A Quote by Retta

A lot of comics fly by the seat of their pants, and they pride themselves on being witty, quick, and off-the-cuff. That's not my show. I wrote a show, and I want to do the show I wrote. I'm not interested in what the audience has to say.
I'm a writer; I've worked as much as a writer as I have as an actor, so I was in a script-note session at Imagine for a TV show I wrote that they were producing, and they happened to say, 'You'd be great as Crosby, do you want to do this show we're doing, 'Parenthood?'
If Portland can truly have a true comics show that doesn't become a media show but retains its focus on comics, I think it's going to serve the city well. If this becomes a big show, it's going to bring in a lot of money for the city.
You and I and everybody in show business and the entertainment industry fly by the seat of our pants. We don't know quite what is going to happen.
Someone wrote in the New York Times recently that if Donald Trump was allowed to go through with his plans, he'd become one of history's major human rights violators and ethnic cleansers, just below the Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin league. But people don't care. Trump goes on Jimmy Fallon's show and that spineless puff of a talk show host praises Trump for being such an "off the cuff" talker and providing "fresh air." Fresh air! What's fresh about racism? it comes out of the darkest dankest rottenest human cellar!
I majored in extracurriculars, honestly. I joined the Harvard Stand Up Comedy Society, which is a ragtag band of misfits. I wrote for 'On Harvard Time,' which was a student TV show trying to be 'The Daily Show.' And I wrote a humor column for 'The Crimson' starting my sophomore year.
My show is an anti-show and the audience have to want to listen. I'm sitting down, there's only one of me, I don't talk much to the audience and it is very quiet. I wouldn't be able to do that kind of show if people didn't know me and my material.
France was very opposite of the show-business experience I'd been living; I was anonymous and alone. I wore no makeup, wore the same clothes every day. And I wrote and wrote and wrote.
And with this show we're trying to be a little sillier. We can do a piece like one we wrote the other day called "Ghost Busters Busters". Where would never do that in a million years on Mr. Show, but somehow on this show it's silly and stupid and a little more disposable, so we can do something like that.
I wanted to show off - a simple impulse or drive; in much the same way as some kids wanted to play football, I wanted to show off. Not complicated in that sense, very natural; it just depends on how you want to show off.
In preschool, I would plan out my show-and-tell every week to be funny and exciting. Then in first grade I wrote a play, and my classmates and I performed it as a puppet show.
I received a lot of complaints from parents who wrote and told me that their kids wouldn't go to sleep until our show was over. So I went on the air and told all the children watching to 'listen to their Uncle Miltie and go to bed right after the show.'
I'm most excited that the hard work has paid off for myself and the team. You put your heart and soul into something and you want to show it to an audience outside of Jersey Boys. It gives a chance to not only show my work, but of Jeffrey Schecter as an actor and co-writer. It gets to show off our cinematographer, my production team. That's what I'm most proud of… everybody gets to have their own moment to enjoy it.
When you perform in front of an audience after only two days of rehearsal, you're flying by the seat of your pants - particularly when they're rewriting the show right up to the moment the camera goes on.
When you introduce a character and show him for the first time, don't show him fully lit. Don't show him one hundred percent to the audience. Show maybe fifty percent or sixty percent so the audience can fill in the dark spots.
Ron Moore. He was the guy that on our show and Deep Space Nine wrote the best Klingon episodes. He wrote great episodes in general but he wrote the best Klingon episodes. I always could tell when he was going to write a Klingon episode because he was able to grow a beard really quick and I’d see him with the beard, like a Worf-beard, and I go "Ah, Klingon episode coming up!" and he goes "Oh yeah."
'Ragtime' was the most magical show that I've done. I had an incredible experience with that, with the show itself, with the cast, with the audience. The response to that show - my God, it really blew me away, the reactions to that show, the way it changed their lives and altered their thinking, their own self-discovery.
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