A Quote by David Chase
I really like comedy. There's always a choice, when you're writing: you can either go for the joke or you can go for the story, the important stuff.
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I'm not a big note-taker, so I think that the way I decide is that whatever I remember I always consider something that's important. If I remember a joke then I know it's a good joke, if I remember a story then I know it's a good story, and so that's how I curate what stories I'm going to write for the book. And I go over them again, make sure there's a theme and all that stuff, but mostly, it is intuition.
A lot of times, comedy writers will go for the gay joke, and I've been vocal about saying, 'Go for the smart joke.'
You know, if you look all my stuff... If you go back to 'Saturday Night Live,' my stuff always has music, even a bunch of my comedy stuff - like in 'Shrek,' the donkey is always singing. Music is always there.
It was not a choice of writing or not writing. It was a choice of loving my life or not loving my life. To keep writing was always a first priority.... I worked probably 25 years by myself.... Just writing and working, not trying to publish much. Not giving readings. A longer time than people really are willing to commit before they want to go public.
I was always interested in comedy, like when I was 5 years old. I watched 'I Love Lucy' and 'Benny Hill.' I would always joke around with my sister. My mom was into comedy, too. She would go to the video store and get a couple of movies and some stand-up comedians' tapes.
There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.
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.
More than just romantic comedy, I like romances: drama romance, romance comedy, comedy romance. I also go to the movies to escape. There are times when you go to learn, when you go to be moved, you go to be transported, and there are really times when you go to escape. And I personally escape more happily into a romance than I do violent movies.
You can't really get the full joy out of life unless you really go for it. You just have to go into it and stay under some kind of hope or illusion that it's going to work. But as you get older, or the more experiences you have, or whatever it is that tells you how this stuff works, you also know that if you go all the way into it, there's the risk of losing everything but you don't have a choice.
I realized that I really enjoy writing comedy, and how important comedy is when you feel like total crap.
I try to do women's-point-of-view comedy. The joke is, 'This is what I think; there's the truth.' I try to think of stuff that's real broad, but the more personal it is, the more universal it is. All my friends go through the same stuff.
I noticed the different kids were always put down by other people and it would cause them to become almost violent with themselves. It's not really necessary; there's a way to find strength in yourself, and for me it was writing. That was sort of my release and my escape, so the term 'Knives and Pens' to me was like a choice. You can either create, or become violent, and maybe go down a dark road.
The difference when I'm writing a story versus writing a joke is that writing a joke is so much more about the structure and it's less about the conversation. To me, the thing that I love about stand-up is the intimacy between performer and audience.To get it even more conversational was something that really appealed to me and that I really enjoyed doing. My early experiments with it, with just telling a story from my life on stage, it was so satisfying to do. And seemingly for the audience as well. It's a different thing, and it's a different feeling and a different vibe.
I still don't really know what my style is. I like a lot of different kinds of comedy, I like watching it and I like being inventive and original. That's the problem with doing a longer set - you can't do every joke that you have because some stuff contradicts other stuff. Even when you know that the audience knows that you're joking and it's not true, you still can't do a joke about your family dying and then later talk about your Mom. I mean you want to keep some kind of cohesive order going.
Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.
You know, I liken it to - when you write a joke for somebody else, it's like you - you know, like the Wile E. Coyote dynamite plunger, where he pushes the plunger down and then you see the fuse go then there's an explosion in the distance? That's like writing a joke for somebody. When you tell the joke, you're in the explosion.
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