A Quote by Maz Jobrani
When you're a stand-up comic, you live and die by what you say on stage. There's no director or writer or producer who can tell you what to say and not to say. Once in a while, a club owner will ask a comic to work clean, or not say something, but that's few and far between.
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This whole idea of editing, not one time I can tell you, not one time has a producer ever asked me to say something I did not want to say. I will also say this about 'Drag Race' producers: I will stand by the show and the people there because they have changed so many people's lives for the better, and I'm one of them.
Writer's block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something. Why? If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.
With the stand-up comic on TV, whether it's Seinfeld or Cosby or Roseanne, more important than their knowledge of how to tell a joke is their knowledge of themselves, or the persona they've created as themselves. So that when you're in a room with writers, you can say, 'Guys, that's a funny line, but I wouldn't say it.'
We never say so much as when we do not quite know what we want to say. We need few words when we have something to say, but all the words in all the dictionaries will not suffice when we have nothing to say and want desperately to say it.
When you say you're a padre, people ask when did you become a parent. When you say you're a cardinal, they tell you to work hard because the next step is pope. But when you say you're a Dodger, everybody knows you're in the Major Leagues.
I've known the glory of the stage and the glory of the spotlight. I still crave it. I want to be on 'American Bandstand' and 'Soul Train' as a solo artist. As a producer, songwriter and arranger, I help other artists say what they want to say. But on my records, I say what I want to say.
Some people will say, "Why read a comic book? It stifles the imagination. If you read a novel you imagine what people are like. If you read a comic, it's showing you." The only answer I can give is, "You can read a Shakespeare play, but does that mean you wouldn't want to see it on the stage?
When I first used to tour, guys would come up and say, 'Where's the fight club in my area?' and I would say, 'There isn't one.' And they'd say, 'No, no, you can tell me, you can tell me.'
Comic-Con is always something that we- we love Comic-Con and we generally have a big presence there. So we usually have something to say there, and just as things come together.
An actor like me hardly ever sees a producer. My agent will say, how about Coogan for the part. The producer will say yes. So you never see the producer.
I get up in front of a bunch of kids and say 'Hey, I'm gonna tell you a new story. Who wants to be in a new story?' Well some kid always sticks up their hand and that gives me a name, but it doesn't give me a story. I just say whatever comes to my mind and usually it's not that good. Every once in a while, however, I say something that turns into a really good story.
To me, my favorite comic book movies were the ones that were never based on comic books, like Unforgiven. That's more the kind of thing that get us inspired. Usually when you say something's a comic book movie, it means you turn on the purple and green lights. Suddenly that means it's more like a comic book, and It's not really like that.
I wouldn't overall say that "The Diagnosis" is a funny book. I would say that it has comic moments. It's a modern tragedy.
My mother was the one who totally got behind me as far as, do things and ask questions later. My father would say, "I don't care how dirty you are up there, just be funny." Because they knew me offstage. They knew I was a good guy. They knew my whole plan of becoming the most exciting comedian, visually, ever. A real rock-and-roll stand-up comic.
Every once in a while I'll say something...I dropped the F-bomb early on in my career. There was this lesbian couple and they looked super-hip. One of them looked at me and shook her head, like "Don't do that." I think she was doing it to say, "It doesn't work." She didn't say anything but it was this cautionary moment. I knew it didn't work. There are just so many other words to choose from.
As a producer, the only thing you have is an opinion - and if you don't trust your own opinion, then everything becomes vanilla. And for me I always say this to my producers, 'If you're not sure what to do, just ask me.' I'm not smarter and it's not that I know better, but I've probably already made that mistake. As far as TV goes, a lot of it is just troubleshooting and dealing with problems that come up. So that's the message for the younger kids coming up: don't be afraid to say, 'I don't know,' cuz' that's the smartest thing you can say.
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