A Quote by Wendi McLendon-Covey
I grew up in the age of variety shows. 'Flip Wilson,' 'Carol Burnett,' 'Donny and Marie,' and 'Sonny and Cher' - I never missed an episode. These shows had it all: singing, dancing, and sketch comedy. One minute, they're ice-skating with pyrotechnics, the next they're doing a scene on a gigantic set. I just couldn't get enough.
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I grew up on variety shows. I'm from the '60s and '70s. I loved watching Flip Wilson. I loved watching Sid Caesar's 'Your Show of Shows,' 'The Ed Sullivan Show.' I love all of those variety shows.
Making music on TV used to be as common as commercials. In the '60s and '70s, prime time was stuffed with variety shows headlined by such major and treasured talents as Carol Burnett, Red Skelton, the Smothers Brothers and Richard Pryor, who had a very brief comedy-variety hour on NBC that was censored literally to death.
I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it.
Standups have all the talk shows, but you never see a sketch group on a talk show. Even on so-called variety shows, if you do see a sketch group or character, it's written specifically for that variety show and usually written around the host of the show or a celebrity.
I have had women in their 70s coming up to me saying, 'I can't get enough of '12 Monkeys' - I love it. I can't wait for the next episode.' That's not the demographic that you expect to be watching sci-fi shows.
Doing TV shows helps me a lot in my screenplay writing and filmmaking, especially since my TV shows are in different formats: comedy sketches, talk shows, debate programs, art variety shows, quiz shows. These enable me to meet interesting people with interesting stories and to learn about interesting subjects, all of which I can reflect into film.
In terms of comedy, I never did five-minute sets or clubs or anything. I just started doing shows. Coming from that theater background, it never crossed my mind that I should start doing five-minute sets.
I was always singing and dancing for my mother when I wasn't glued to the television watching I Love Lucy or the Carol Burnett Show.
Endings of television shows are sometimes such depressing things. I think shows that have more of a narrative and are about what's going to happen next, those need to wrap up as a complete story. But it's weird when a goofy comedy show needs to end, and we knew it was going to be the end, and sometimes it's just better if a comedy show ends and goes away and they never had a series finale.
I grew up in rural Ireland; we only had a few TV channels and had never even heard of sketch shows, but it was completely natural for me to tell jokes and stories.
I wrote a play at drama school, which was a dark comedy - people laughed and cried. And then my script of one of the shows was picked up by a comedy sketch company... so then I had to write comedy.
Sketch shows change gears so drastically every two minutes. I think sketch shows are for sketch fans; they're not really for everybody.
Well, I'm old enough to remember Carol Burnett, and I would love a variety show type of thing.
Ever since I was a little kid, whenever my parents would have company over, I would put on shows, whether they would be magic shows, singing shows, dancing shows, little skits.
I did comedy shows and the only thing beating out my fights were my comedy shows. The entertainment I was providing was ridiculous. They had me doing absolutely everything and anything.
I was obsessed with Carol Burnett and then Tracey Ullman. Like, obsessed with their shows.
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