Tag: Comedy Books

I recently finished reading “Screenwriting 434” by Lew Hunter. Here are the quotes I found most interesting:

“The idea is the most important. The structure is second. Ironically, the script itself is least important. Of course it takes the most time. But a story and a script can be “fixed.” An idea can’t.” (20)

“Always pick stories that scream for visualization.” (22)

“Greek theater, Shakespeare, and actually everything of quality known to Western persons has a significant undertow of sex or violence or a combination of thereof. To deny it is insane and even worse, wrong.” (23)

“This does not mean blood and gore and naked bodies. Sometimes the most extreme form of violence is psychological violence.” (23)

“One screenwriter friend periodically comes out of his Bel Air cave and rides city buses without any geographic destination. His creative destination is to overhear “real people” talk for dialogue, stories, and scenes.” (28)

“If you get something in your writing teeth you have got to do, do it. Forget about the marketplace. Follow your obsession. Obsession makes the best screenplay character drive for screenplays, and obsession makes the best screenwriter drive for you.” (30)

“Forget writing for money, which means trying to second guess what the marketplace wants. By the time you write the screenplay, the marketplace will generally have gone on to another fad.” (35)

“I suddenly realized that I, by then, knew more overall than most people who had been catapulted into that tragedy of American history. It was time to stop researching and start writing. Too much research can be the disguise of procrastination or fear.” (35)

“Individualism is what makes screenplays great, not their uniqueness.” (40)

“Even if this “love story in a madhouse” or any of your scripts you write “on speculation” never sell, you must love the process. That should be more important to you than acceptance or sale. Make your principal reward the very act of writing. That will keep you psychologically afloat and able to handle those difficult and numerous rejections. (41)

“Forget making a living, being famous, or getting rich. If you’re targeted on any of these goals, you’ll fail yourself, your society, and your world.” (42)

“You have to make the audience care about your on-screen people and their dilemmas, and when that occurs you’ve created believable unbelievability. Audiences will just not get with a film that starts with what they perceive as unbelievable unbelievability.” (49)

“Beware of such “friends.” Yes, you need feedback because the isolation can be debilitating. Just make very sure it’s good feedback from an intelligent, feeling fellow human.” (55)

“Extremes are the best choice we all have.” (60)

“You want to establish your heavy is a monster. For instance, a character is about to rob a bank. Have him, just before opening the bank door, shoot an old lady’s dog. The audience will hate him. Ironically, probably much more so than if he had shot the old lady.” (75)

“The best flaw is obsession. Your hero should want something so badly, he or she will battle any equally obsessed heavy to get it against all odds. That is the supreme conflict.” (76)

“Every classic human heavy has one of two motivations. Greed or power. Period. Don’t look for more than greed or power. That’s it. Villainy emanates from those two motives.” (77)

“When you’re in a corner, always look to your characters to lead you out. They will show the way.” (81)

“People who can really matter in getting your script made may feel that your numbered characters are superficial, and hence that could carry over to the star roles.” (85)

“At all steps along the story way, make sure the scene you’re in was caused by the scene that went before. And the following scene you’re in was caused by the scene that went before. And the following scene is there because of the one you’re in. Keep that rhythm going and you’ll have a damned good story.” (89)

“Anticipation is often as wonderful, or as suspenseful, as the realization of the end result.” (97)

“John T. Kelley wrote: “No matter how little you feel like working, force your mind to continue thinking about the story or idea under consideration. Eventually the wheels will begin to turn. Usually it won’t take more than five or ten minutes at the most.” Jack London said: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”” (98)

“Pick and start with the most passionate, exciting, funny, or tension-filled scene you can find.” (99)

“The audience’s “need to know” should always be in your story mind, but especially in Act One. Withhold as long as you can.” (100)

“Don’t ever rely on the last half of your script being brilliant. Few will get to that section if the first five and ten pages don’t happen and happen strong.” (132)

“Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22 from four to seven each morning, before taking the train into New York for his 9-5 advertising job.” (137)

“Life is when thing happen one after another. Structure is when things happen because of the other.” (162)

“The scenes in question have the couple waiting to learn about their son’s condition, and then being informed he has died. These are two potentially boring, obligatory scenes. I heightened the drama and the interest level by using the third party trick. You see, generally when someone else is in front of your two people, they can’t be so on-the-nose with their dialogue. Restrained subtext is what the scene’s dialogue must contain.” (172)

“A viewer cannot set a movie down. He can set a book down. He can stop, take a break, pick it up later. But when a viewer is bored for more than three or four minutes, the movie is irreparably harmed. The flow is broken.” (180)

“I am generally far more interested in being effective than right, and being effective means selling. During my thirty years of selling scripts I have been inculcated with a David Susskind admonishment about what “they” want: “Happy people with happy problems and happy endings.”” (268)

“Most of Hollywood hates unhappy endings. I recommend the happy, even ecstatic ending to make your script saleable. Later in the process, you can suggest considering the unhappy ending. The purchasing party will probably turn you down but you’ll be pleased you tried.” (268)

“We writers can always write. We may not be getting paid, but we can always work. Not so for anyone else in this collaborative art called filmmaking.” (318)

“Consider Dr. Samuel Johnson’s words to a fellow writer: “Your manuscript is both good and original. The part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.”” (319)

“Remember, audiences remember characters even more than story. Salt the mine. Make your characters memorable. Here and now.” (325)

“Sooner or later you may have to accept the fact that your ability does not best reside in comedy or drama or action adventure or whatever. It’s all right to lack strong aptitude for certain story forms, but deluding yourself is not alright. Identifying your strengths and weaknesses in writing is as important a self-recognition as you can have as a beginning or established writer.” (329)

“Don’t be an “anything you like I like” writer because you will be as undesirable to those persons able to buy your wares as a writer who won’t listen at all.” (335)

“Many writers who have been working a long time have huge attitudes, yet blame their lack of employment on ageism. Often that’s real, but as often their attitude in meetings is simply insufferable. They’re almost always dealing with people younger and less experienced than themselves. They find it hard not to come off as “the teacher.” Quinn Martin said: “We’re not doing Shakespeare. It’s a game. Play it, enjoy it. If the day comes when you can’t, get out.”” (335)

“If you must say “no,” make sure you’re not destroying your future relationship with that person. You’d rather be effective, and not be replaced by another writer, than be right. In this business of show, you can be “right” but wrong in the long of the haul. Do not be “wrong by being right.”” (336)

“We do not need to like Citizen Kane, most of the Humphrey Bogart characters, or the pedophile Howie in Fallen Angel. We need to understand them. To understand them means to dimensionalize them. To develop the character beyond the stereotype. To make Butch and Sundance more than robbers. To make E.T. Not a monster from outer space, but lovable and loving.” (338)

“Don’t worry about making the character lovable. Worry about the role’s having dimension so that “they” and the audience understand why the character is what the character is. Put in “pet the dog” scenes.” (338)

“UCLA’s John Wooden constantly tried to psychologically condition his team to have as close to the same demeanor when they lost as when they won. He believed if the lows were too low and the highs too high, the slams at each end would be destructive to the team’s season-long morale.” (341)

“Many professors, professionals, and others in the midst of life seem to be locked in the mode of not believing a majority of people have talent.” (344)

As always, if you find these quotes useful, please buy the full book here.

I recently finished reading “Mastery: The Keys to Long-Term Fulfillment” by George Leonard. Here are the quotes I found interesting. As always, if you like the quotes, please consider buying the book here.

“If there is any sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long-term, essentially goalless process of mastery.” (xiii)

“You have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practicing even when you seem to e getting nowhere.” (15)

“When your tennis partner starts improving his or her game and you don’t, the game eventually breaks up. The same thing applies to relationships.” (24)

“Unlike the Hacker, we were working hard, doing the best we could to improve our skills. But we had learned the perils of getting ahead of ourselves, and now were willing ot stay on the plateau for as long as was necessary. Ambition still was there, but it was tame.d Once again we enjoyed our training. We loved the plateau. And we made progress.” (44)

““A lot of people go for things only because a teacher told them they should, or their parents,” said Olympic gymnast Peter Vidmar. “People who get into something for the money, the fame, or the medal can’t be effective. When you discover your own desire, you’re not going to wait for other people to find solutions to your problems. You’re going to find your own. I set goals for myself, but underlying all the goals and the work wast he fact that I enjoyed it.”” (45)

“Recognition is often unsatisfying and fame is like seawater for the thirsty. Love of your work, willingness to stay with it even in the absence of extrinsic reward, is good food and good drink.” (47)

“Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is not a man of small ego. I’m sure he loved the money, the fame, the privileges his career brought him. But he loved the sky-hook more.” (48)

“The human individual is equipped to learn and go on learning prodigiously from birth to death, and this is precisely what sets him or her apart from all other known forms of life. Man has at various times been defined as a building animal, a working animal, and a fighting animal, but all of these definitions are incomplete and finally false. Man is a learning animal.” (53)

“If you intend to take the journey of mastery, the best thing you can do is to arrange for first-rate instruction.” (55)

“Even those who will some day overthrow conventional ways of thinking or doing need to know what it is they are overthrowing.” (55)

“It’s particularly challenging, in fact, for a top performer to become a first-rate teacher. Instruction demands a certain humility; at best, the teacher takes delight in being surpassed by his or her students.” (57)

“The essence of the instructor’s art lies in the ability to work effectively and enthusiastically with beginners and to serve as a guide on the path of mastery for those who are neither as fast nor as talented as the norm.” (58)

“In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki approaches the question of fast and slow learners in terms of horses. “In our scriptures, it is said that there are four kinds of horses: excellent ones, good ones, poor ones, and bad ones. The best horse will run slow and fast, right and left, at the driver’s will, before it sees the shadow of the whip; the second best will run as well as the first one, just before the whip reaches its skin; the third one will run when it feels pain on its body; the fourth will run after the pain penetrates to the marrow of its bones. You can imagine how difficult it is for the fourth one to learn to run.
“When we hear this story, almost all of us want to be the best horse. If it is impossible to be the best one, we want to be the second best.” But this is a mistake, Master Suzuki says. When you learn too easily, you’re tempted not to work hard, not to penetrate to the marrow of a practice.
“If you study calligraphy, you will find that those who are not so clever usually become the best calligraphers. Those who are very clever with their hands often encounter great difficulty after they have reached a certain stage. This is also true in art, and in life.” The best horse, according to Suzuki, may be the worst horse. And the worse horse can be the best, for if it perseveres, it will have learned whatever it is practicing all the way to the marrow of its bones.” (67)

“Learning eventually involves interaction between the learner and the learning environment, and its effectiveness relates tot he frequency, quality, variety, and intensity of the interaction.” (68)

“If the traveler is fortunate – that is, if the path is complex and profound enough – the destination is two miles farther way for every mile he or she travels.” (74)

“There’s another secret: The people we know as masters don’t devote themselves to their particular skill just to get better at it. The truth is, they love to practice – and because of this they do get better. And then, to complete the circle, the better they get the more they enjoy performing the basic moves over and over again.” (75)

““The master,” an old martial arts saying goes, “is the one who stays on the mat five minutes longer every day than anybody else.”” (76)

“The master of any game is generally a master of practice.” (77)

““How long will it take me to master aikido?” a prospective student asks. “How Long do you expect to live?” is the only respectable response.” (79)

“The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your own hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency.” (81)

“The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty: Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.” (83)

“For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.” (88)

“Now we come, as come we must in anything of real consequence, to a seeming contradiction, a paradox. Almost without exception, those we know as masters are dedicated to the fundamentals of their calling. They are zealots of practice, connoisseurs of the small, incremental step. At the same time – and here’s the paradox – these people, these masters, are precisely the one who are likely to challenge previous limits, to take risks for the sake of higher performance, and even to become obsessive at times in that pursuit. Clearly, for them the key is not either/or, it’s both/and.” (97)

“The trick here is not only to test the edges of the envelope, but also to walk the fine line between endless, goalless practice and those alluring goals that appear along the way.” (98)

In the words of the ancient Eastern adage: “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”” (99)

“The new black belt is expected to be on the mat the next day, ready to take the first fall.” (99)

“But before you can even consider playing this edge, there must be many years of instruction, practice, surrender, and intentionality. And afterwards? More training, more time on the plateau: the never-ending path again.” (101)

“Backsliding is a universal experience. Every one of us resists significant change, no matter whether it’s for the worse or for the better. Our body, brain, and behavior have a built-in tendency to stay the same within rather narrow limits, and to snap back when changed – and it’s a very good thing they do.” (107)

“If an organization or cultural reform meets tremendous resistance, it is because it’s either a tremendously bad idea or a tremendously good idea. Trivial change, bureaucratic meddling, is much easier to accept, and that’s one reason why you see so much of it.” (112)

“The fine art of playing the edge in this case involves a willingness to take one step back for every two forward, sometimes vice versa. It also demands a determination to keep pushing, but not without awareness. Simply turning off your awareness to the warnings deprives you of guidance and risks damaging the system. Simply pushing your way through despite the warning signals increases the possibility of backsliding.” (115)

Tools for mastery:

1. Be aware of the way homeostasis works.
2. Be willing to negotiate with your resistance to change.
3. Develop a support system.
4. Follow a regular practice.
5. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning. (114-118)

“A human being is the kind of machine that wears out from lack of use. There are limits, of course, and we do need healthful rest and relaxation, but for the most part we gain energy by using energy. Often the best remedy for physical weariness is thirty minutes of aerobic exercise.” (120)

Getting energy for mastery:

1. Maintain physical fitness
2. Acknowledge the negative and accentuate the positive.
3. Try telling the truth.
4. Honor but don’t indulge your own dark side.
5. Set your priorities
6. Make Commitments
7. Get on the path of mastery and stay on it. (123-131)

“Priorities do shift, and you can change them at any time, but simply getting them down in black and white adds clarity to your life, and clarity creates energy.” (129)

“The gift of an externally imposed deadline isn’t always available. Sometimes you need to set your own. But you have to take it seriously. One way to do this is to make it public.” (130)

“You can’t build energy up by not using it. Adequate rest is, of course, a part of the master’s journey, but, unaccompanied by positive action, rest may only depress you.” (131)

““Never marry a person,” psychologist Nathaniel Brandon tells his clients, “who is not a friend of your excitement.”” (134)

Pitfalls along the path to mastery:

1. Conflicting way of life
2. Obsessive goal orientation
3. Poor instruction
4. Lack of competitiveness
5. Over-competitiveness
6. Laziness
7. Injuries
8. Drugs
9. Prizes and medals
10. Vanity
11. Dead seriousness
12. Inconsistency
13. Perfectionism (133-140)

“It’s fine to have ambitious goals, but the best way of reaching them is to cultivate modest expectations at every step along the way. When you’re climbing a mountain, in other words, be aware that the peak is ahead, but don’t keep looking up at it. Keep your eyes on the path. And when you reach the top of the mountain, as the Zen saying goes, keep on climbing.” (134)

“If you’re always thinking about appearances, you can never attain the state of concentration that’s necessary for effective learning and top performance.” (138)

“To be deadly serious is to suffer tunnel vision. When choosing fellow voyagers, beware of grimness, self importance, and the solemn eye.” (139)

“Even without comparing ourselves to the world’s greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.” (140)

“Psychologist Abraham Maslow discovered a childlike quality (he called it a “second naivete”) in people who have met an unusually high degree of their potential.” (175)

If you liked the book, please buy it here.

I recently finished reading Bossypants by Tina Fey. Here’s the quotes I found most interesting.

“When choosing sexual partners, remember: Talent is not sexually transmittable.” (Kindle Location 13).

“In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” (Kindle Location 32).

“My whole life, people who ask about my scar within one week of knowing me have invariably turned out to be egomaniacs of average intelligence or less. And egomaniacs of average intelligence or less often end up in the field of TV journalism.” (Kindle Locations 64-66).

“So I spent four years attempting to charm the uninterested. (It was probably good practice for my future career on a low-rated TV show.)” (Kindle Location 521).

“A wise friend once told me, “Don’t wear what fashion designers tell you to wear. Wear what they wear.”” (Kindle Location 1080).

“It seemed promising because I’d heard the show was looking to diversify. Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.” (Kindle Locations 1154-1155).

“The only advice anyone had given me about meeting with Lorne was “Whatever you do, don’t finish his sentences.”” (Kindle Location 1163).

“Things I Learned from Lorne Michaels

1) Producing is about discouraging creativity.

…sometimes Actors have what they call “ideas.” Usually it involves them talking more, or, in the case of more experienced actors, sitting more. When Actors have ideas it’s very important to get to the core reason behind their idea. Is there something you’re asking them to do that’s making them uncomfortable? Are they being asked to bare their midriff or make out with a Dick Cheney look-alike? (For the record, I have asked actors to do both, and they were completely game.) Rather than say, “I’m uncomfortable breast-feeding a grown man who I just met today,” the actor may speak in code and say something like “I don’t think my character would do that.” Or “I’ve hurt my back and I’m not coming out of my dressing room.” You have to remember that actors are human beings. Which is hard sometimes because they look so much better than human beings. Is there someone in the room the actor is trying to impress? This is a big one and should not be overlooked. If a male actor is giving you a hard time about something, you must immediately scan the area for pretty interns…

2) The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.

…You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go.

What I learned about bombing as a writer at Saturday Night is that you can’t be too worried about your “permanent record.” Yes, you’re going to write some sketches that you love and are proud of forever—your golden nuggets. But you’re also going to write some real shit nuggets. And unfortunately, sometimes the shit nuggets will make it onto the air. You can’t worry about it. As long as you know the difference, you can go back to panning for gold on Monday.

3) When hiring, mix Harvard Nerds with Chicago Improvisers and stir.

Harvard Is Classical Military Theory, Improv Is Vietnam.

4) Television is a visual medium.

You may want to be diligent and stay up with the writers all night, but if you’re going to be on the show, you can’t.

5) Don’t make any big decisions right after the season ends.

The interesting thing about this piece of advice is that no one ever takes it.

6) Never cut to a closed door.

7) Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway at three in the morning.

#8 Never tell a crazy person he’s crazy.

Lorne knows that the most exhausting people occasionally turn out the best stuff. How do I explain the presence of crazy people on the staff if we’re following Rule #7? Easily: These crazy people are charming and brilliant and great fun to see at three in the morning. Also, some people arrive at the show sane and the show turns them crazy.” (Kindle Locations 1180-1264).

“Real movie stars do look different from regular people. They are often a little smaller and usually have nicer teeth, shoes, and watches than anyone else in the room.” (Kindle Locations 1291-1292).

“Writers are often assigned to help produce sketches that the performers write.” (Kindle Locations 1297-1298).

“Saturday Night Live runs on a combustion engine of ambition and disappointment.” (Kindle Location 1315).

“If your boss is a jerk, try to find someone above or around your boss who is not a jerk.” (Kindle Location 1407).

“Technology doesn’t move backward. No society has ever de-industrialized.” (Kindle Locations 1560-1561).

“What I learned about Film Acting is that it’s mostly about not standing in other people’s light, and remembering what hand you had your papers in. When you do your “off-camera” lines for someone, you try to put your head real close to the camera. That’s about it. You’re a trained film actor now.” (Kindle Locations 1811-1813).

“Though we are grateful for the affection 30 Rock has received from critics and hipsters, we were actually trying to make a hit show. We weren’t trying to make a low-rated critical darling that snarled in the face of conventionality. We were trying to make Home Improvement and we did it wrong.” (Kindle Locations 1837-1839).

“Even if I sucked, it might be a good rating. A good rating is a good rating, even if people tune in just to be mad about how much it sucked.” (Kindle Locations 1971-1972).

“By the second week, I realized what made this experience so fun and different. For the first time ever, I was performing in front of an audience that wanted to see me. I had spent so many years handing out fliers, begging people to check out my improv team. I was so used to trying to win the audience over or just get permission to be there that a willing audience was an incredible luxury. It was like having a weight lifted off you. I thought, “This must be what it’s like for Darrell when he plays Bill Clinton.” Or for Tracy Morgan when he does anything. People are just happy to see them.” (Kindle Locations 2067-2071).

“Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? “I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open.” The crowd cheers.” (Kindle Locations 2079-2081).

“Some weeks you got to produce a pure little comedy piece that was dear to your heart and had a great host like Alec Baldwin or Julia Louis-Dreyfus in it. Some weeks you had to sit and take notes from the smallest Hanson brother about what jokes he didn’t care for.” (Kindle Locations 2152-2153).

“When people say, “You really, really must ” do something, it means you don’t really have to. No one ever says, “You really, really must deliver the baby during labor.” When it’s true, it doesn’t need to be said.” (Kindle Locations 2298-2299).

If you liked the quotes, please buy the book here.

I recently finished “Enter Talking” by Joan Rivers. Here’s the quotes I found interesting.

“I felt timing inside me, knew instinctively the exact moment to pause, the instant to hit a line like punching a button to detonate laughter – and it was laughter with me, not at me, laughter intoxicating beyond anything. I had never knowing how to deal with adults, ahd always felt there was nothing inside my head which could be of any interest to them, but those men wanted this pathetic, fantasy-ridden kid at the table, wanted me to perform and be funny, wanted to be entertained and I was doing it. I had found out how to get my way, how to get them to say, “Sure, you can stay up another twenty minutes.” By making them laugh I was in charge. It was the first time I ever had the heady feeling, the first time I found this way to be in control – and I have lived by that knowledge to this day.” (54)

“A comic onstage must be in command, an authoritarian figure. Ladylike ways do not work for my audiences. I have to be the toughest one in the room or they will talk right through me. They have to know I am like a lion tamer who says, “if you come near me, I’ll kill you.” (55)

“If you love the wrong person, there is a point where you must walk away, not matter what it does to you.” (66)

“Nobody else will ever have your ambition, will ever hand your success to you, so you had better go out and achieve it yourself.” (70)

“Everybody in the business knows that resumes are mostly lies and no legitimate producer looks at them – or, if they do, they know instantly which are the lies. Nobody ever says, “Oh, I’m going to hire you because I see you were in so-and-so.” If you have a big credit, they already know it.” (77)

“I would think, Please, God, if you’re going to make me a failure, fine. Bud don’t make me a failure at something I don’t want to do.” (84)

“Whenever nobody laughed, Lou Alexander pressed on with energy. If his ego was on the line, he had learned to hide that.” (116)

“He told me that other people’s material only worked well for them, and when I knew who I was, I would know what would work for me.” (119)

“I was experiencing a show business truth – familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds hope.” (130)

“Even sobbing in the filthy shower in Boston, telling myself, “I’m not going to do this anymore; I’m not going to do it anymore,” I had known I would keep on going, no matter what. My parents were not going to defeat me.” (147)

“All of us in comedy have had our Show Bars, our hideous low points that almost destroy us – except that we come back to have more of them – walking out on stages hundreds and hundreds of times when lights are broken, when microphones do not work, when audiences are hostile, when our material stinks. That is what makes you tough. That is what changes you from a happy amateur to a professional, tans your hide, turns you, eventually, leathery.” (149)

“I could not endure the reality that I might end up Joan Molinsky, an unattractive, nondescript little Jewish girl, run-of-the-mill, who might just as well have stayed in Brooklyn and married the druggist and had a normal life. I had come from normal life, from real life, and nobody there had been happy. I knew I had to be special, had to have a life different from anything I had ever known, and if I ended up ordinary Joan Molinsky, I would always be unhappy and make my husband and children unhappy.” (207)

“How could he be loving when from childhood he had never been taught what it is to love – when his wife did not love him and his children did not love him?” (216)

“The act evolves out of yourself – but not intellectually. It gathers emotionally inside you, in a strange way a by-product of struggle, of a willingness to do anything, try anything, expose yourself to anything – staying in motion because sooner or later those ripples will cause change. This is paying your dues, appearing again and again and again on every sort of stage in front of every kind of audience, until you gradually, gradually acquire technique and a stage identity, which is not you, but has your passion, your hurts, your angers, your particular humor.” (217)

“When you begin losing an audience, do not get loud; get quiet, make them find you and come back to you.” (223)

“The only way you can go into show business is to expect no reward at all – which, of course, is impossible. Everybody goes into this business for profit and recognition. The paradox is: If you are not in it for the rewards, they are more likely to come to you. If you are willing to do anything just to work – if you are obsessed – you will make your luck.” (241)

“Talent rises to the surface like the best of cream because there is so little of it. All the neurotics go into this business, the unhappy people, the misfits, and they say, “I’m going to be an actor; I’m going to be a comic.” The ones with talent always make it, unless their neurosis is so great it stops them. Talent shines through.” (241)

“But to maintain success, stamina is more important than talent. You have to learn to be a marathon runner.” (242)

“It was wrong to let a man I would never marry devote his life to me.” (244)

“I discovered the performer’s paradox: the greater the high of a success, the deeper the pit of frustration afterward.” (246)

“Just supporting myself by performing has always been to me major success in show business.” (247)

“I was absorbing a sorry truth of show business – rejection is the norm and acceptance the oddity.” (252)

“You must make crucial choices in comedy, must constantly say, “This is funny, but it is not for me.” (253)

“I was doing hunks that sort of worked, but had no consistent image of myself onstage – and never even thought about it. There was no core to me, nothing that made it all the same girl. I was only trying to be a funny girl – anything for a laugh, whether it fir the character or not. The minute there was no laugh, there was no me – and the audience knew it instantly.” (259)

“I had no concept till then of the incredible dedication of somebody like Tennessee Williams. I had always thought he sat down in his room and wrote A Streetcar Named Desire and brought it to somebody who said, “This is very good, I’ll produce it.” But here was this Pulitzer Prize winner, who had already given us Blanche DuBois, working like a beginner with his first play. After all the pretty parties, all the nice manners, all the big limousines that he pulled up in, there he was day after day in the theater cutting and fixing and pruning and changing and switching and worrying, sitting, hunched forward, making notes in the low box stage at right, where Lincoln would have gotten it.” (276)

“Experience counts for a great deal and very little. Every night onstage I feel I am starting from scratch, still not quite sure what I am doing and where I am going, thrown by the simplest thing that goes wrong.” (276)

“Jack Benny once said, “No matter how big you are, you have to get to the stage through the kitchen.” (276)

“The anger and bitterness in him were so great, you could see he would not last long as a comic. He could not keep himself from making a statement – and you cannot make statements through comedy. Your anger can be forty-nine percent and your comedy fifty-one percent, and you are okay. If the anger is fifty-one percent, the comedy is gone. Comedy is anger, but anger is not comedy.” (282)

“I knew that they wanted to laugh and that I was going to fail them. So I had no confidence, and when you walk onstage without confidence, never meeting the audience’s eyes, they smell the fear. Everything is affected – your delivery, your look, your stance.” (301)

“Never trust an audience. Never think they are truly your friends. Get their attention and their respect immediately. You are like a lion tamer on that stage, either master or victim, and there is no in between.” (301)

“I have learned that certain kinds of success can ruin you. If I had been a hit in the Catskills that summer, I would probably not be where I am today. The struggle to make it in the mountains, the browbeating you suffer, defeats many comics. They wake up at age forty and find they are Catskills comics, locked into that groove of humor, sapped of the talent and drive they need to reach the next rung. Once a cruise comic did so well on a cruise ship that he went to his agent and said, “I’m ready for Caesars palace.” The agent answered, “As soon as it floats.” (302)

“It started my lifelong technique of taping every show, replaying the act, making notes, and using the new lines that worked.” (304)

“Lenny Bruce was hysterically funny with total control of his audience. The children were lined up to be fed. I was seeing Jesus.” (307)

“That night I realized the importance of getting down to basics: What are we really talking about? Why are we embarrassed about this? If that is all it is, so what? We need to know what we are really bothered about, need to get in touch with our true feelings and attitudes so we can deal with them.” (308)

“Personal truth means to me talking about your pain, which means stripping everything away, showing all of yourself, not some corner of your life okay for audiences to see. But the risk is awesome. When you open yourself up, talking about things that deeply pain you, perhaps the audience will not be your friend, perhaps when you bare your soul and say, “Here are my thighs,” they may go, “Yeah? So? Waiter, another drink please,” instead of “My god, my God, you’ve been living with this?” That is a tremendous fear to overcome.” (309)

“My pain had found a channel and was spilling through, flooding me with a happy hysteria, goading me to speak fast and make everything funny because at any second I might begin to cry.” (310)

“At last I had become hurt enough, upset enough, angry enough to expose her onstage – and in my act from that night on, the pain kept spilling and spilling and spilling.” (311)

“When you work solely for money, the spark and excitement go and the audience knows it.” (314)

“I wondered to myself why I constantly chose impossible men. Maybe I was picking men who would not stop my career, men I would not have to marry.” (321)

“Freddie used to ask people what they thought of a new performer. “Liked” was the kiss of death. “Loved” or “hated” interested him. At least the performer had aroused emotion. It was the first time being loathed by some people was my big asset.” (330)

“There was within me a primal understanding that I could only be happy alone onstage, talking one-on-one to the audience.” (333)

“They all kept saying, “She goes too far…” and kept coming back, and night after night I was feeling those shock waves of laughter, luxuriating in the appreciation, getting that soaring sensation of liftoff.” (342)

“I learned that if I made even one friend in the audience, then I did not care if the entire rest of the audience turned against me.” (343)

“William Randolph Heart said, “If you write for the masses, you eat with the classes. If you write for the classes, you eat with the masses.” (344)

“I thought a hook was low-class, so it took me years to find mine and it just came naturally. Much later, when my act had really become gossiping over the back fence with audiences, I slipped into “Can we talk?” I said it so much, so automatically, it became my identifying line. People began to know who I was oh – “Oh, yeah, she’s the one who says ‘Can we talk?’” I hate saying it – I do not like anything that’s consciously done. It is too manipulative. But that hook lifted me off a plateau in my career, and what really took me through the roof was talking about personalities.” (347)

“You cannot rely on anything, even while it is happening. You cannot say, “Okay, I’ve reached this level.” You have reached no level. You get up the next morning and you are at the bottom all over again. You have your talent on this day, but you never know whether tomorrow you will be able to look at something and make a joke of it – whether you will still have that gift that came from nowhere and may disappear into nowhere.” (358)

“In a curious way, failure was setting me free. Since show business considered me too old, too shopworn, too shocking, there was nobody left to please except myself – and that, of course, is the real secret of pleasing the audience. When you enjoy what you are doing, they will enjoy it with you.” (364)

As always, if you liked the quotes please buy the book here.

I recently finished reading The War for Late Night by Bill Carter. Here’s the quotes I found most interesting. Instead of my usual page numbers, they’re marked “KL” for Kindle Location.

“After a while you don’t bomb anymore. You do better than you might have done, or you do a little worse. But you don’t go out there and just bomb.” (KL 239-240).

“He got laughs—genuine, honest laughs. The sound wafted up from the audience and enveloped him, embraced him, cocoonlike—or maybe like the ring of smoke in an opium den. O’Brien had never used drugs and never would. But this? This was the same thing; this was cocaine.” (KL 1064-1066).

“Conan spent his free time fighting off anxiety and frustration—and depression. He had always been prone to falling into an occasional slough of despond, sometimes even when things were going relatively well.” (KL 1253-1255).

“That day Conan proved he had some mettle. When he entered the building, he stepped into an elevator and was immediately confronted by a reporter from the New York Post, who taunted, “I counted how many laughs Letterman got in his press conference leaving the show and I’m gonna count how many you get!” Far from throwing Conan, the encounter relaxed him. It was when things were calm that he leaned toward depression or panic. When his back was against the wall, he seemed to do things he didn’t know he could do.” (KL 1441-1444).

“The knock was that he didn’t delegate well, mainly because he always seemed certain he could do the job as well or better himself. “Sometimes it’s a curse to be too smart and think you can do too much,” said an NBC executive who worked closely with Zucker for a time.” (KL 1697-1699)

“Earning just enough to live on so that he could show up every night at the Comedy Cellar and go on as the last act. Every weeknight, somewhere near two a.m., Jon Stewart performed before the drunk and the lonely of the New York metropolitan area. “I sucked for two straight years,” Jon would later tell aspiring comics, partly as advice and partly as storm warning.” (KL 1884-1887)

“Leno seared that advice into his psyche. If he wasn’t as gifted as other kids—later, other comics—he would hit them where they might be weak: their work ethic.” (KL 1954-1955).

“He was living by what he called “the first rule of show business: Don’t create anything bigger than your act.” Jay interpreted the rule to mean that, if you found yourself consumed by something bigger than what you are known for, your downfall was assured. If something distracting or dispiriting was going on in his life, his duty was to shrug it off, get back in the game of telling jokes, and be funny, day in, day out.” (KL 2036-2039).

“As Zucker had often said before, “It’s sometimes easier to see the world when you’re flat on your back.” (KL 2909-2910).

“Michaels still believed that what worked on late-night talk shows was a host people could identify with and like. “The more time you fill on television, the more and more of you comes out,” Michaels said. “These jobs define overexposure.”  (KL 3093-3095).

“Every night the show, for good or for bad, defined who he was. The act of stepping out nearly daily onto a stage and standing in front of people, millions of people, and soliciting laughs almost defined the term narcissism. Every performer would have needed an outsize ego to get through that crucible every night. Clearly the two giants of this late-night era had that in common, but they reacted to it in totally opposite ways. Jay Leno told friends and colleagues he had the easiest job in the world. One friend remembered hearing Jay say that and replying, “Jay, I know you’re at ease with what you do. But you really think you have the easiest job in the world? Every night getting a report card? Nobody else’s job gives them a grade every time they finish up their work. No, Jay, really this is the opposite of the easiest job.” The same friend also knew Dave well. The significant difference between them, the friend said, was that “with Jay nothing is ever wrong and with Dave nothing is ever right.” Jay’s narcissism took the form of an overarching single-mindedness about his career and the material that fed it. To some close observers of Jay over the years, the Tonight Show star didn’t seem to be living life so much as he seemed to be living comedy material.” (KL 4013-4022).

“I think Conan chooses not to have a point of view, unlike Jay, who doesn’t really have the mentality to have one.” (KL 4189-4190).

“Conan thought they were working at looking sympathetic, following some lesson that had been taught at corporate school.” (Kindle Location 5364).

“Early on, Conan had said, “I don’t care what happens in my career as long as it’s interesting.” (Kindle Location 6351).

“Here’s big point number two in show business: Hang around! Just stay there, just be there! The old cliché: 95 percent is just showing up. OK, I’m on at twelve; I’m still showing up. You never leave!” (KL 7012-7013).

“Conan was trying to be both outrageous and mainstream. “You can’t be both things. He didn’t have enough time. He was three-quarters of the way there.” (KL 7045-7046).

Lorne walked into Segelstein’s office, sat down, and laid out all the reasons he had decided to resign. And Segelstein, who had a sardonic streak, listened patiently, not uttering a word until Michaels had finished. Then he launched into a story, a parable of sorts, one that touched on the religion of television. “Let me just take you through what will happen when you leave,” Segelstein began. “When you leave, the show will get worse. But not all of a sudden—gradually. And it will take the audience a while to figure that out. Maybe two, maybe three years. And when it gets to be, you know, awful, and the audience has abandoned it, then we will cancel it. And the show will be gone, but we will still be here, because we’re the network and we are eternal. If you read your contract closely, it says that the show is to be ninety minutes in length. It is to cost X. That’s the budget. Nowhere in that do we ever say that it has to be good. And if you are so robotic and driven that you feel the pressure to push yourself in that way to make it good, don’t come to us and say you’ve been treated unfairly, because you’re trying hard to make it good and we’re getting in your way. Because at no point did we ask for it to be good. That you’re neurotic is a bonus to us. Our job is to lie, cheat, and steal—and your job is to do the show.” (KL 7136-7145).

If you find these quotes interesting, please buy the whole book here.