After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times, and then one night it'll flop.
After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times and then one night it’ll flop. And that’s when I really take a hard look at myself and say: "Well, that crowd is obviously wrong. That crowd has absolutely no idea what it’s talking about."
After you do a joke a few times, you have material that you know works. Although sometimes I have a joke that has worked a bunch of times and then one night it'll flop. And that's when I really take a hard look at myself and say: 'Well, that crowd is obviously wrong. That crowd has absolutely no idea what it's talking about.'
When I was governor, if I told a joke in front of the press - I learned. I would go, "That was a joke, joke, joke," and I'd say it three times.
The U.K. and Europe in general seem to be a lot more patient. The U.S. are expecting 'joke joke joke joke joke joke joke.' They don't actually sit and listen to you.
When I'm writing columns, it's - all I'm thinking about is jokes, joke, joke, joke, setup, punch line, joke, joke, joke. And I really don't care where it goes.
About a year after I moved to Los Angeles, I decided I wanted to be a joke writer for a late night talk show. So I met with a late night joke writer and he told me that I should start by doing stand-up comedy, because that would really hone my sense of humor and joke writing ability. Eventually I took a stand-up class and a few months later I had a seven-minute act.
Even if you get a joke right you've done it a thousand times and sometimes there's times where it just doesn't work or someone doesn't agree with you. And I want to show that. I have had more hecklers because that's part of comedy is arguments, you know?
30 Rock is probably one of my favorite shows. It's just joke after joke after joke.
'30 Rock' is probably one of my favorite shows. It's just joke after joke after joke.
What you never want to do is have a story that doesn't track emotionally, because then you're going joke to joke and you're going to fatigue the audience. The only thing that's going to string them to the next joke is how successful the previous joke is.
It's very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that's not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It's a gut feeling.
In all honesty I think, sometimes with the LGBT community, if you look at anything else surrounding it, there's always been this oddness and sense of humor. I really appreciate that. It's kind of a hard world to take yourself too seriously. It's a good balance check. It's not serious all the time. I'm that way too, even though I write a lot of depressing music. A lot of times our shows are not very serious at all. We joke a lot and then we play a sad song and then we joke again.
Scripts are a house of cards and you can't just reach in the middle and pull out the middle card because the house of cards will fall down. But at a certain point you almost have to allow that house of cards to get knocked down a few times because you need to make it sturdier. How many times do you hear, "No, that doesn't make sense," or "Why would this happen?" That was a mistake. You shouldn't have those moments, because the moment you're knocked out of the story, then you're dead. And all you can go is moment to moment,or joke to joke. And that's gonna wear people out.
Sometimes you don't really know what you're going to write about. I mean, there's times where you get into a writing room and it's a complete flop. And then there's times where you get to a writing room and you're like, 'Oh, I'm just on a roll.'
A lot of times, comedy writers will go for the gay joke, and I've been vocal about saying, 'Go for the smart joke.'
There were plenty of times some writers would make some kind of stupid joke to each other and then it was on TV that night or that week.