I think that comedy, at its most basic level, is making light of unpleasant things. That’s how we deal with life. I think that the myth that comedy and depression are linked, and that any artist has to be unhappy to create, is a very dangerous myth that I think has hurt a lot of people. When Robin Williams died, I did a few interviews about that, because people were reaching out to the comedy community and asking people how they felt and their personal stories. A lot of people wanted to draw a link between comedians and depression and suicide, and I think that’s a really terrible myth. Anybody can be depressed in any walk of life. It just seems strange when comedians are depressed, because t...
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Related posts tagged 'Depression'
Q: According to the book The Chris Farley Show, Beverly Hills Ninja depressed Chris Farley a fair amount and put him back in to a bad place that spiraled into his death. Is that accurate? Any sense of that on set?
A: There was no sense of that on the set. I mean, we all were depressed on Beverly Hills Ninja. So we were ALL depressed. It wasn't a great representation of anybody in it.
I would let that bad feeling drag me down to the bottom of the lake and I’d lay down there. The only thing that would pull me out of it would be getting a new chunk of material. And to get a new chunk of material you have to go out into the world. But when you’re in that funk you don’t want to go out and then you get writer’s block. When I was younger I even used to think all that clichéd sad-clown shit. Now I don’t want to fucking be that guy. I want to be the happy guy, which believe it or not, I am.
Sometimes, things get so bad, that nothing can really make you feel "better", but I know asking for help (even from strangers- phone operators, suicide hotlines, delta airlines representatives) can be oddly helpful in a pinch.
Try to take in some sun every day. Like 15-30 minutes of direct sunlight. Every day. And stay on the medication until you and your doctor are ready to go off as a team. And when you do go off, challenge the people in your life to stay up on you and to tell you when or if they think you're starting to slip.
Related posts tagged 'Comedy theory'
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Related posts tagged 'Comedy theory'
I don't do movies because I think generally the size of that content does not lend itself to great comedy; it lends itself to people saying, "Hey, I made a movie." To me, the funniest things are shorter, so I think TV series or comedians in cars, I think I have a better chance of making you laugh.
I think just reminding myself to quit thinking that there’s some kind of perfect show to capture; to remind myself constantly that it is comedy and mistakes are funny. Anything that is too perfect—it kind of becomes too sterile and then it does not feel genuine. If it doesn’t feel genuine then there’s no possible way people are going to feel they saw you.
Believe it or not, this is something I think about a lot. I have often wondered if there's a way to teach being funny or comedy, and George Stephanopoulos actually got me wound up enough at one point that we were going to contact, I think his name was Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia, and we were gonna go in there, and I was going to teach a course on comedy. Because I know a lot about it, but I just don't know if it's teachable. I'm still wrestling with the idea if you can teach someone to be funny.
A lot of it is bragging. It used to drive me crazy when I knew that a stand-up’s agenda was about showing how smart they were. The last character you want to be is a guy who’s smarter than the audience. But there’s some hole inside that these stand-ups have to fill. It has nothing to do with making people laugh.
The US had a huge head start and we have all these cultures in our cities thrown together. There's something about that. And the whole way this country was built. People have a romanticized version or the horrific truth of it. We're sort of like Poltergeist the country.
I guess there came a time, and I missed it, when revealing everything started to be considered art. I’d always learned that concealing everything was art. And I still believe that, because comedy is a vulgar art; it’s an art that’s just beginning to take form because it’s so young. But I can look at other art forms and see how postmodernism has destroyed them, and now threatens to destroy stand-up. It’s the height of narcissism to write meta-comedy, because people aren’t interested in comedy. They’re interested in going home after shoveling shit all day and then seeing some fool perform. That’s not to say that comedy can’t make a greater point, because it can. But it can’t make a greater poi...
The most common question I see here on Twitter is if I have any advice on being a comedian. I have never given any but I will. It is said that you must write what you have experienced, that great comedy comes from truth, or from tragedy. All of this is nonsense. I am crushed by the time, gone and irrevocable, that these 300 pages have cost me. But here are a couple of stand-up tips. I am not sure if this can be done by the novice, but if I could go back and do stand-up differently, I would. The big problem, oddly enough, when a comedian performs, are the laughs. Stand-up comedy, as it is customarily produced, is a craft and not an art. Here is the reason. The stand-up comedian must create a ...
If you ask yourself, `Is there anything I can do to get a laugh?’ you can find a lot of things.
And usually they’re things that other people have found. But if you take something that’s never going to work and you go, `Wow, I wonder if there’s any way I can get somebody to laugh at this?’ it’s a great challenge.
That whole punching-down thing — I absolutely cannot stand people who say that. “Punch up. Punch up.” That has got to be the most boring thing you could ever do onstage. It’s yelling into an echo chamber. What’s so fucking funny to me is that what’s really going on is never brought up. Who donates to the president and who pays for the advertising on all these big news networks? That’s shit people should be upset about. But instead, if you do a fucking feminist joke in a strip mall you make the news. So that’s just a load of shit.
Smarmy people who aren’t funny say that. Comedy is a pastime. The pastime is making fun of something you’re not supposed to make fun of because that gives you a me...
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