A Quote by Bret McKenzie
There are a lot of good shows that don't get picked up. Like that Ben Stiller pilot, Heat Vision And Jack? That would have been a great show, but somehow it slipped by.
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Right when I started getting solid was when I was offered a lot of writing work. And when The Ben Stiller Show was picked up, I realized there was no way for me to do stand-up three or four nights a week and run this television show with Ben. So that was the moment when I had to make a choice.
Ben Stiller isn't funny - honest. Ben Stiller is very funny, and smart, and cute, too, in a neurotic, New York kind of way.
I've always said that it's like being the winner of three separate lottery tickets - getting a pilot, getting the pilot picked up, and having a show that actually lasts. There are no guarantees, and no one knows where a show is going to go.
I've been really lucky to get on shows that stay on. It's one thing to book a show, and it's like winning the lottery again to have it picked up, and then again to have the show stay on the air.
I've always said that it's like being the winner of three separate lottery tickets - getting a pilot, getting the pilot picked up, and having a show that actually lasts.
There was so long from when we did the pilot and then when the show was eventually picked up by Comedy Central - and, in fact, we had to shoot the pilot twice.
I had a dream cast when Dan first went off and wrote 'Ghostbusters 3' by himself. It was so long ago that my dream cast was Ben Stiller, Chris Farley, and Chris Rock. That would have been cool. Now, a lot of time has passed, and there are a lot of young funny people.
So, I can live with people saying, "I didn't like it." But I can't live with people saying, "There just seems to be no plan here," 'cause there is a plan. And a lot of people fall into that, where they don't know what their show is yet. Their pilot gets picked up, and they have to figure it out. I would hate to be in that situation.
It looked like Ben Stiller was one of the showbiz meteorites who was moving so fast he would soon have no worlds left to conquer.
As actors, if you get a pilot on HBO or on USA, your odds are good that it's going to get picked up.
Had "Malcolm in the Middle" been picked up I would not have been available for the pilot of "Breaking Bad." And right now someone else would be sitting in this chair talking to you. Not me.
You get more out of doing a web series than a pilot, in some ways, especially when we were interviewing for writers. They had already seen what our show looked like, rather than something that we wrote that doesn't get picked up and they never see it.
I had done another show called 'United States of Cars,' which was a pilot that didn't get picked up. And they said, 'You know, we're doing 'Top Gear,' and would you like to meet the guys?' It was the wild - most wild audition I ever had because I never went to a studio or a producer's office.
The moment when you find out when you shoot the pilot - getting the pilot is a small victory. You shoot the pilot, and when you get picked up, that's a huge victory right there.
Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot.
I look at careers like Ben Stiller and think that's a great career to have where you're doing movies that you write and direct, and also act in films, although he's primarily an actor.
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