Metadata →
- Tags: humor
[!summary]Jerry Seinfeld shares insights on comedy, writing jokes, and the creative process in a conversation. He discusses the challenge of maintaining originality and freshness in comedy. Seinfeld emphasizes the importance of authenticity and audience connection in comedy performance.
Highlights
id715260803
the funny thing about that book is he talks a lot about the fallacy of even thinking of leaving a legacy—thinking your life is important, thinking anything’s important. The ego and fallacy of it, the vanity of it. And his book, of course, disproves all of it, because he wrote this thing for himself, and it lived on centuries beyond his life, affecting other people. So he defeats his own argument in the quality of this book.
id715261055
we don’t think that there is much value in everything else in life. Everything else in life is pretty much a nuisance. But, if you can get a laugh out of it, it’s worth it. That’s the way you go through life. You only care about laughing and being funny
id715261126
They’re all the same. They start off with fifteen to twenty minutes of absolute nonsense. There’s a lot of really vile profanity, complaining about absolutely everything and anything. And then you go, “O.K., what were we working on yesterday? What was the scene? Where are we going from here?” And then you start to write, but you’re all kind of—you’re in this mood now, and that’s how you write comedy
id715261261
to me a bad show is, I’m going to do four new pieces tonight. If three of them tank, it’s a frustrating night. The show’s still good, but what I was trying to do—you’re always trying to forge ahead.
Interesante acercamiento a la innovación. Partir de a poquito, con una infraestructura funcional asegurada.
id715261730
I don’t care if someone’s an asshole if they’re charming. A charming asshole is way better than a boring, polite person.
id715263338
the only thing in life that’s really worth having is good skill. Good skill is the greatest possession
id715263373
I know a lot of rich people. So do you. They don’t feel good, as you think they should and would. They’re miserable. Because, if they don’t master a skill, life is unfulfilling. So I work because if you don’t, in standup comedy, if you don’t do it a lot, you stink.
id715264411
The reason my show succeeded was the brilliance of Jason [Alexander], Michael [Richards], and Julia [Louis-Dreyfus]. They took this really esoteric material and, the brilliant performers and actors that they were, made this material accessible to a wide audience. That’s why the show worked. Those three people. Larry and I could never have done it. Our humor is not—I think it’s maybe a little more accessible now, but, at that time, no
id715264971
So, he’s a great writer, and he’s invented this character, which is himself times eleven, I guess. How did you invent how you wanted to be onstage—the persona? It’s like sculpting. Sculpting is removing everything that isn’t the sculpture you want to make. You’re not adding; you’re removing. Stone sculpture, not clay. So, when you do a joke and it gets a laugh and something inside you doesn’t feel quite right, you don’t do that joke. You do the jokes that you feel connect to your anger, your attitude, your personality. Success in comedy is very much a—conducting. So, the face, the voice, the body, the joke—when all of that is working together, it hits. Bang. You just feel it. You feel it like hitting a baseball on the button. And, when one of them is a little off, it’s not there.
Podría aplicarse al trabajo en general. En clínica y en la consultoría.
id715265372
Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly and they don’t get it.
id715265421
This is the result of the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people. Now they’re going to see standup comics because we are not policed by anyone. The audience polices us. We know when we’re off track. We know instantly and we adjust to it instantly. But when you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups—“Here’s our thought about this joke.” Well, that’s the end of your comedy.