Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama

I tried just as hard at the stuff that didn't work as I did at the stuff that worked.

I figured I'd work in forestry, since I like the outdoors. In fact, in high school I filled out some kind of career-planning assessment and it said just that: 'Go into the forest and don't come back.

Victoria Jackson would have been a riot on The Tonight Show in the fifties…the 1850s! Gooooood-night!!

I'm in this to entertain myself.

...[A]lways [...] put [your] work in front of people. Get those laughs. Or call up them crickets. ...[Y]ou need to have that audience in mind, sitting right there, eager to laugh, or scowl and grunt disapprovingly.

We made our way forward employing the three steps to success in showbiz: 1. Persistence 2. Begging 3. Waiting—then start again at the top

A deep self-loathing brought out the best in her: “I was a straight C student, a middle-of-the-roader in every aspect of my life. A quitter. Just a quitter.” How could I not love her attitude? That’s the attitude that fueled a million grunge-rock songs and painful revelations; in this case it fueled a whole new wave of comedy.

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.

Somewhere in the middle of shooting that first scene in Saul’s law office, after a verbal run of Saul’s flimflammery, a crew member, lost in the scrum around the camera, shouted out, “Can I get a job on the spin-off?!” And everybody laughed.

Here’s what I can admit to right out of the gate, and it’s tragic: I tried just as hard at the stuff that didn’t work as I did at the stuff that worked.

The 'better angels of our nature' may be the ones we want leading us forward, but the worser angels are the ones that we seem to want to watch onscreen.

Cads kill me. Men who go through life making wisecracks, being overtly rude, taking advantage, being self-obsessed disasters. They're just funny to me. Because of this hobbyhorse, one of my favorite films is Breathless, by Jean-Luc Godard.

You seem like a nice person, but, seriously, read books more carefully next time.

It’s fun to visit New York and get lost in the sea of humanity. But to get lost and stay lost, to not be able to find yourself or feel like you matter anywhere, at any time…It messed with my head. Many

Also, I’m dying… in the sense that we all are. And on that bright note—buy the book already, your plane and/ or toilet seat awaits.

One trick for surviving Hollywood’s beatdown is to keep making new things in spite of every “no.” To somehow stay in touch with the joy that brought you into the game.

The Derek and Simon (2007) short films for HBO were about two friends who cockblock each other, reliably. A cast of young amazings including Zach Galifianakis, Jake Johnson, Ashley Johnson, and Eric Edelstein joined us. It

the Upfront Comedy Showcase, in Santa Monica—and renamed it the Grand National Championships.

That’s what acting is!”—lose yourself in the part, bring an entire world with you onto the stage. Inhabit that imagined world fully and the audience will join you there.

I rarely paid for the inky blather, but the mechanics of Mad are good circuitry to burn into any future comedy writer’s brain.

The Kids in the Hall were doing everything pretty much right in my book. Their show hung together, was distinctive, really likable, and you got to know them even while they were playing stridently strange characters. Plus they had a number of homes for the show, all in off-brand time slots and locales—right where it belonged. This made me envious and mad. Not at the guys—I liked them all—but at Canada in general. Somehow they were able to bring Canadian niceness to the brain-warping comic mayhem. How much maple syrup do I have to drink to become that nonthreatening? There isn’t enough in the world.

Python was like my Bible, and in many ways it provoked contemplation just like that ratty old book. Also, it was kinder and more truthful.