A Quote by John Ridley
I never wanted to show up and just say, "Okay, what are we doing today? Let's wing it!"
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I knew I wanted to be in comedy but the path of least resistance was doing stand-up in folk music clubs where I could get on stage. I guess you could get up no matter how bad you were and you didn't have to audition. You just got up. Everything else required an audition and if you auditioned for a TV show, you would stand in line with a hundred other people. But at the clubs, it was okay just to get up, so that's why I started in stand-up.
I was told that I don't understand radio, should go into sales and all this. It was only my desire and love for what I wanted to do and what I was doing that kept me plugging away. I never at any time was motivated by an "I'll show them" attitude. Never was I motivated by, "I'll show them," that wasn't it. I just loved it. It was what I wanted to do. I was lucky to learn early in life what I wanted to do, and I knew how to define success, even though by the time I'm 33 I still hadn't had any. I was just on the verge of it, and I'd been working since I was 16.
To do more of a concert thing, it takes so much preparation. You don't just show up and wing it. You're putting countless hours in the studio, not just to write and produce stuff, but to come up with edits and special things for the show.
When I hear people say that Fox News is right wing, I know that's not true, because I'm the one doing the news. It's my show, and there's no place for opinion on my show. It's uninteresting to me.
I've never done anything that I need to be doing tomorrow. If someone says, 'We no longer want you here,' I won't show up again. It was true at 'The West Wing.' It was true in the Senate.
I wanted to walk over there. I wanted to curl up beside him, lean against him, talk to him. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I wanted to tell him everything would be okay. And I wanted him to tell me the same thing. I didn't care if it was true or not- I just wanted to say it. To hear it, to feel his arms around me, hear the rumble of his words, that deep chuckle that made me pulse race
It's okay to doubt yourself, it's okay to feel down; just never give up.
What he does, faults and all, he's our president. And so I want him to be successful. When these tweets come out, I mean, do I look at 'em and say, 'Okay, where did that come from?' Yes. But I don't pick up the phone and say, 'What are you doing?' I just know that's who he is.
Larry David called me and said, "You can never watch The West Wing again. Either the show is going to be great without you and you're going to be miserable, or the show is going to be less than great without you and you're going to be miserable." So I had them send a tape of the first episode that I didn't do. I put it in the VCR and I don't think I got 15 seconds in before I leapt up and slammed it off! It felt like I was watching somebody make out with my girlfriend. I've never seen a West Wing episode in seasons five, six or seven.
SportsCenter' is the legacy brand at ESPN, I had a great year doing the show. But it was not a fit for me because ultimately I had a lot of things that I really wanted to say and wanted to express, and the 'SportsCenter' vehicle is not necessarily set up for that.
I have a real worker-bee mentality. Just show up, just do it. Even if you feel like s--t and you think you're terrible and you'll never get better and it will never go anywhere, just show up and do it. And, eventually, something happens.
People always say, 'How is it to be so successful?' I'm not successful yet. Richard Branson is successful. That's successful. Michael Jackson was successful. U2 was successful. I'm just a guy, doing okay. But I'm a happy guy doing okay.
I had already just sort of decided okay it's just never going to happen. So when they - when my name was called it was an out of body, you know, just glorious moment. It shouldn't mean that much. But, you know, I'd be lying if I didn't say that it meant the world to know that my peers appreciated what I was doing.
Just for today, SMILE a little more. Just for today, ask someone how he or she is really doing. Just for today, remember, while some may have it better than you do, there are others whom definitely have it worse than you! Just for today, just let go, just for today.
Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.
I really do love doing stand-up, and I don't see why it should affect the acting. And I just want more interesting jobs. I just want to keep doing stuff that's different, rather than saying, "Okay, I've become known for this, and I'll just do this from now on." If I feel like I've done this one thing, I never want to do it again. I want to do something totally different.
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