A Quote by Jonathan Ames

Having a show get canceled is like, 'Oh, you have caviar between your teeth,' you know what I mean? Because you had a show in the first place. — © Jonathan Ames
Having a show get canceled is like, 'Oh, you have caviar between your teeth,' you know what I mean? Because you had a show in the first place.
Yeah, I had a talk show canceled. Okay, let's go back to the list of people who had talk shows canceled. Johnny Carson had his first talk show canceled. Jon Stewart. Letterman. Conan O'Brien, if you look at 'The Tonight Show' as a show that got canceled.
One of the things I've learned - before I would go on a show, I was like, "Oh God, I hate that show" or "That show is gonna get canceled." But now after being full-time on a show, you see how difficult it is and how much work goes into it and how so many decisions are based on finances or people's schedules or talent or location issues. It's a miracle that anything gets made.
In my own life, hate has consumed me at times. Or envy. When my TV show was canceled, I didn't think it deserved to be canceled because people liked it. It was canceled for the wrong reasons, you know? I was consumed with hate for about a year.
It's interesting: I went 25 years without watching a single television show. I was one of those people, because I was so inside how a television show was made, if I would turn on somebody else's show, I would sit there and analyze it, like, 'Oh, so they had four hours in this location and had to get out and the number of set-ups, etc.'
[With depression] you get a real sense of shame, because your friends go, 'Oh come on, show me the lump, show me the x-rays,' and of course you've got nothing to show.
Basically we learned not ever to do a show like that [ Gigi Does It] again. That took me to a limit that I didn't know I had. First off, I show-ran the show and was the head writer. I had never done anything like that before. It was an immense responsibility.
I don't know what it's like to be an actor, where if your show gets canceled, really you're just a bum.
Mel Brooks came to see Oh, Hello in L.A. Mulaney and I had a meeting with him, and we invited him to come to the show, and he saw the Oh, Hello show live in L.A. To me, he's the most famous person. Having him come to our show that was so inspired by both of us loving The Producers and all his movies.
I had these fangs because I had jaundice when I was a kid and I was put on so many antibiotics that my teeth rotted. They had to cut them out. So I never had milk teeth. That was tough, you know, being in school having photos taken while I was pretending I had teeth. It was hideous.
You do a job; your show gets canceled. You get used to it.
I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.
I'd still stand in line all day to get into an AC/DC show, because that was the one show when I was younger that kind of changed my life. Because it was a little wrong. I think I was 14 or 15, first concert without the parents, you know, and they were all worried because we were going to an AC/DC show, and it was an amphitheater.
Doing this web show - people underestimate what it takes to do a web show successfully. They underestimate the amount of work that you have to do to get it to your audience after it's made. I think you have to work so much harder, especially if you don't have a huge budget. You have to know how to get your audience engaged, because the Internet is so distracting, and there are so many choices. People, even if they love your show, will forget to go back for episode four, because you know, people are busy.
But when you get to know a character so well, you start to have insights that you can't show because you're confined to your script of your hit show.
My first 'Tonight Show' was just one of those things - I mean this seriously - a cosmic, meant-to-be coming together of circumstance. You walk out there to do your first 'Tonight Show': Is the audience going to be hot? Are you going to be on fire? It's like an athlete: Are you going to have your moves at a peak?
The amount of time it took me to get a show like 'Shameless' was definitely worth it because of the people and the material. I can appreciate it because I know what it's like when I didn't have a show.
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