1:58pm
East of the Mississippi
Saturday I watched half of the Mel Brooks classic, Spaceballs.
I’ve seen it dozens of times and I still laughed out loud.
I was inspired to watch it after reading a Judd Apatow interview with Brooks in Judd’s serious book about comedy, Sick in the Head.
There was a lot about writing in the book, and about life in general, and I want to share some of it with you.
Jerry Seinfeld: Anything can be done either in a classy, interesting way, or in a junky, easy way. It’s not the form itself, it’s the way someone approaches it.
James L. Brooks: People use the word ego all the time, but self-consciousness kills. You can’t do your best work when you’re self-conscious… I think, the whole thing with writing––generally, you push and push and push and then… at a certain point… it’s pulling you forward and you’re not working so hard. You’re not laboring. You’re serving.
Jeff Garlin: Groucho Marx came to see me at Second City one time… and he goes, “Make it shorter, make it funnier.”
Lena Dunham: There are always people telling you that your experience doesn’t matter, that it’s navel gazing or unnecessary… But we do need to hear it, because that’s where so many people are! I mean, it can be the difference between someone feeling like they have a place in the world and someone feeling they don’t.
Louis C.K.: And so I would go onstage with five minutes of improv, ten minutes, now I’ve got a really strong twenty. So stop doing it and start at five again and build another twenty, and I’ve got forty minutes now… Go onstage with not quite enough time and with the pressure of headlining, and forty turns into an hour just out of necessity… Do a second hour, fold it in… Make it great.
and: This means I did something right because he’s so upset.
Sarah Silverman: I saw, at a really early age, that if I shocked people, I would get approval.
Judd Apatow: I went to meet with Warren Zevon about scoring [a movie]… and being anxious. And he looked at me like I was crazy for even getting notes [from the studio], or wanting notes, or caring what the notes would say. He’s like, “What do you care what they say? That’s not what this is about.” …And as soon as I let go, everything went better. The second I made that adjustment, my career took off.
There are other quotes in the book that I wish I had dog-eared but didn’t, and some great laughs too.
And it makes me think about how some people have zero sense of humor.
I feel bad for them.
Jeffrey