Sunday, July 25, 2010

I'm reading AND HERE'S THE KICKER: CONVERSATIONS WITH 21 TOP HUMOR WRITERS ON THEIR CRAFT. It's ridiculously full of useful nuggets of info. Marshall Brickman on Annie Hall:

After watching [the rough cut], we thought, "Where's the relationship?" When people come to me with ideas, sometimes they say, "I want to do a story about a war," or "I want to do a story about a hospital." And I'll always say, "Tell me the story in terms of a relationship." So with Annie Hall, we knew what was missing. It didn't focus on a relationship.

And Harold Ramis:

I always tell students to identify the most talented person in the room, and go stand next to him. That's what I did with Bill [Murray].

And George Meyer:

You can't keep bitch-slapping your creativity, or it'll run away and find a new pimp.

Buy it. Read it.

Labels: books, reading

8:06 AM

2 Comments:

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By  Anonymous, at 2:25 AM  

I bought it and I'm currently reading it, in random order. Harold Ramis' section was excellent - I didn't know much about the guy. Interesting to hear his thoughts on SCTV vs. SNL, and how they leveraged their second place position to work for them.

By  PlasmicSteve, at 11:41 AM  

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