathing suit Deborah Walley would wear in Bon Voyage. He did not have a costume designer do it. He did it himself. The man was intense, but in an admirable way. He believed he had to control his product, utterly, as the product was really just him in another way.” (62)

“Nothing is more important than a relationship. It trumps politics, party, club. People are what matter.” (68)

“I am still the same kid who ran away from the Bronx. Life is strange – you travel so far, do so much, but the people you look for at the end are often the same people you looked for at the beginning.” (70)

“The man who rides in style often rides away with the big contract.” (74)

“When the man says no, pretend you can’t hear him. Look confused, stammer, say, “Huh?” Persistence – it’s a cliche, but it happens to work. The person who makes it is the person who keeps on going after everyone else has quit. This is more important than intelligence, pedigree, even connections. Be dogged! Keep hitting that door until you bust it down! I have accomplished almost nothing on the first or second or even the third try – the breakthrough usually comes late, when everyone else has left the field.” (76)

“The Colonel once scolded me, saying, “To you guys from the coasts, the country is New York and LA. Everything in between is just the blur you fly over. But I’ll tell you, that blur is where the audiences lives and where you make your money.” (80)

“To understand this country, you must understand the paintings in the Whitney Museum in New York, or know how to pretend to, but you must also understand the flamingos in Colonel Tom’s garden.” (80)

“Elvis was older than me. He was also the biggest star in the world. Yet he called me sir. It’s how he was raised. He was uneducated and country, but really, in many ways, a true gentleman.” (82)

“Let the other guy save face with his people, but keep score.” (98)

“Once you’ve established yourself, you can, to some extent, let business find you. You become a beacon, a door into a better life. “Can you do for me what you did for Elvis?” In other words, people seek you out.” (99)

“This is another part of the job: being able to cross frontiers, move from culture to culture, making everyone believe you are a fully committed citizen of each.” (103)

“Dean worked as a blackjack dealer in the Beverly Hills Club in Cincinnati. Dean’s whole philosophy was that everybody on the other side of the table is a sucker. Whoever he was dealing to was by definition a sucker. And when he got on stage, everybody in the audience was a sucker, too. That’s why he sang the way he did, cocky and nonchalant – because he was singing to the suckers. He couldn’t believe people actually paid to hear him.” (106)

“What had started as a ploy to snap Frank out of his depression had turned into a major deal – handled wrong, it could turn into a major embarrassment. At such times, I become obsessed with details. That’s where God is, so that’s where I go, with my notebook and phone numbers and head full of ideas.” (111)

“Sinatra taught me about spontaneity that night – this, too, helped me as a film producer. Live, let it happen. There’s never a better take than the first: Sinatra knew that in his bones.” (114)

“I sat and listened. John Denver made a connection immediately. That’s how it was with him – his talent. With each song, you felt he had opened his chest and was showing you his beating heart.” (119)

“You can evolve and grow but you should never resent your thing. If you look at how few artists actually make it, you will recognize that those trademarks, though in some ways limiting, are a gift of providence.” (121)

“At times, I used my other clients to break John. Fame is a private party. You can dazzle your way in with talent, or you can be vouched for. How far this can be carried depends entirely on who is doing the vouching.” (121)

“The song, the tour, the public appearances – these were a means to an end, which was not merely to have a hit, but to turn John Denver into a star: not a star in prospect, but a star now and yesterday, someone who has already happened, so accomplished it’s no longer up for debate. It’s why I did not present John Denver as an exciting find, or as someone who had recently been playing to an empty house in Greenwich Village, but as talent that had already made it, an accomplished fact. I sold him in the past tense, as someone you’ve known about for years. I was telling the audience to relax and enjoy, as the judgment has already been made. You love him! In this way, we skipped several steps, jumping directly from the early days of struggle to the golden years.” (122)

“If a bunch of men are discussing you, meeting about you, and scheming to destroy you, it probably means you’re doing something right.” (135)

“Work with the best people. If you have the best writers, the best actors, and the best director and fail, okay, fine, there is even something noble in it; but if you fail with garbage, then you are left with nothing to hang your spirits on.” (167)

“Was I there for every recital, or play, or concert? No, I was working. It’s nearly impossible to succeed in the world and also succeed in the house, which means, at some level, even if you do not realize it, you make a choice.” (177)

“Everyone stood when George Burns came in. For the actors, reading with him was like taking batting practice with Babe Ruth. But he was an old man, so you could not help but wonder how he would handle his lines. When we started reading, though, it was obvious he knew not only his part, but every part in the script. If John Denver fumbled, George Burns would correct him. He was incredible.” (183)

“As I always say, “Better too late than too early.” Too late means you look slow but still make a bundle. Too early means you look like you’ve lost your mind, and you get people shouting, “Kill that idiot.” But it also means there is a chance for rediscovery.” (187)

“It’s a danger of success: You’re a kid, and want only to be heard; then you are heard, by everybody, all the time, but your thought is, either, “Well, yeah, great, but now what?” or “Yes, they hear me, but it’s not the real me, not the voice I have in my head, or the person I want to be.” (198)

“You have to be willing to walk away from the most comfortable perch, precisely because it is the most comfortable.” (204)

“It’s nearly impossible to sell a story that has no grand concept, reads intimate and small, and is moody in the way a song can be moody – you get it or don’t. It was like trying to sell jazz to a person who’s never heard of Coltrane.” (206)

“With Armand, the event was always less interesting than the show. He wanted to be in the action, to see and be seen. He made a study of human drama – it was his life’s work. He was fascinated by everyone, high and low. He wanted to find out everything. He had a special interest in charisma and power, in great men, the special few who worked their will on history. Hammer participated, but he also observed. In this, he exhibited a kind of active detachment. He was in the game but removed from the game, playing and watching himself play. He made a spectacle of himself but enjoyed watching that spectacle.” (226)

“People think that Hollywood and politics operate in different spheres – they don’t. The world is very small at the top, with a few thousand players running everything. For a producer, an actor, a banker, a politician – name your celebrity – crossing genres is less a matter of making connections with the leaders of other industries than of climbing high enough in your own to reach the place where all lines converge.” (229)

“From Kennedy I learned that the best politicians are not different from movie stars. They charm, communicate, command. The good ones never make you feel isolated or small, as if they have something you don’t. Quite the opposite. They include you in their world, enlarge you, make you recognize the best qualities in yourself.” (230)

“At one point, I realized that everyone in the room had been on the cover of Time magazine. Secretaries of state, presidents, vice presidents. But when Reagan came in, everything stopped, everyone stared, then they rushed to him like moths to a flame. Whatever moment he was in became his moment. Whatever room he entered became his room. Some people have that. It’s the intangible quality that sells tickets and pulls nations out of funks. It’s where politics becomes showbiz, and showbiz becomes transcendent. A movie or a piece of art can save your life in the same way your life can be saved by a policy or law. This is why politicians seek out movie stars, and why movie stars want to become politicians. They seek the same target, which is the soul of the people.” (231)

“The Rebbe comforted me about life and death. He made me see that my general, uneducated sense of the world – that there is a God, an order, a plan – was not superstition or error, but correct, built into me for a reason, as my heart or lungs are built into me. Without it, I could not live. Which is why you need more than material things. I mean, yes, the material can be nice. I like having what I have, but I know none of it is mine, that we are only renters on earth, that even our bodies belong to someone else. Which is why you hunger even when you’ve had your fill. Life will never satisfy if it is experienced only as the rise and fall of commerce. You need to see yourself as part of something larger that never dies.” (240)

“As I hired staff and began planning projects, I realized he had given me the title but not the job. A title without a job is the worst of all worlds: it means taking all the blame while getting none of the credit and having none of the fun.” (244)

“The rooms had floor-to-ceiling windows through which you could see hills and cars moving in the canyons. There was art on the walls, shag on the floors, Perrier in the refrigerators, no expense spared. People judge on first sight, so make those surfaces shine. If you want to be seen as a major, look like a major.” (245)

“You grow into the suit. As a philosophy this means operation gon confidence, in the belief that something will happen, that the trick will work, that the backup will arrive with the heavy guns. It’s how America has operated from the beginning.” (245)

“I loved making movies, which resulted in hits, which increased my love, which sparked a desire for control, which caused me to start my own studio, which – and here is the paradox – took me out of the movie business and put me in the company running business, occupied not with writers and artists, but with health-care plans, office rivalries, and infighting. I had, in a sense, promoted myself right out of the job I always wanted, which was telling stories, producing. I lost touch with the films, which were now being made for me instead of by me and thus were no longer Jerry Weintraub Productions.” (246)

“Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications said, “What are you worrying about? You are a talented guy. That talent did not go away. The company went away? So what! Companies always go away. They’re a dime a dozen. It’s talent that counts!” (248)

“I learned how to act – and I am not saying I’m a good actor, only that I’m comfortable in front of a camera – after I learned how to stop acting.” (249)

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I recently read “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama” by Bob Odenkirk. Below are the quotes I found most interesting. If you like them, buy the book here.

“I tried just as hard at the stuff that didn’t work as I did at the stuff that worked.” (xiv)

“Now I find myself in “drama,” of all things – comedy’s enemy. In the past decade or so, I have been called upon not to mock but to empathize with humanity, to discover dignity in every character, even when the character’s most notable quality is his lack of dignity. It’s a new kind of challenge, approaching humanity’s foibles from a sympathetic stance, my work is turned inside out. For the first thirty years of my career, I did nothing but compromise my character’s dignity.” (xv)

“Janet Coleman told me, “You know what Del did that was truly amazing? He didn’t commit suicide. He figured out other things to do.”” (13)

“My mom is also very funny, but she doesn’t know it. She was always a big fan of not thinking too highly of yourself, or anyone else for that matter. This is a base component for good comedy thinking and writing – a lack of respect for the world and one’s place in it.” (16)

“Monty Python was comedy with a kick. It never winked or suggested that ‘We’re all in on it.’ Instead it maintained its point of view and said, ‘We’re in, and whoever doesn’t get it is out.’ It felt great to find my people.” (19)

“To me, the best comedy has an anger in it, and I still don’t like comedy that lacks a touch of that anger. It’s like “smooth jazz” – a waste of jazz.” (19)

“You are a pro the second you take that crumpled, sweaty, possibly counterfeit twenty.” (34)

“Besides writing good stuff and presenting it well, you have to give some thought to how the audience comes to it, and what they signed up for. They’re good people, that ol’ audience, but if they paid for a greasy hamburger, then a deftly seared steak will only bum them out.” (37)

“This was another thing that separated me from “real” stand-ups: their brazen disregard for being liked. The hardcore stand-ups I know all have proud stories of “walking the room,” performing their act to an unappreciative or hostile audience and digging in on it until they all disperse.” (41)

“There was no obvious route to fame, or even a “career” … Every day was just Write something funny today, then see what happens.” (42)

“On Monday of my third week at SNL, I took out a legal pad and wrote:
Use the Host!
Write for the Ladies!
Something topical! Read the news!

One Set! No films!
Loud and/or Recurring Characters!!” 

I figured out that if I could incorporate two of these strictures into a sketch, it would greatly improve my chance of getting something on the show. Sound like no fun? It was! Reverse-engineering comedy is an inspiration killer, but it’s a good list if you ever get hired there, so tear this page out and stuff it in your pocket.” (58)

“I was trying too hard, but the more I failed, the more I tried. It’s a sick cycle afflicts many a fresh SNL writer.” (59)

“It’s wonderful that the audience is there, but you mustn’t listen to them; they don’t know what’s good.” (61)

“You don’t want to put your good stuff out there (at the Monday meeting) because you want a fresh energy to greet your golden idea when it’s read at Wednesday read-through.” (61)

“I revered writing, but performing completed the journey. It was the payoff for the pain of writing!” (68)

“Adam Sandler was having a good time. The intimidation factor of SNL, of the big time, of more experienced people around him, did not faze Adam. He would happily pitch the thinnest of notions, and he had a blast doing it, and his good energy was infectious. I needed some of that. It was the opposite of this brainy math-problem pursuit of the “craft” of sketch writing, and a great reminder that, especially in comedy, performance matters more than writing or ideas. Loony behavior trumps clever constructions… Of course, if you have both, well, then you got something truly great.” (79)

“From the start, I had wanted to be part of a team that made the show its own. But that show is bigger than any team. It’s justifiably a juggernaut, and it’s hard to wrangle it into any writer’s personal voice. Only Michael O’Donoghue and Adam McKay seemed to me to have done some version of this: been a “star writer” whose work is distinctive and takes the show in a unique direction. Basically, I had to realize that I wanted what every comedy writer wants: my own damn show.” (80)

“Animation seemed like a lot of work – no time to focus on my own material. I was right about that – animation allows for numerous rounds of rethinking and rewriting and the Simpsons writers I knew put in long days with no time for doing their own projects on the side. My whole life is side projects!” (83)

“The best thing about Fox at the time was they had no idea what they were doing. Awkward beginnings are when good things can still happen. Once a network knows what works, well… chances are no longer taken. Something beautiful dies with success: the freedom to flail. But for now, and for the next few years, Fox would flail, and I would benefit. I’ve learned that, just like Del, “I belong in struggling organizations.” (85)

“After a while you just can’t keep not being genuine; you run out of gas.” (87)

“David Cross described “alternative comedy” simply as “comedy without the cadence.”” (93)

“There was one more lesson, one I’d been learning my whole career: get your stuff in front of the right audience.” (98)

“The agency doesn’t matter – the agent matters.” (109)

“Garry Shandling was maniacally focused, utterly consumed in the pursuit of perfection. But is there such a thing as perfection in what we do? There is not. Everyone has to come to their own terms with that conundrum; Garry never quit wanting to achieve total mastery.” (11)

David Cross said, “I resented how hard and long you were expecting me, the guy who liked to start drinking at four and going to see bands and ‘living life man!,’ to work. But you expected that from everyone you worked with, because that’s how you worked, because that’s how much work was needed to be done to get it right. And of course you were right.”

“We put each show up only one time. If you were network exec/agent/heat seeker, you HAD to attend the show when we did it. We never repeated material, so you would have missed it completely.” (122)

“Every two months or so for the next year and a half, we would do a live show, with filmed pieces interconnecting with the live performance stuff, showing everyone exactly what we wanted to do on the TV.” (122)

“We made our way forward employing THE THREE STEPS TO SUCESS IN SHOWBIZ:
1. Persistence

2. Begging
3. Waiting – then start again at the top.” (123)

“Chris Albrecht said, “Whatever you do, make it something you would never see on regular TV… It doesn’t matter if people actually watch the show, just so long as they think they should watch it.” … he was saying, “Fuck the ratings – make something worth talking about…” (125)

“There was a lot of luck alongside the years of preparation and intense focus that made Mr. Show happen, but meeting Troy miller was probably the biggest piece of luck in the luck bag.” (128)

“I ran the writers’ room in an opposite manner to every room I’d been in before this one. Instead of beating ideas up, especially weak ones, this gang would build them up – especially weak ones. You’d pitch a bad idea, or bring in a weak first draft, it would lie there, and I would ask, “It’s kind funny – what was the funniest moment in there for you?” and we could find that funny moment and build it out.” (133)

“Our writing process, “make it work,” transformed many a half-assed notion into hard laughs. But, even better, writers didn’t pitch crap that they didn’t want to talk about, only stuff they had a genuine good feeling about.” (133)

“Unlike Chris Farley, Jack Black had more confidence in his talents and himself – good for him. Demons wilt at genuine self-confidence.” (152)

“The script we produced has more funny lines than the Fast and the Furious films have automobiles, but funny lines won’t save yer film.” (157)

“Just as in every filming experience ever, every scene was turning out better than it seemed on the page; an experienced filmmaker knows that this tells you nothing at all.” (158)

“If I’m going to fail, at least let me do it by my own hand.” (160)

“Karma is a bitch! Be nice to people! You can be right without being a dick about it!” (161)

“Bernie Brillstein was in my corner, encouraging me, and he was always the last to let go. In fact, I would be the one talking him down when the network said no. “Bernie, it’s okay; they’re right, it wasn’t panning out. We did our best. Here, I got a new thing…” I always had a new thing, and I think Bernie loved that about me.” (169)

“Bernie had had a long career and a front-row seat to so many fringe ideas that blew up big (SNL, the Muppets), so he knew that the fringe is where truly big stuff is invented.” (169)

“One more failure I have to alert you to before we get into worldwide success and golden days. Because, you fool, failure is where it’s at! It tells you more about anyone’s talent and drive and self than anything that works. Pay attention – it all works out in the end.” (170)

“The moving sidewalk in LAX Terminal 4 goes on forever in the perfect opening sequence of The Graduate, and that can be how the biz feels. Like you are moving but getting nowhere. You’re getting compliments from your peers, and execs and heat seekers tell you, “you’re really special,” “We want ot work with you,” “Bring us whatever you got” … but then, nothing. I know the feeling.” (176)

“Life is a “tale told by an idiot” – int this case, two idiots – and that can be a meaningful thing to share when you’re feeling disconnected or down.” (182)

“I enjoyed directing too much and wanted another film too badly to do the simple, first, job of a director – pick a story you really, really love.” (190)

“The writers were busy with bigger projects, so there was no time for the reworking, something all films demand.” (192)

“I didn’t fall in love (like) with acting until years later; it was always secondary to digging thoughts out of my head and putting them on paper to get a laugh – real man’s work.” (197)

“But even more than the specific character, the way the show wa smade – improvised form a script – was the big attraction. The looseness of this shooting style is the most pure fun you can have as an actor.” (198)

“One trick for surviving Hollywood’s beatdown is to keep making new things in spite of every “no.”” (198)

“Blue is the color of the third rewrite, or fourth – I can never keep track, but it’s pretty final. You should definitely memorize the blue pages, young actor.” (205)

“On most comedies, it’s considered good to know most of your lines, pretty much in the right order, and you are encouraged to “have fun,” as in: MAKE IT FUNNIER, please.” (206)

“Lesson: WRITERS, ESPECIALLY COMEDY WRITERS, SHOULD ALWAYS BE PUTTING THEIR WORK IN FRONT OF PEOPLE. Get those laughs. Or call up them crickets. When you write comedy, you need to have an audience in mind, sitting right there, eager to laugh, or scowl and grunt disapprovingly. Doing brief live tours had become a lifeline in my lost wandering through these Hollywood development years.” (218)

“‘What the hell?’ you ask. ‘Don’t you want to be a star?! Isn’t that why you got into show business?’

Well… NO. Haven’t you been reading this goddamn book for hours now?! I don’t give a shit about that stuff. I am in this to entertainmyself. Here’s how much fame I need: ‘just enough’ and no more.” (220)

“The biggest reason tos ay yes to this offer was what I’d learned from the Del Close School of Trying Crazy Shit. Do something hard, something tha tyou will probably fail at, something that tests you adn excites you and takes you places you didn’t know you would ever go to. Buy the little brown bottle with the label worn off and wallow it (metaphorically speaking).” (221)

“Somewhere in the first season (of Better Call Saul), I wrote a little note to myself: “Every line is emotional.” Which is not entirely true, let’s say it’s mostly true – or at least it’s a good guide to finding the purpose of all of Saul’s chatter. I am always looking for the emotional underpinnings of any line or moment in a scene – so I’m nto just memorizing lines, I’m memorizing feelings, which stick inside you deeper. But you need to know the lines, too – they just tend to come easier if you’re following the emotional journey.” (227)

“Whose side are we on? We are on no one’s side… We aim to tease everyone, equally.
“All comedy is critical” – John Cleese.
It is. There isn’t a good joke alive that can’t be found insulting or insensitive by someone.” (237)

“In Fargo, the blinkered Bill Oswalt eventually shows a glimmer of self-awareness, and it surprise and makes him a person worth caring about. Self-awareness makes characters much richer. Everyone has at least an inkling of their worst character traits, no matter how well hidden they are in public. When you show this self-awareness peeking through, people recognize it.” (244)

“It’s a numbers game, if you haven’t figured that out from this book, but it’s also not. Every single project I work on is one I believe in and that I believe the world needs to gaze upon. Sadly, most will stumble and collapse far short of their mark.” (264)

“I settled on the truth: “You can’t. You can’t make your own break.” She was not happy to hear it. Sorry, kid. But if you care about doing the work, if it rewards you, just to do it, you will probably be all right.” (266)

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