A Quote by Sherwood Schwartz
I think writers have become hypnotised by the number of jokes on the page at the expense of character.
Related Quotes
Tips for aspiring writers: don't be afraid of writing rubbish. It's very easy to become hypnotised by an empty page or screen. It's tempting to abandon a half-finished work because you can't make it perfect. I hereby give you permission to write things that aren't perfect, make mistakes, try things that don't work, experiment with styles you're not used to and generally throw words around. You'll learn much faster that way.
I'm a bug on acting, which distinguishes Second City from a lot of other revues. It comes from the character, the behavior, and not from the jokes. I don't think jokes are funny. Humor comes out of character and out of situations the character is in.
Furious protesters don't come after you for jokes at the expense of people; they come after you for jokes at the expense of their gods.
I have to say that The Simpsons comes from a huge number of great writers headed by Al Jean, the show-runner, and the work that they do is really fantastic. It's a blast just to sit around with them in the writers' room and listen to all the filthy jokes that will never get on the air.
It’s a basic rule of humor that a joke is always at somebody’s expense. Really good jokes, however, tend to be at everyone’s expense.
What helps writers, and ultimately, obviously, helps the actors - who should serve the words that the writer puts on the page - is if the character has damages, because then the writers can cultivate and excavate, like a dentist going into a tooth.
If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on.
That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.
I didn't want to do comedy again. It is way harder when you are doing comedy. You can't just concentrate on the character and the plot. In comedy, the writers, instead of obsessing about character and plot, obsess about the jokes.
Auditions are an opportunity to play and go in there and bring the character to life. The writers have it stuck in their head and haven't seen it jump off the page.
I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.
It's really an organic sort of process. You start off with the character on the page. You fall in love with that character and you have to represent that character well and I think it's just an evolution there. Using the accent and speaking the lines with the accent in fact opens the door to who the character really is.
I always remember writing a page of jokes for a comedian and handing it to him backstage at a club and he read it and then took his cigarette lighter and lit the page on...
Woody Allen - nobody has been a better joke teller than him - and even in his great films, it's always coming out of the character. If you don't have that, jokes are just empty and I think that people rely too much on jokes.
I'll come up with an idea for a character, and I'll write some jokes and make sure that that character is going to have some legs to it - that it's really going to work. If I can come up with jokes and material that I think will work, then I make a cheap version of the doll. Achmed started out just being this little plastic toy from the store.
In 'Tintin,' it's like a live-action role. You're living and breathing and making decisions for that character from page 1 to page 120, the whole emotional arc. In an animated movie, it's a committee decision. There are 50 people creating that character. You're responsible for a small part.
Related Authors
Declan Donnelly Quotes
English
Producer
Ekta Kapoor Quotes
Indian
Producer
Gauri Khan Quotes
Indian
Producer
J. Michael Straczynski Quotes
American
Producer
James Wan Quotes
Australian
Producer
Jason Blum Quotes
American
Producer
Jimmy Iovine Quotes
American
Producer
Julie Plec Quotes
American
Producer
Noah Hawley Quotes
American
Producer
Noel Edmonds Quotes
English
Producer
Paul Heyman Quotes
American
Producer
Roger Ross Williams Quotes
American
Producer
Samuel Goldwyn Quotes
American
Producer
Shonda Rhimes Quotes
American
Producer
Travis Knight Quotes
American
Producer
Troy Carter Quotes
American
Producer