read a book called save the cat, watch every great pilot, read as many tv scripts as you can, watch you tube videos on great writers processes
Related posts tagged 'Advice for aspiring comedians'
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Related posts tagged 'Advice for aspiring comedians'
This is something I get asked a lot. My answer is to just set a date, maybe a month out or 3 months out. Whatever. Find an open mic and set yourself a date when that open mic is happening. And then tell people that you'll be doing an open mic on that date if that'll help drive you. You don't (and shouldn't) tell anybody to come. Just set that date and stick to it. You will be nervous. But once it's done you'll have already started standup.
i don't think standup is a place for networking or getting discovered too quickly. it's really something you need to spend a lot of time on before getting good, and it's a good idea to hold off before exposing people to your work. there are a couple of times when it felt like a break, but you can't tell a break when it happens to you. you just hope people see your work and like it. And keep doing it. About 4 years into comedy is when i got filed from my mail-sorting job and relied on comedy. it still feels like a frightening risk.
Louis CK once told me to never let go of a bit. I tend to throw away a lot of ideas if they're not working, but now I think I'm going to go back to stuff I once believed in, and see if I still find it funny and can maybe re-shape it into something good.
Question: how do you organize and develop your material and various jokes? Do you have notebooks full of detailed notes and jokes, or do you just sketch them out and wing it on stage?
Answer: I believe in detailed notes and jokes, and also winging it onstage. But, not for your first open mic. For your first open mic, my advice to you would be to make sure you have what you're gonna do memorized, to the point that one of your friends can gently slap you across the face, and you'll still be able to get it out of your mouth.
Start a show. Host the show. at a bar or any space. then you have guaranteed stage time and you do other comics favors by giving them spots so then they will give you spots on their shows. also hang out a lot at comedy clubs.
If you want to do stand up, just do it.
Broad City is fun and I'm excited for the second season.
Eric Andre is weird and talented and the show is insane and not for everyone .
Chozen is one of the easiest jobs that I have in my life.
I developed my delivery through trial and error and performing over and over.
I will destroy you in NBA 2k14
All is Lost Starring Robert Redford is not a good movie
Good comedians to check out Lil B, Don Rickles Michael Che, Jerrod Carmichael, Sean Patton, W. Kamau Bell, Bridget Everett, Nick Vatterott, Jon Laster, Kara Klenk
To all of you that didn't have a question and just wanted to say something nice, thank you.
Related posts tagged 'Writing for TV'
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Related posts tagged 'Writing for TV'
Oh. Well I thought a Minute with Stan Hooper was the best thing I ever did outside of stand up comedy. But Fox didn't stay with the show. It was a show that was intended to turn very dark, like at the end of the first season, it was set up like a homespun show, and then at the end of the first season my wife was going to be slaughtered by the town barber that we'd come to love as a kind of a funny old fella. Anyways, turned out he was a psychosexual sadist. but they never let us get to the end. So you never got to see my plan.
And I'm not saying anything against psychosexual sadists. I just think oftentimes you know, they'll slaughter innocents and I'm no fan of that.
It was pretty crazy. I already had a whole rhythm to my week as a writer, so it took a while to change it up and focus more on performing than on writing. Here's what helped a ton: Rob Klein and Bryan Tucker took over most of the Head Writer job and they're two of the funniest writers I've ever met. Rob and Bryan and I write a lot together for the show. Also Dennis McNicholas who used to be one of the head writers with Tina Fey and Adam McKay started producing WU last year and that was awesome. And our WU writers are the best and made our jobs a lot more fun: Pete Schultz (Leslie calls him "Franklin), Josh Patten (Leslie calls him "Clarence"), Katie Rich (Leslie calls her "Rachel"), and Mega...
TV was an accidental detour from what I thought was going to be a feature writing career - it started when Ben Stiller asked me and Schrab during a movie pitch meeting if we had any TV ideas...a very long story later, we ended up doing Heat Vision and Jack with Stiller and although FOX didn't pick it up, I had already gotten a taste of how much more empowered writers were in TV than they were in features and ended up sticking around for a few decades.
Very fun. I got paid to travel across Canada and stay in fancy hotels and all I had to do was come up with lines for the host like "The temperature may be ice cold here in Winnipeg, but things are really heating up in the judging room."
There is no line that I know in terms of what's "too far," whether that means too sentimental or too ...I don't know, controversial or confessional....a "boundary" is an artificial construct, we have to create boundaries when they involve other people, precisely because it makes empirical something that would otherwise be frustratingly subjective (like that neighbor that just kind of 'feels like' their yard extends into yours, in which case you have to go to city hall and pull out a map with lines on it). In matters of creativity - when you're sitting and writing dialogue by yourself, there's no lines needed because you're not having to function in cooperation, your job in creation, I think,...
i just started watching tons of pilots and reading pilot scripts. i also read a book called "save the cat" which is an excellent way to learn the math of writing tv and movies. i got note cards, a cork board, the whole thing! I'm a dork but i couldn't afford classes or anything on it. watch your favorite tv pilot, write out the math of it, and follow that template.
Related posts tagged 'Screenwriting'
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Related posts tagged 'Screenwriting'
‘Do not write jokes to your readers in your stage directions.’ You know what I mean by that? People do that. Don’t do that. Your job is to create an atmosphere. You’re trying to establish a mood. You’re writing a story and what you’re trying to do is to help this large group of people who are going to come together to understand the tone and the spirit and the feeling of this movie so that they can come together and make it. That’s what you should spend your time on, not with winks and stuff. Not winking at people.
Allow yourself the freedom to change as you discover, allow your screenplay to grow and change as you work on it. You will discover things as you work. You must not put these things aside, even if they’re inconvenient. Let’s not disregard all the little voices in order to simplify. Do not simplify. Let’s not worry about what it looks like, let’s not worry about failure. Failure is a badge of honor; it means you risked failure. If you don’t risk failure you’re never going to do anything that’s different than what you’ve already done, or what somebody else has done.
Just know that that’s the choice you’re making when you won’t put yourself at jeopardy like that. Don’t compartmentalize to make...
Question: When I think of dialog, it sounds good in my head. But when I put it on paper it becomes garbage. How would you solve this problem?
Answer: hmmmmmm. good question. what's it sound like when you say it out loud? it doesn't need to look good on the paper if it's a script....a novel maybe, but a script is just a temporary thing....good for the actors, not for reading....
I can’t tell anyone how to write a screenplay because the truth is that anything of value you might do comes from you. The way I work is not the way that you work, and the whole point of any creative act is that. What I have to offer is me, what you have to offer is you, and if you offer yourself with authenticity and generosity I will be moved. You are born into a body, into a family, into a situation, into a brain chemistry, into a gender, into a culture, into a time – as am I. At times I can feel the massive gravitation pulling of all these various things, pulling me in different directions, creating me.
There’s another quote that I like, this one’s a little long, but I think it’s good. It’s by a guy named John Garvey: ‘I am increasingly convinced that the need to be right has nothing whatsoever to do with the love of truth, but to face the implications of this means accepting a painful inner emptiness; I am not now what I sense somehow I am meant to be. I do not know what I feel from the bottom of my heart, I need to know. The beginning of wisdom is not to flee from this condition or distract yourself from it. It is essential not to fill it up with answers that have not been earned. It is important to learn how to wait with that emptiness. It is the desire to fill up that emptiness which le...
It’s very important that what you do is specific to the medium in which you’re doing it. And that you utilize what’s specific about that medium to do the work. And if you can’t think about why it should be done this way or needs to be done this way, then it doesn’t need to be done this way and then you should figure out what it is about this – if you want to do it – that needs to be told in the form of a movie.
I don’t feel that way about myself, I don’t think that way. And I would never intentionally play on it. I always try to do something that I don’t know how to do and I always try to do something different but I’m a person with a very specific existence and a very specific background, like everybody is.
And the stuff that comes out of me might resemble other things that have come out of me, but don’t try for that. In fact I try for the opposite. This thing that I just wrote that hopefully is going to get made is a musical, you know? I’ve never done that before, so I did it.
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