The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You're Not - John Vorhaus [FULL INTERVIEW]

John why do you say that comedy is both truth and pain comedy is truth and pain because in every human moment if you are aware of it you can detect an underlying truth and pain of that moment a joke is something that looks at and explores the truth and pain and gives the audience an opportunity to think about it in a slightly different way here's a classic a a fellow is falling from a um skyscraper and he gets down about the 33rd 34th floor and some guy leans out the window says how's it going he

says okay so far so the underlying truth in pain is here's a guy who's in Peril that's the truth and the pain is there's nothing he can do about it and his expression there's okay so far is an acknowledgement of the truth and pain but indirectly and if you look at any joke you can think of you're going to find that it is an indirect acknowledgement of Truth and Pain by Nature then are funny people cruel that's a great question I like to say comedy is cruelty a thing isn't funny to the person it's happening

too it's funny to the people watching it's not necessary that you don't have to be cruel to make comedy but there is an element of Cruelty in jokes because a thing isn't funny to the person it's happening to we derive our emotional sustenance from experiencing Vicariously the conflict or predicament or peril of somebody else and being observing it but far enough away from it that it's not us that's what gives us the emotional bond that makes us engage and the emotional separation that makes us laugh further to that if I may when people are creating

characters in a situation comedy or comic film for example they often become caught up in the in the the sense of I'm hurting These characters I don't want to hurt my characters this is uh in a sense conflict avoidance in the real life walking around the world a lot of us try to avoid conflict I do I don't like conflict as a writer I don't have to engage in it I can just go home and write but when I am guiding characters through story my emotional need to protect them from conflict fights against the need

of the story which is to put them under pressure so They can advance toward a new understanding of themselves characters in stories like people in the real world will not undergo authentic change unless they're forced to they'll stay in a status quo all stories in a sense put pressure and increasingly more and more pressure on a character until the character is forced to enter an explosive new truth the consequence of this is in order to help our characters achieve their growth we have to burden Them with opposition with conflict so the thing that we're afraid

of giving them conflict that's actually the thing they need can you explain how comedy begins with someone's suffering the classic comic book comic uh moment we can think of is somebody slipping on a banana peel if you're 5-year-old you're laughing at that why are you laughing at that somebody slipped on a banana peel they might have gotten hurt but if you Look at the person who slips on the banana peel it's never an innocent person it's always some somebody who in some sense deserves it somebody who is the wrong attitude arrogance selfishness uh uh impatience

uh clumsiness that's not exactly On Target but if a person with high status slips on a banana appeal then the person with high status is brought low and the the fall from high status to low status for people who have Low status is always very funny and for most people in audience situations low status is kind of baked in they're in the audience they're not the performers so if they see the high and mighty performers slip and fall or otherwise suffer they get the first benefit of watching a funny thing happen to someone who's not

them the second benefit of seeing somebody uh some high and mighty person brought low and then the third benefit of processing all of this more Information more effectively because they have a new way to think about about it and experience it that guy was rushing he slipped on a banana peel fell on his butt and I laughed but I also learned a lesson and the lesson is don't rush and also don't be so high and mighty so there's a lot packed into a joke that looks like it's about the suffering but it's really about triggering

the laugh reflex which is a matter of giving the audience a puzzle To solve and then letting them solve it what's going on here how is slipping on a banana field appeel impact in the situation what's the new result aha guy with status slipped on a banana peel I'm laughing so let's say if I'm at an office party the office Christmas party and my good friend comes from the bathroom she has lipstick on her teeth or forbid she has a panty hose tucked in the back I'm going to tell her but if it's marged from

accounting who I can't Stand and who's who's who's messed with my check I might I might laugh at that I think I think that's a great example because a thing isn't funny to the person it's happening to and that includes close allies like if it's happening to me I feel it if it's happening to people I care about I feel it in a different way than if it's happening to people I don't care about or hate through the example that that you suggested I'm going to help my Friend because this isn't a laughing situation I

I have no Val I get no value out of making fun of my friend although some people do but I do get value out of making fun of Marge from accounting who is deserving what she's getting at this moment I'm reminded of something that my wife and I passed through early in our relationship being a funny guy I would make jokes about anything and everything and some of those jokes were kind of at her expense you know like my wife she Doesn't know how she she she she's so dumb she couldn't pass a blood test

as an example of a joke that doesn't do me or my relationship or my wife or our relationship any good at all over time I learned that if I'm telling a joke at the expense of a loved one I'm doing damage that I don't want to do and don't need to do you can consider a standup comic having the challenge how can I be on a stage and talk about my family in a way that's Funny and in a way that gets the laughs and advances my career the way I suppos the way I wanted

to and speaks the truth that I want to speak without hurting the people around me it's possible but it's it's a space that needs investigating but on the flip side we can we can tear ourselves apart and and it's actually funny and and in that you find the solution to the problem how do I make fun of my family without hurting my family I make fun of myself I don't Say my family is so stupid they do X Y or Z I say I'm so stupid I don't understand why my family does X Y or

Z and that gets you out of the Trap I can give you a great example of this and it's one that well we can reference because it's in the public domain or in the public sphere one would say years ago I was in Russia running the Russian version of Married With Children like you do and I happened to be there at the same time that Phil ramuno the creator Of Everybody Loves Raymond was in Russia doing the pilot of Everybody Loves Raymond for Russian television and also doing a documentary of his own experience now I

was a fly on the wall and I saw how my Russian colleagues wanted to close off to him they were afraid of him they were afraid that his documentary would make fun of them that the whole point of the exercise was to mock the quaint and idiotic ways of the Russian people but Phil Runo is's much Smarter than that the whole comic perspective of the piece is there are things going around here that I do not understand and all the comic energy is directed on what Phil Runo does not understand not directed at the things

he's observing and would otherwise be tempted to make direct fun of and as a consequence the documentary works for American audiences and Russian audiences because there's a a generosity of spirit underneath the whole thing it's the Filmmaker's intention for everybody to have a good time the Russians who are participating in the documentary the audience watching at home and he realizes his intention by focusing all the comic energy on himself which is 100% safe Target all the time as a coded to that story if you happen to watch that video watch very closely at the end

there's a rap party for the documentary and the pilot and uh I'm in the background and you can see me for That long great so before we leave Russia if I may yeah okay sort of ask and answer my own question we're interested in the question of where do jokes come from what are they made of how do they work and we've addressed one thing that's for sure comedy is truth and pain comedy is cruelty but here's something else to look at and it's called defeat of expectation I'll tell you a joke and then we'll

deconstruct it a little bit This joke comes to mind because it's about Russian vodka uh I was in Russia and I was given some Russian pepper vodka to try oh pepper vodka very hot and I tasted it and they asked me how was it I said well it starts like Tabasco and finishes like paint thinner okay okay so now the defeat of expectation is found in the phrase and and finishes like paint thinner because the way I have set the joke up I'm describing the Vodka as if I were an Expert like a wine expert

it starts you know starts with notes of cherry and finishes with oak or something like that you and the audience are already putting the pieces of the puzzle together you're thinking oh he sounds like a wine connoisseur he's identified a note in the Vodka that I would expect to find in a pepper vodka at this point the audience doesn't really know where the joke is going they can expect that it's not going to go to it starts like Tabasco and finishes like Frank's Louisiana hot sauce cuz there's no surprise there there's nothing interesting there but

if I say starts like Tobasco and finishes like paint thinner I have created a a picture in the mind of something that's ah horrible and completely destroyed the picture in the mind of something that's being apprehended like a glass of fine wine and that destruction of one image and its instantaneous replacement with Another that's a comic tool called defeat of expectation what is the will to risk somebody asked me do you think anyone can be funny I said I think anyone can be funny I'm not sure everyone is willing to risk being funny because the

will to risk implies the will to fail if I try this and it doesn't work there will be consequences if my fear of consequence is quite great then my witer risk is quite low because the the fear of negative consequences Bad outcome will keep me from Taking Chances as an example you might be terribly funny and you might want to do stand-up comedy but you have to have the will to risk to get from the floor to the stage even if it's only 6 in that's a big step up and the only way you can

take that step is if you can bring your mind around to the idea that this outcome doesn't matter it might be a bad outcome it might hurt me emotionally but for the sake of my goals It's a step I have to take and that the whole math of it is if you have a clear sense of your goals and you can link those goals to actions then the combination of goal and action will give you the will to risk because you will see quite clearly in order to achieve this goal I have to take this

action I understand that there's a risk of a possible negative outcome but I also understand that if if I don't take this action I can't achieve that goal and That's a known bad outcome so I fight against theoretical or possible bad outcomes with the knowledge that taking no action is itself an undesirable outcome for me it won't advance me toward my goals do you think some people have a natural just sort of like the propensity to be up in front of a crowd it doesn't if they fail if someone throws a tomato at them it's

not the end of the world I I think some people have that quality naturally some people Acquire it a lot of us are I don't want to say that we're programmed in our youth but I'll just tell you about my own experience as a youngest child youngest of three I was counted on to be funny you know I was the little one I was the cute one and there was a lot of positive reinforcement directed at me for taking comic risks as a consequence I grew up feeling pretty comfortable with taking not just comic RIS

but creative risks of all kinds mostly Because I had already acquired some experience in trying some things that work and trying some things that don't work in my book the comic toolbox and this is kind of one of the things that I'm known for I I established What's called the rule of nine which say says for every 10 jokes you try nine won't work and you think well that's a terrible bad average I'm only getting it right one time out of 10 that's horrible it's not because it tells you two Important things one is you're

going to get it wrong much more often than you get it right getting it wrong is the norm and the other thing is if you have 10 jokes and you only need one to work then you don't have to invest 100% of your ego in any one joke you can basically distribute all of your ego across 10 jokes and any joke that fails only cost you 10% of ego and then that one joke that does work that's what you need to advance toward your goals and Anytime you advance toward your goals your ego feels much

better so we can say what falls out from this is for someone who's operating in Creative spaces we're always operating in an ego space we're always uh engaged with whether we know it or not engaged with the question of how does this circumstance make me feel what I try to do is focus on a different question how can I use this circumstance to advance toward my goals I find that if I operate With that question in mind the fear fear Falls away the insecurity Falls away the the um uh the the will to risk advances

because it's clear that no matter what's going to happen I'm going to gather information and it's going to advance me toward my goals one way or another so the ultimate outcome of this is I'm going to do a better job I'm going to create better products I'm going to win more a claim and it turns out from moment to moment as writers or creators We are uh serving our ego and the minute we stop serving our ego and serve the work instead try to make the work as good as it can be then the work

becomes better and better and better we achieve more we attain more and our ego feels that much better all of which boils down to to serve the ego ignore the ego and save your ego for the award ceremony but you know they say that uh most people fear uh the biggest fear is is public speaking I'd rather stand up In front of a group of people on a topic I know nothing about and be booed off the stage than let's say walk across the Golden Gate Bridge on a windy day which I've done in a

class trip and couldn't make it so some people have certain fears that that seem normal and you know public speaking I guess is considered a normal fear I I use a a metaphorical structure for my fears I imagine that the inside of my brain is outer space and my fears are present in here and There in outer space they manifest as black holes they suck all my energy in they they warp reality they do a lot of bad things and since they're black holes they feel dangerous to me so I avoid them fear fear of

rejection let's say as an example or in my case fear of not hearing adequately so my experience of this is if there's a black hole that exists and I don't confront it then it exists and it dominates but if there's a black hole that exists and I confront it Doing no more than saying I acknowledge this black hole I acknowledge the presence of this fear that kind of sucks the air out of that balloon the black hole goes away and I have more freedom of movement in my own mind that's why I use that metaphor

and that's what I'm attempting to serve not to deny my fears or even really make them go away just to acknowledge their presence and manage them effectively as part of my overall job of being as successful a creative Entrepreneur as I can what if a writers afraid they will embarrass themselves and maybe especially embarrass themselves in front of a group of their peers strangers it's like whatever but yeah strangers it's like whatever but oh my mom's in the audience or Marge from County or Marge from a county well Marge from M County uh I'm going

to answer your question but first I'm going to go roundabout with a little bit of Story I was in Prague in the Czech Republic doing a comedy writing Workshop and uh it was a multi-day thing and I was just getting started I was midway through the morning on the first day and I'm at a point in my lecture and I just lose it might have been jet lag might have been I don't know something that I thought I understood very well I suddenly couldn't make head and her tail stuff it was a story structure that

I was trying to Communicate and I just found that I couldn't and I had a kind of a freakout moment and it wasn't bad and I acknowledged it I said to the audience so you guys Let's Take 5 minutes I've lost the plot I need to find it again and that was the moment and we took a break and I came back and started teaching something else that night we went the whole group went out for drinks and dinner and my wife was there she was traveling with me And she was part of the party

and later she reported to me that she talked to a lot of different students and they all said the same thing that moment when he fell apart and acknowledged that he'd Fallen apart that's when he won our lead Allegiance cuz we thought if that guy can fail this expert can stand in front of us and fail so visibly and own it and transcend it and move on that's a big relief to us because now we're not afraid of failure we've seen the boss Failing we've seen the mro failing and that leaves us free to manifest

our own failure I have since used that over and over again as a strategy if the room is tough if people are feeling up tight they're not ready to take chances yet I just fail I fail on purpose I go someplace crazy I I go out on a limb that I know I'm not going to arrive someplace good and just crash on on purpose so that people can see me modeling failure and feel better about Their own failure now back to your question can you repeat it please because I was um tell me tell me

again the the questions you asked is a writer afraid they will embarrass themselves and embarrass themselves in front of a group of their peers T writers room okay so there I am embarrassing myself in front of a group of students each of them is worried about embarrassing themselves in front of their peers it's a comedy writing Workshop they're Supposed to be funny Stakes are high pressure is high they're not going to do well I'm going to instruct them to lower pressure by embracing failure I always tell people in these circumstances if you must fail and

you will fail fail big if you have a magnificent failure at least you created something that was magnificent and if your goal is to fail big then failure doesn't scare you anymore but in terms of this idea of I'm afraid of the negative response of the People around me I think a lot of that is what I call cartoon emotion we have emotional states that exist without giving too much thought to them and the the emotional state we're in right now is people are going to hate me people who love me will hate me that's

on on on the on the Bedrock that's what we're afraid of if I if I write this romantic novel if I write this screenplay if I do this stand-up comedy routine and it goes bad which it will cuz I'm a loser then Everybody who loves me will hate me I'll be that much more of a loser we can see that this is a lot of kind of self-fulfilling prophecy toward a negative outcome a vicious circle we can turn it into a virtuous circle simply by saying I'm going to have this experience and I'm going to

collect this outcome I'm not going to have expectations on whether it's going to be a good outcome or a bad outcome try for a good one but not marry my ego to a good Outcome and what's going to help me in this is the understanding that people who love me actually love me they're rooting for a good outcome and if it happens that I don't get a good outcome the only one it'll really bother is me because I'll feel like I let them down they're prepared to give me charity they're not going to condemn me

for trying something that didn't work out they're on my side so in the moment where I am attempting the creative act Trying to throw it out the window and see if it lands I need to remind myself the audience is not in conflict with me they want the same thing I want a good outcome a a funny joke a good story a good movie experience whatever we're all on the same side we're not against each other and that also will help me step over that fear barrier and into the experience that I want to have

so if someone would like to win the empathy or the sympathy of a crowd should they Knock the microphone off the podium for a second and then apologize or drop their papers it's a perfectly valid strategy I've seen stand up Comics trip getting up on stage it never fails to get a laugh because of what we talked about slipping on a banana peel in a sense making yourself the Target in a sense this is standup comedy 101 make yourself the Target in my book the little book of standup I talk about your first 5 minutes

what are you trying to Do with that precious first 5 minutes of comic material that you trying to generate one thing you're trying to do is Define yourself another thing you're trying to do is to build audience Allegiance and you can do both of those things by telling jokes about yourself that matter I might say look at me I haven't had a bad hair day in 25 years and it's my way of saying I'm bald everybody knows you're bald I don't carry any issues with me about baldness But I could certainly use the appearance of

having those issues to win audience Allegiance we talked earlier about getting the audience on your side so creating empathy or sympathy I feel like I might want to try this sort of you know maybe when I go into the grocery store I'll trip on purpose or I'll I'll I'll do some not fall of course but something to kind of like Get me used to being in the position of of wanting to feel stupid about myself yes what you're Proposing is that you do something new and unexpected break a rule it's a rule we might say

that you go into the grocery store and you behave properly and you don't trip and you're proposing to break a norm maybe not a rule but a norm a a an exercise homework that I give to my classes whenever they run more than one day at the end of the first day I always tell them between now and tomorrow morning go out and do something you've never done before Doesn't matter what it is and it doesn't matter how you go about deciding what to do the experience of doing something you've never done before carries so

much creative value and so much psychic value that it's worth having just for the sake of having it and I illustrate this um if you can imagine trying to think of it uh here's here's a great illustration uh one of my students was uh divorced from her husband and had Been for a bunch of years and they hadn't had a really healthy dialogue since they divorced and she took my homework as a permission to do the following new thing I'm going to have a civil conversation with my ex and I'll call it homework so that

it's safe for us both and she entered into that and had a really productive experience and I asked her later how did you feel and she said well at first I was really afraid Because I didn't know what I was getting into and and I didn't know if it was going to work and then when I saw myself in the moment and having a good experience I felt really powerful like I'm I'm in charge of this moment in a way I've never been in charge before and then coming out of the moment she said I

just felt High I'd had so much an exhilarating experience of the new that that in and of itself has value so this exercise whether it's uh brushing your Teeth left-handed or talking to a stranger on the subway or buying a a stranger drink in a bar talking to your ex-husband or whatever else you choose to do there's so much excitement and Discovery and humor in Breaking the Rules and Breaking the Norms so I predict if you take yourself to the grocery store and stumble around like a clown at first you're going to feel scared because

all eyes will be on you and you'll be the subject of examination Sure but then you'll feel empowered because you realize I've got control of the situation like a standup comic owns the stage and owns the audience you're owning that moment all eyes are on you and you'll feel powerful and then when it's over you'll just have this sense of relief and exhilaration and enderin and adrenaline and all of this stuff I'm getting high just thinking about it yeah let's go do it well that's the thing that you said You're really in control of the

situation so if I accidentally let's say drop the basket and and the eggs fall all over the ground then I'm legitimately I'm going to feel stupid about myself but if I not that I want to do this not waste product but do something similar where I drop my grocery bag of something and and it's not a major thing but I'm in control of it I did it on purpose I think it's a it's more of an empowering not only that But if you do happen to drop the eggs accidentally you can absolutely make a Surefire

joke out of it and absolutely win the allegiance of everybody around you by using a comic tool called telling a lie to Comic effect stating the opposite of what's true those eggs hit the floor you cross your arms and you say I meant to do that and everybody's on your side and everybody's laughing right cuz they know that you're not suffering the accident you just suffered You can imagine sorry if I please please you can imagine I've been thinking about this a lot I'm writing a new book it's called The Book of practice the subtitle

is how to do better what you want to do well and one of the things that I'm looking at is this idea of uh self-monitoring I I try to be in a moment and also be observing myself in the moment at the same time and just checking in it real in real time am I doing what I want to be doing now I'm Checking in with my hands and reminding myself let's get those hands under control and don't let them fly around all over the all over the camera I know you don't care but I'm

self-monitoring it's a goal that I have to keep my hands still if I find myself not achieving that goal if I'm actively self-monitoring then I can course correct in the moment you think about that moment in the in the um in the store where the eggs go down if you're Self-monitoring you realize you have a choice you can take this bad outcome and make it worse by generating all kinds of bad energy around it or you can take this bad outcome and start to make it less bad by generating positive energy around it and that's

a choice you have every moment and that's an that's a choice you can access as long as you're paying to yourself paying attention to yourself in the moments you're in well is that part of being in the Comic Space is really dialing into who you are your in idiosyncrasies and how other people see you yes yes exactly ly there are a couple of things to think about one is you have strengths that will be your strengths and knowing what those strengths are and how to use them and leaning into them further is is better for

you there are a lot of things that you just can't do well comically or creatively you can choose to do the easy things you can choose to get better at Doing the hard things but there is a a relationship between what is natural to you and what works well for you and I can give you an example from a kind of a different perspective as you might know I'm something of a self-described expert in poker that is to say I've written 10 books on the subject so I should know one or two things about it

and one of the things that I know is poker players at a table have an image and that image Might be a fear fearsome image a scary image Crazy image innocent image stupid image playful image uh clueless image intense image checked out image any of these things for Effectiveness in poker you need to ask yourself what image can I project that in harmony with my nature in other words how can I be more me so for myself playing poker fearsome doesn't work I can't scare people but playful works great I can disarm them why because

I'm naturally not a fearsome Person but I Am Naturally a playful person so that's an example of knowing something that's true about myself first knowing it second owning it like it's okay for me to be playful and then third using it as a tool so if I can boil all of that down to a algorithm know your strengths own your strengths and use them as tools so don't try to become you know let's say in in in World Wrestling they they all had Dawn these these sort of not avatars but these these sort of Monikers

or I don't even know what you call I think Avatar is a good character Avatar yeah and who knows if it's sort of a larger image of themselves I don't really know these wrestlers in person but but we come to know oh that's kind of an evil one and everyone's booing and s and hissing and stuff and the other ones proud and funny and so kind of like Dawning that almost sure you're going to cast the heel according to who can play the heel naturally and you has cast the Hero according to who can play

the hero naturally this is something connected to what I teach when I teach stand-up comedy you have a comic filter and your comic filter is just who you are plus a ton of exaggeration uh my comic filter is the world is my circus everything that exists on this planet is here for Amusement my rational mind knows that that's not true but exaggerating that comic filter and taking it on stage like Thank you all for being here tonight you really made my experience what's your name Bob you in particular I was hoping you would come you

can already see that I'm I'm taking a natural playfulness and just jacking it up and that's really if if you want comedy boiled down to simple terms we've talked about some but here's another one that works a treat comedy is drama Plus exaggeration if you just take a dramatic moment and exaggerate it out of all reality it will become comic if You take a normal perspective I'm a kind of a playful guy and exaggerated I'm all playful all the time I'm like insanely playful then it becomes comic it cannot help but where does a great

idea begin usually with a bad idea usually I have to pass through a lot of bad ideas to get to a great idea uh we talked earlier about the rule of nine says 10 for every 10 jokes you try n won't work same is true for ideas you might have 10 ideas For a sitcom or a screenplay and if you look at all 10 of them you can just say well some of these are better than others which one's the best one at that if you have 10 ideas and you pick the one you like

best you might not have a great idea but you know you have the best of 10 ideas that's why it's so important to generate a lot a lot a lot of ideas most of them will fall by the wayside in my vocabulary there's something called a Monday idea a Monday Idea is something that sounds great on Monday but by the end of the week you don't even know why you were so excited about it it's like a hit song that sounds great at first but then pretty soon you can't stand it you realize there's nothing

really there we fall in love with things because they're new and the great ideas are the ones that stand the test of time and the weight of development I'll give you an example of something that I consider to be a great Idea that's new to me in my experience then I'll talk about where this one came from because they don't always come from that strategy that I just gave you I'm walking with a friend we're walking our dogs and my friend has a kind of a wild and and Woolly look about him he's an actor

and he looks a little deranged most of the time uh he's from Kentucky and I turned to him and I said I said you know it' be a great idea for A movie rutin in Kentucky cuz you look like rutin but you're from Kentucky and you could totally play that role now I consider that to be a great idea because it's it takes no effort to imagine the story around it there's a governor of the state and he's been being manipulated by some mad Rasputin type character it's basically the Rasputin story taken from zaris Russia

and stuck in world Kentucky where it's just going to work a treat so one way we recognize Good ideas or great ideas is we can see the the the bones of other good ideas on top of them this raises a point that's worth raising people who are in the writing game are very self-conscious about copying or being thought to copy or be derivative and it's nearly the problem that we think it is and I offer as a as a counternarrative the artist's experience I'm lately an artist I've been doing art for a few years now

and I've started to understand that for many Great pieces of art the conversation starts with I like what I'm looking at I'm inspired by that I want to do something like that and there's never any sense of and I'm copying them or I'm going into areas that are cliched or not allowed to me just that artist painted a beautiful field of poppies I want to try painting poppies too and there's no self-consciousness around copying or turning soil that's already been turned I would say that a great idea is not Necessarily a new idea or an

original idea a great idea is something that like I said can stand the weight of development and stand the test of time what is a money idea you talked about Monday ideas what about money ideas what is a money idea a money idea my personal vocabulary is an idea that the minute you have it you know it's going to work and you can say I know it's going to make money that that just makes it kind of a Joke or metaphor but um let's say you're pitching sitcom ideas to me I have a series uh

I'm going to make up a sitcom called rest Putin in Kentucky because why not and uh now it's a comedy and you're pitching ideas for Rasputin like episode ideas R Putin goes to a car wash Rasputin uh uh takes a pickle ball and then you say Rasputin poses in the nude uh that's a money idea because the audience is going to really want to know that they're not going to see him naked They know they're never going to but they know it's going to be an awkward situation for them they know instinctively that it's going

to be fun so I as someone who is evaluating ideas I can look at that and say from here to that money moment that funny scene I can see the direct line and that's why I say money idea and that's why I say let's put that into development and see if we can make it happen another idea will come along that's not a money idea um Rasputin cleans out his closet I don't know how that's going to be funny until I know what he finds in the closet so it's not yet a money idea but

it could become one I'm going to offer you one more observation around this when we seek good ideas and somebody comes along and says the path to a good idea is through a bad idea you might not be agreeable to that you might say well that seems like a lot of hard work and frustration heartbreak Heartache why should I do that because often you cannot get to the good idea without passing through the bad idea and I didn't teach this I learned this from a student of mine very early in my teaching career adult Learners

uh I I said you know sometimes you have to pass through the bad idea to get to the good one and she said oh it's like going on a blind date and I said well what do you mean she said well you know he could be horrible but he might have a cute Roommate and you're never going to meet the cute roommate if you don't go on the bad blind date that's true it it ties back into this notion of having a will to risk recognizing that bad outcomes are not to be feared bad outcomes

are just outcomes and in this business that we're in the currency of the realm is outcomes the more times we make a thing whatever that thing is the more quickly and uh prosperously we progress toward our goals creativity is carrying buckets To the river what is this in eastern philosophy there is this notion that creativity is carrying buckets to the river that there's a river of creativity flowing by and our job is artist is to dip into the flow of creativity and see what we get and that's a valid approach it's like walking around waiting

for a joke to occur to you or waiting for an idea to to occur to you you've had these moments you're walking down the street and it's Like you get hit by lightning suddenly a great idea appears to you that's the experience of carrying buckets to the river and it's good as far as it goes but it doesn't go far enough because I don't want to be creative just in the moment where creativity takes me by surprise I want to be creative from 9:00 in the morning till 5: at night if I so choose so

carrying buckets to the river isn't going to be enough I need to build some irrigation channels I need to throw Up a dam or two I need to use the raw stuff of creativity more effectively from moment to moment so when I say carrying buckets to the river what I'm really saying is develop a set of tools that will free you from the magic of creativity you can benefit from the magic of creativity is great to get hit by that lightning but you don't have to be a slave to it you don't have to wait

for it to strike as long as you have strategies for bringing creativity to You every time you want I can't tell you how many wonderful ideas I would get sitting in morning traffic rush hour traffic could be a Monday and then the minute you actually have time to implement them you find a million things to do to keep yourself busy do you know why oh do it's fear fear okay it's fear resistance I'm not I I don't know if that's true for you but nine times out of 10 when someone has trouble executing if you

look at it hard enough they're Afraid of the outcome and you can see this in a lot of situations having trouble starting and having trouble finishing are both uh manifestations of fear let's look at having trouble finishing I've written this novel and it's time for me to do what Winston Church Hill said kill the Beast and fling it to the public but I'm afraid I'm afraid of bad outcome I don't know I'm afraid cuz I'm not self-monitoring so I look at what I've Written and I say oh the ending doesn't work or this is all

trash I need to go and start over again I'm not satisfied I'm not going to release it until it's perfect this is perfectionism disguising fear it's fear cloaked as it needs to be perfect Before I Let It Go first of all it's never going to be perfect because nothing is and secondly the only reason you're afraid to let it go is not because it's not perfect but because you're afraid Afraid of a negative outcome can I tell you about a negative well a a stalled outcome that I've been surfing now for months last year I

wrote a screenplay a feature animation for a German client I work internationally it's in English but as for a German client and I delivered a draft of the screenplay and it didn't work and I agreed that it didn't work and I went back and rewrote it and I delivered it again day before Halloween that was uh four months ago five months ago and I have not until today actually even today haven't heard one word about whether they like it or not and you might say that's very rude of them but I just say that's an

outcome there is an outcome out there that I don't know about and even if I do know about it it's not going to change how I feel about myself I'm content to wait today they emailed me and they said now that everybody's healthy again oh I Didn't know people were sick we want to help have a meeting on it okay sure let's do that but now look I'm going into a meeting where I as a writer have a tremendous emotional investment in what those guys say and I have a feeling they wouldn't be calling this

meeting if all they wanted to say was we love every word of it put down your tools and you know do a dance that that would be great but that seems like an unlikely outcome so I'm already prospecting the future I'm already investigating what that meeting will be like in my mind so that when I'm in that meeting I can operate effectively not as a slave to my emotional reactions but in service of the work which ultimately is in service of my ego there's a lot going on I'm sorry I went around the corner and

down the street like I usually do no that's fascinating so you waited four or five months or so haven't heard anything and now they'd like to call a meeting so all This time you've been waiting not knowing where you stood yes but I haven't been holding on to it the way I would have held on to it in my youth this is the important thing I actually had a friend writer friend called me the other day you still haven't heard I still haven't heard must be driving you insane it's not bothering me at all I'm

not even thinking about it it's an outcome it's going to be a great outcome or a bad outcome or an outcome I never Know about but I'm not in the business of evaluating outcomes I'm in the business of having new outcomes so if they say we hate it never darken our door again I'll say okay that's the outcome if I'm hooked on outcome this is another phrase we can think about people get hooked on outcome if I'm hooked on outcome it's because I'm invested in the outcome leading to new outcomes like if they love it

maybe they'll hire me to write another one or maybe they'll tell Their friends and they'll hire me I think a function of being a senior citizen is that I'm no longer hooked on outcomes at this point I got I'm playing with the house is money and I think that makes it a lot easier for me to have this tranquility and work on work on it as if I were working on any other tool that I might wish to work with but that's why I'm writing this book of practice because when I was young and freaked

out I needed a book that said to Me explicitly you're just young don't freak out and that book didn't exist and so or at least I couldn't find my way to it so maybe we can consider this to be the theme of the book of practice you're just young don't freak out well I think too you have enough sort of uh roller coaster rides and then you start to realize oh okay yeah we're just kind of chugging up the thing here and who knows what's going to happen but I'm going to hold on and and

I've been Down this I've been on this ride before I've been on this ride all along and I know it only has three states up down and plateau and I actually talk about this I think in my book creativity rules I talk about something called Plateau thinking which says you're only in one of three states either your life is rising or it's descending or you're on a plateau and wherever you are one thing's for sure you'll be someplace different you might go from rising to Plateau or Plateau to Rising again or Plateau to Falling or

falling to Plateau or falling to Rising but you're always in a change of state as long as you are engaged in your practice as long as you are creating outcomes you're also creating change for yourself now that's really powerful if you think about it all my outcomes even the worst ones create change within me if that change is positive then it's growth so now I can look at bad outcomes and say even if It's a bad outcome and doesn't Advance my career it's not a bad outcome it's a good outcome because it advances my growth

that's a win I can always take no matter what the other guy says and again thinking about people who might be watching this video and wanting to engage effectively in their own creative practice this is the secret there are no bad outcomes there're only outcomes that we assign a value to and we have the choice to assign those outcomes the Value of good outcome bad outcome or just outcomes and where I try to stand every day of my life is it's not a good thing it's not a bad thing it's just a thing that's taking

place and if I can apprehend it on that level then no matter what it is I can manage it more effectively and of those three states uh sort of the roller coaster analogy so ascending descending or plateauing where do you find your most comfortable having just been through a Plateau or or a valley I'm not sure how to look at it uh I would say that that I am I'm more comfortable with a plateau State than I was before let me lay it out for you uh through the end of the year I was engaged

in intense labors and then I finished them and suddenly everything dropped off I had nothing to do and I knew that I needed to take a break and I knew that I also needed to start my next project the book of practice not start re-engage with cuz It's it's been around for a while and I went through a period of about two weeks where I was saying no to starting the work and then one day I said yes to starting the work and I recognize that's very common for me when I know I need to

recharge my body tells me because it just won't let me work and that's what gets me through those spaces more broadly because of how I'm wired when I feel myself in dissent I say to myself well Of the three possible States descent is my least favorite I don't want to be going down I want to go up I want my life to rise when I feel myself in descent again I try to be mindful of what's going on and act in a way that will reverse the situation I can give you a great example in

2016 my writing practice was broken it was busted I couldn't write anything I couldn't sell anything I didn't feel good about my writing I felt like uh It's over I'm never going to be creatively successful again clearly this is a freef fall descent but it wasn't the first time I've been through this before I'd know what it's like to lose my writing Mojo and I knew from past experience that the solution was to try something different that's how I've always gotten out of the bind in the past but it up to that point it was

always try a different kind of writing and this time I said it's more major Than that I need a more major change I need to rethink everything and I made the conscious decision to take up art knowing that I didn't know the first thing about art had no history no practice of it no expectation of being good at it but I knew that if I introduced myself to it it would give me new information that I could use to reinvigorate my writing so much so that I end ended up writing a book about the experience

of being my first year in art Because the the big hurdle I hit hit was I've been a writer all my life I know how to solve problems creatively but I haven't been a writer an artist for five minutes I don't know how to do anything I'm so uptight what do I do I said I know I'll go for a white belt in art cuz the white belt's the one they give you for just showing up they whatever else I can do I can show up and then when I heard myself say those words white

belt in Another part of my brain said that's a money idea because it will give structure to the work that I'm going to do for the next year it will give me the freedom to work without needing to harvest for a full year that is to say I give myself permission to play for a year knowing that I'm going to take all that playfulness and turn it into product at the end and it gave me a great book called a white belt in Art what is the comic premise the comic premise is is the gap

between real reality and comic reality it's a rule change that takes normal reality and turns it into something else uh you here's a good example in the situation comedy Married with Children which I'm sure you know uh if you don't know it's about horrible people who somehow manage to live together the comic premise is these people who have no business spending five minutes in each other's Company somehow managed to hold it together real reality is not like that if these people were real people in the real world they would run screaming from one another the

comic reality says to the audience if you will accept the premise that these horrible people can live together we're going to give you some fun so the comic premise is the change of reality the altered reality that the comedian offers in order to welcome the audience into his or her or Their world on the level of standup as an example you can find a comic premise in something like just when you thought Airlines couldn't get any worse the audience understands you're not going to tell me what really happens with Airlines you're going to tell me

an exaggerated version of it a an alternate reality version of it a Comic version of it so the comic premise is airlines are even worse than you think on that level it's easy to understand that we're not Going to be talking about air air travel in a straight sense we're going to talk about it in an exaggerated or bent sense so the comic premise is is the thing you do to bend reality what are the components of a comic premise the main component of a comic premise is a rule change in this world let's take

another example from from uh uh well-known sitcom we can Think about Kramer from Seinfeld his comic premise his comic perspective or filter is there's nothing I can't do like I'm Kramer everybody knows he's Kramer and because we know he has that attitude about himself we will allow him to do any bizarre thing he wants to do and the more bizarre the better it all stems from a single rule change in the real world this loser doofus does not Prosper they don't they just don't they're losers they're doofuses nobody Gives them the time of day in

the world of in the comic world of the story of Seinfeld This loser doofus triumphs every time so the rule change is losers win uh now let's take that as an example let's say we we like the rule change losers win but we want to make something new out of it we could say something like the world's poorest family wins the lottery in the real world that's not happening for all intents and purposes as a friend of mine once said he did the Mathematical modeling for the California Lottery and he said to five significant figures

your chances of winning are the same whether you play or not so so we know in real reality it's not going to happen but we allow the comic premise to change the situation normal poor family all of a sudden they're endowed with great riches doesn't matter how we're going to watch poor people be rich and it's going to be fun that's what a comic premise does it takes Normal reality and turns it upside down what's the difference between a great comic premise and a bad comic premise this almost feels like an SAT question sat actually

what I'm reflecting on now is I do a lot of work coaching people for interviews and one of the things that I talk about is when you get a hard question you're going to want to blab you're going to want to say stuff that doesn't matter so um well let's see and instead it's good just to have a Moment's silence or talk about something completely irrelevant andall while you're trying to figure out what you really want want to say which is exactly what I'm doing now cuz I don't really know what is the difference between

a good premise and a bad premise except as we said before a good premise a good idea will stand the weight of development and stand the test of time that is to say if it's interesting to me now and it's interesting next week and Next year or funny now funny next week and next year then that's a good premise if it's funny now and upon further further investigation it stops being funny it's not such a good premise I have an example I was working on a joke about uh uh virtually meaningless superpowers like if you

could have any superpower what would you choose would you choose something dumb and and I said I would choose the superpower of the ability to carry Groceries on a bicycle and somebody said well that's just balance and I realized okay that's not a very good superpower not a good premise but there is something funny in the poor guy who had the chance to pick his one superpower and he wasted it on balance because he thought it was something better than that and that's a good premise because that's something I can work with I can think

about somebody who makes a big Mistake and suffers the consequences rather than thinking about the mistake itself you're asking me a question and and as I'm answering it I'm kind of unpacking it a good premise is about something sustainable a bad premise is not about something sustainable okay so you talked about earlier uh job interviews so if we I don't know did you see Emily the Criminal did you see the opening SC okay so she's in this job interview and and it it it really sort of establishes who she is in that moment and they

they kind of uh show that they have this like file they they've done their research on her and um you talked about how see I'm not even sure where I'm going now now I'm kind of stumped We're In It Together there are no bad outomes there you go and I'm willing to to be okay with that but it was a great scene in that you Learn who she is in that moment what you're speaking of is something called a character key and this is something else that I teach and talk about all the time when

you're creating characters your first job is to introduce the them to the audience in a way that the audience will understand you want to tell them two important things in a comedy those two important things are how they will behave in all situations and how they will be funny in all situations and a Good character key will do all of that so when we think about that opening moment we're getting everything we need to know in order to predict the stories that will take place in this world and also the character perspective that will give

us value on a comic level where writers go wrong is thinking they don't need that or they should delay it they try to introduce the characters without introducing them let's just imagine a scene that starts I Walk into the room and I say hello to you and you say hello back and I say how is your day and you say not so bad and I say that's good and then I go to the refrigerator for something to eat I have spent a lot of time not defining myself but if I walk in and try to

open the refrigerator door on the wrong side and say who changed the sides of the refrigerator door or something funny I'm telling you I don't know what's going on and I think I know what's going on and That's going to drive me into mistake after mistake and story after Story or or I I see you I say hey how's your day and you launch into you know what's wrong with the world and you have a whole Manifesto of everything that's wrong and you're up on your soap box and I was just about to check my

email and I just wanted to be polite you you did you did so many great things there let's deconstruct it you boiled the character key down to two lines how is your day Let me tell you what's wrong with the world that's so genius because how was your day creates an expectation and the expectation is we're going to hear fine we're going to hear polite stuff when I tell you let me tell you what's wrong with the world I'm defeating expectation well you as the Creator are defeating the audience's expectation immediately you're engaged then the

words let me tell you what's wrong with the world perfect character key perfect predictor Of what will happen next this is a guy who's going to complain about everything and be wrong and be in conflict with the world and be just hilariously misguided for 150 episodes let's go why is it important for a comedy writer to get in the habit of making a bad situation worse when we look at what happens on the level of a joke or a level of a comic scene we're We're trying to figure out how to build the story how

to advance toward a Moment of Truth toward an explosion of new understanding and the strategy that gets you from the beginning of the story to the end of the story is making bad situations worse over and over again uh this will sound like an oddball example but you can look at Star Wars as an example of a story that's built on making a bad situation worse Luke uh is all alone on the planet hanging out Everything's okay his parents are killed he's taken off his home planet he's under threat he's being attacked he's life is

in danger finally he finds his way into the Rebel Alliance and he discovers the force but he doesn't want to use the force he doesn't know if he can in the Moment of Truth he tries not to use the force and then he uses the force all of the pressure that's been put on him from the start of the story to that moment brings him to the Moment Of Truth where he says I was wrong not to embrace the force the force is the answer to everything he Co through an explosive transformation from denial to

acceptance of the truth and that explosive transformation from denial to acceptance of the truth is the goal and destination of most stories and virtually every comic story so how do we get to that moment of explosive transformation from denial to acceptance pressure pressure pressure pressure more Pressure bad situation worse another example that comes to my mind is The Wedding Singer do you know this movie Adam Sandler plays A Wedding Singer who needs to be a songwriter if his girlfriend doesn't break off their engagement he never becomes a songwriter cuz his situation isn't bad but when

she leaves him he M it makes his bad situation worse then when it gets fired it's worse still then when he falls in love with Julie Guli uh Julia whatever her name is it it's worse and worse and worse until it finally comes to the moment where he says I can no longer go on denying my truth that I need to transcend my fear and be the person I'm intended to be a songwriter a Creator someone in control of his Destiny if we don't put him under pressure if we don't make his bad situation worse

we never get we never give him the reward that the audience wants so that's Why you make a bad situation worse and going back to our earlier discussion about conflict this is how you tell yourself it's okay to make your character suffer it's okay to put them in conflict because you're bringing them to a new understanding that they very much want and can't get there on their own similarly in Emily the criminal she's trying to to get a job and actually go the right way and then circumstances change and she's given This opportunity for this

survey and and Things Fall Apart from there so her situation becomes just dire because now she has like a no way out she's she's not even if she wants to get out she can she's already sort of built these walls that she's trapped in sure and and then that's sense especially in this day of streaming entertainment we can really see make a bad situation worse is the DNA of not just comic storytelling but dramatic storytelling thinking about I'm Thinking about Ozark right now if he can escape to the Ozark and get away clean that's good

for him but it's not much of a story there's no story if we don't make the bad situation worse that's why we make a bad situation worse because it drives story it's also funny I mean uh right now I'm thinking about John C in a movie called Clockwork where he's trying to get from one place in England to another place against a ticking clock and every attempt he makes To travel or Planes Trains and Automobiles same thing every attempt he makes to travel makes the bad situation worse it's not just that the plane won't go

home it's the train won't and the car won't and the whole thing breaks down and it just gets funnier and funnier how can we attack a char Char's peace to attack a character's peace and thus make a bad situation worse we simply ask ourselves what does this character want and how can I keep them from getting it Because their peace will be achieved if they get what they want and any roadblocks that we put between themselves and what they want will attack their peace I'll give you an example this is the one I use all

the time in classrooms I'm a teacher in a classroom what do I want I want to teach effectively I want people to learn what I have to teach them I want to have a good teaching experience it's obvious now in comic Terms if we want to make that moment of teaching funny we remember thing isn't funny the person is happening to so I'm not going to enjoy what happens but if the fire alarm goes off or if somebody comes in thinking it's a different kind of class or somebody's on their phone or everybody falls asleep

or I start burping uncontrollably or hiccuping uncontrollably my bad situation is getting worse and worse I'm getting further away from my peace because the Thing that I want is being blocked by new and successive roadblocks so this all ties together when we speak of attacking a character's piece we simply think about what does he want how can I keep him from getting it and how can those roadblocks make him change so that he finally can get what he wants let's let's let's follow the example let's say I'm a teacher in a classroom but I'm Uptight

like I'm very stiff and what I need is to be loose I need to let go can't teach effectively until I let go everybody with me so far now I'm uptight and I don't want to let go and a fire alarm didn't make me let go and a guy on his cell phone didn't make me let go and the principal walking in and casting an eye at me didn't make me let go but when that brass band next door started playing I just lost lost it and I lost it so magnificently and Completely that I

had a cathartic experience and I realized well I guess if you saw me do that you should be okay with what I have to teach you next now that I'm changed now that I'm not so afraid of not teaching you now at last I can teach you you know funny you're you're triggering a real life memory in that at my school uh some high school students were able to rig the PA system where they played the Howard Stern Show and they played the Fartman bit and one Of the teachers supposedly just lost it and he

went and dis dismantled he just kind of ripped it from the wall the speakers because they couldn't get it to stop and so you had I'm sorry you it's still funny after all these years it's still yeah many years and it's very funny not funny to him no it wasn't but and it got around to the whole school and so to that just envisioning that and I guess he was sort of an uptight teacher I I didn't know him personally But just to know that he couldn't prevent this like vulgar radio show from coming through

the airwaves just s i i I have very little patience for people who are overcommitted to propriety uh if you're if if if you're committed to your rules if you're married to the rules uh I'm going to have a devilish desire to subvert you it's just in my nature so yeah probably was would have been the one to pipe that Howard Stern Show into The classroom comedy begins where tolerance ends why because when you reach people to the point where they're nervous they start to store tension and the more tension they store the more explosively

they will release that tension in the form of a laugh when the laugh comes basically they're thinking how bad is this going to get how far is he going to go how much is this going to Cost me this is bad and if the punchline to the joke takes all of that tension and relieves it with a defeat of expectation then not only do do I get the defeat of expectation I get the release of tension we can examine this space by looking at what is taboo and we can note that in any group group

Nation culture Community neighborhood social group club sports team there are things that are allowed and things that are not Allowed and the line will always be different from group to group jokes that are allowed in same sex groups are different from jokes that are allowed in mixed gender groups jokes that are allowed to adults are different from ones that are allowed to Children if you tell a joke that's right there on the edge of what's allowed for your group that's when people will get nervous that's when they'll start to get up tight and that's when

you can milk that Tension and store it and then pop it like a balloon uh I do this exercise in a lot of cultures where I teach mostly because I'm interested I like to ask the question what's taboo here what's Taboo in modern Germany is it still taboo to talk about World War II is it taboo to talk about religion is it taboo to talk about politics is it talk taboo to talk about gender I don't know but once you Tell me what's taboo I can tell you exactly where to find the joke which is

right where people start to get nervous right now there's a corollary expression comedy begins where tolerance ends the corollary expression is the trouble with too far is you never know you're going till you've gone this takes us back to will to risk I have to if I'm going to explore the area of taboo I have to be willing to risk going too far cuz I'm never going to land on the right spot Every time there's a great example of this that I talk about in the comic toolbox Robin Williams is doing stand-up comedy and he

tells a joke that the audience does not approve of I don't remember what it was but you could just hear an audible gasp everybody like oh Robin you went too far and in the next moment he said something that boiled down to I went too far didn't I he didn't use those words exactly but it was the understanding he acknowledged That he had gone too far and everybody in the audience said oh well he knows he went too far it's okay he bought back their loyalty so it's possible to go too far if you go

too far you can always buy it back just by saying oops I went too far where you lose is where you go too far and you don't acknowledge it because then you create uh a wall between yourself and the audience I I describe it as a rift in the fabric of space something just happened and you're not Acknowledging it and the audience knows you're not acknowledging it and they're no longer your fan they're suffering for you cuz they see you suffering the minute you say I made a mistake but it's okay you're no longer suffering

so they're no longer suffering and they can go back to enjoying you as you can see it's a complex puzzle but what's exciting about it is to apprehend it as a puzzle so that you're not just creating jokes in a vacuum you're not Just trying to write something funny and hope they laugh but you have an understanding of what works for one audience is different from what works for another audience and knowing how to manipulate that space um let's imagine that have a gig this is from the the the little book of standup let's imagine

that I have a gig and I'm addressing people who make humy oh no fans of Humvees you know those big gas guzzling cars I'm no fan of Humvees and I might Say to myself this is not my space but if I just think about it I can say to myself what's on their mind what do they care about they got these big hulking hulking cars probably hard to park I have trouble parking in my car I can talk about that so now I can connect with the audience audence with something that is of concern to

them how do I park this Beast without avoiding any of the potential conflict areas that I might not want to get into on the other hand I Might take the approach you people know you're stupid right let's just imagine this I'm telling a lie to Comic effect I'm definitely going to land a laugh on that cuz people don't know me yet they don't know that I mean it they probably expect that I don't mean it so they're willing to kind of take the first blow you people know you're stupid to drive these gas-guzzling cars don't

you if I then turn around and reveal My misunderstanding of what a Humvee driver is I can win their loyalty I can poke fun at them I can make us all part of a group experience and then I can take them to the edge you know let's just imagine that you're driving your Humvee only it's not a Humvee it's a limousine and it's prom night what's going on in this limousine On Prom Night o says the audience limousine On Prom Night in my Humvee I'm intrigued tell me more and I Might take you to a

dangerous spot there I can go to some dangerous places on prom night but I've set you up to take that Journey with me by building a bond of trust and a bond of common understanding between you and me so when we say that comedy begins where tolerance ends we can also say you get to Define where tolerance ends you can push them farther than they think they can go simply by taking them there with you well it seems like some groups there Might be more tabos and some less I mean you talked about going to

concerts and sort of this counterculture sort of experience I would imagine there's probably less tabos there absolutely uh the way I like well well I mean of course they're going to go for the the drug humor won't be taboo um there's a lot of behaviors that won't be tab it's like late night television the rules on late night television are different from the rules of daytime tele television Because the audience is different here's the way to think about it an audience is a bell curve goes like this and at one end of the bell curve

are people who won't get the joke because they don't know enough or they don't accept enough these are people who are intolerant at the other end of the bell curve there are people who won't get the joke because they know it already they've heard it before or it just doesn't bother them they over Accept they're too tolerant our Target is always the big fat middle these are people who have enough tolerance to understand what we're getting at and enough intolerance to feel nervous so they'll laugh the big fat middle will shift if it's a late

night show the big fat middle is over here more sophisticated if it's a children's television show The Big Fat middle is over here much safer if it's Teletubbies it's way over there somewhere our job is As strategic creators is to ask ourselves what's the big fat middle for this audience how can I play to it and then how can I push it because if I both play to it and push it it'll be more satisfying ing experience for the audience if I just play to it they'll say yeah okay that was fine that was funny

but it didn't teach me anything if I push it and get them to think about something in a way that they're unused to thinking about no matter what their Level of Tolerance is something will push their buttons If I strategically push their buttons then I reward them with comedy and with insight and that's where creativity starts to play for higher Stakes I was reflecting on this earlier there was a time in my career in in my early career when I reached a crossroad in my writing and the question was am I going to continue to

write funny or I'm going to write something different and I remember very clearly Thinking to myself knowing in my heart that I wanted to play for higher Stakes I wanted to talk about and think about the kind of things that we're talking about and thinking about now but I look back and I say what how different would my life be if I had made that different choice if I had said first let's completely Crush comedy and then turn our attention to serious that is an option that I didn't realize I had at the time I

felt like I Had to make a move and make it now I might not have been wrong but there's always a sense of the road not taken and what I'm reflecting on now is in that moment I felt that I didn't have any win bigger than making them laugh I didn't realize that I could make them laugh and make them change at the same time I could bring them to a new place so since learned you can do both when you talked about push them the the bell curve you're it's going to be constantly Moving

when you say push the audience is that mean kind of like taking them right up into the line of what may be inappropriate kind of like flirting with it yes okay okay yeah and and how are you going to find out how to flirt with that line effectively trial and error which means you're going to bomb so badly but every stand-up comic comic will tell you if you haven't bombed you're not in your craft you you you must die on stage over and over again in Order to understand what your business is about on stage

cuz otherwise here's my set the intention for my set is to not fail if my intention is to not fail I'm going to play it safe right I'm never going to take a chance because I'm afraid of failing which means that I never grab the Brass Ring of making them change how they think if my intention is to make them change how they think amuse them to new enlight amuse them to Enlightenment let's say if that's my goal I know for sure it's not going to work every time I'm going to go too far not

far enough there will be failure and it will be spectacular but I can't get the big win I want unless I risk the big failure so I have to find some way to say it's part of the process people bomb all the time let's go for it I mean Andy Kaufman style uh on the Letterman show Type exactly everything Andy Kaufman ever did was pushing the envelope in Extreme Ways and I can certainly understand his motivation to do so this is going to be such a great joke on the audience and I think where people

have trouble with Andy Kaufman myself in a way is that for all of his body of work he never let the audience being on the joke with him it was always at their expense and we talked earlier about having an image that fits your nature I Would never take that approach because I don't want to hurt those people I don't want to fool them at their own expense I want them to enjoy my reality with me not in opposition to me but a thousand Comics Andrew dce Clay um uh uh Sam Kennison the list of

conflict confrontational Comics is long and this tells us and this is another super important Point comedy has a lot of different powers but broadly speaking it has two Powers the Power to lift up and the power to knock down and both of those powers are valid I choose to lift up that's where I live comically but people who use comedy to attack are playing a vital role in society they're telling people what's wrong if your passionate to get people to think differently about that you're going to have to make them feel it and you might

take some chances that don't pay off if they don't want to feel it if they're resisting you have to overcome Their resistance so you're using comedy to break down in order to create something better this is this is what comedy does it reinforces social norms and at the same time it destroys social norms and it's so weird that it does both so I always tell people when you're doing standup comedy if you want to destroy destroy I'm never going to tell you not to do that I'm not a destroyer I'm a builder uper and I

always will be I might try destroying to see how it Feels but that's not where I live or or if somebody's really boxing with you you might take a couple but but if if we're playing nice sure but if if well and people put themselves in that situation you have rap battles or roast battles where two Comics stand toe to- toe insulting each other I would fail so badly I I I wouldn't I think I'd probably have the the flexibility in the moment to come up with the jokes but I'm not sure that I Would

have the wherewithal to say them I think the taboos that exist in me would be too strong to take me there effectively at least on the first try sure but then when I hear myself say that I say well make a note try that because how else you're going to grow let's call it a black hole there's a black hole that says hey John vorous you're afraid of being insult comic maybe you better try it just so you can experience not being afraid of it well What if someone's taking some real cutting uh blows at

you and and maybe they're not trying to be funny so you think all right I'm going to hit him back with some humor but it's going to have a little bit of a sting to it I wouldn't even do that I'll tell you why because first of all no matter what they direct at me it's probably not going to make me feel bad because I'm self what what I'm self monitoring oh okay Actualized I'm I'm self-monitoring and I'm not I'm I'm not taking in that information thinking at all about how does it make me feel

I'm not thinking about how other people think about me I'm not worried about any of that I'm just present in the moment that's my normal operating Behavior at this point so it's it's going to be hard for me to be legitimately angry in the moment and even if I am legitimately angry and I want to strike back I'm Probably going to want to strike back in a way that builds a bridge because all things considered I'd rather have that friend that person as a friend than an enemy as a as an ally than an enemy

and engaging him in conflict or her in Conflict won't necessarily get me to the goal that I want there's a lot going on you you can be very sophisticated about this stuff and it all starts with the understanding that operating effectively with other people in any realm starts With operating effectively within the way that I put it is you can read people's minds you can know 90% of everything everybody is thinking all the time the trick is to read your own mind because most of everything everybody thinks is the same stuff so if you're articulate

in your own self dialogue if you know yourself in concrete terms then you know everybody else in the same way um I think about this when I'm in the classroom what do I what what's on these people's minds what are they afraid of well if I were them I'd be afraid of being called on I'd be afraid of being asked to tell a joke and have it be not funny how do I know that how do I know you feeling that way cuz I'd feel that way and 90% of everything everybody thinks is the same

stuff all right with this awareness now I can give you a gift I can relieve you of that fear in a thousand different ways and All of them are jokes I I I would say to you um uh everybody here who's afraid to tell a joke raise your hand oh nobody will raise their hand because they're all afraid to tell a joke okay everybody who's not afraid to tell a joke raise their hand and whoever raises their hand I pick on some pick somebody else and you can manipulate the situation effectively to serve your goal

go and other people's goals simply by having at The same time self-awareness and other awareness again in the book of practice I talk about something called a win-win situation when you look at a situation and you say this is what this person wants and I can give it to them and that's what that person wants and I can give it to her and if I give them both what they want then I'm going to be seen as somebody who empowers other people and that's what I want so it's a win for him it's a win

for her it's a win for me That's wins all around and I can have that anytime I want simply by allowing myself to examine the situation honestly and objectively that's great so you talk about jokes that build Bridges and then jokes that burn them yes mhm interesting and and you can absolutely do that and you see H you see Comics do it all the time can you think about a comic you've seen who blew up on stage lost it completely and started yelling at the Audience being angry at the audience for not meeting the comics

expectation I can that is a comic who is trying to ease a psychic pain the pain the the current flaming hurt of failure I'm bombing and I know it and I'm so desperate not to feel bad that I'm going to attack those people there the attack doesn't really achieve that goal you kind of feel better cuz you scratched the urge to rage but you didn't win any fans you came off kind of looking Ridiculous it might have been better off if you just said well that didn't work I'm going to give my time back to

the room and walk off stage I've known people that have gone to comedy clubs and been the subject of attacks yes and and left in tears and they weren't the comic they were the they were you know it they were in the audience well and and that's a different kind of strategy and that strategy is Let's bond together by attacking a common enemy we'll all make fun of that guy we'll brutalize that guy and we'll all laugh cuz it's not us and then I the comic and you the audience we're together against that common enemy

Don Rickles is a classic example of that and again it's somebody's idea of a good time and and I know people who love being attacked they want to Heckle and get shot down mercilessly it satisfies Them little bit of reflected Glory a little bit of participation a little bit of I don't know um it it hurts so good kind of thing endorphin stimulation like getting a tattoo or eating hot sauce you know if I can make myself the object of the comics attack and he really gives it to me good it hurts but it kind

of feels good hey I was the object of everybody's attention that feels good yeah there's a great clip with Kevin Smith at ComiCon I don't remember what year it was but Somebody kind of challenged him one of the fans in the audience and he's good he takes it and he he he he's good and then then he flips it and he just gives it to the guy and the whole place cheers and excellent that and that talented practitioner is three steps ahead of his mouth in his mind I do this all the time I'm not

a I'm not a Kevin Smith but I know what it means to launch a joke without really knowing what the punchline is going to Be but knowing that I'll find it by the time I need it yeah he's really skilled yes what is the comic filter comic filter is a character's way of viewing reality different from what real really is a strong Comic character has an identifiable and consistent comic filter strong in the sense that it's completely uncompromising I think about everything this way uh examples abound let's let's Uh um here's here's one I I

teach from uh he's a cop she's a crook together they're law and disorder his comic filter is Law and Order he's a cop he wants to do the right thing in all situations he's going to do the right thing her comic filter is Break The Rules I'm going to do the wrong thing I'm I'm a free spirit I'm an Outlaw I'm a rebel I'm an anarchist the world is good when the rules are broken so now you have one Character whose comic filter is obey the rules and you have another character whose comic filter is

Break The Rules you put those two characters together and give them strong comic filters they're going to fight forever over who gets to be right and this is the heart and soul of a sitcom this is how you build two-hander sitcoms what they call comic opposites in sitcom you take a comic filter exaggerate it to the end and then pit it against a similar an Opposite comic filter and have them go to war then if you're looking for stories you can just look at any situation and ask how will this character filter this reality through

his or her comic filter the example that I use now it's a little outdated because it involves stolen pirated DVDs which don't exist anymore but let's just imagine that she brings home a box of pirated DVDs but it's DVDs that he really wants to see Like it's the hot new movies what a nice moral dilemma for him because he knows he's breaking the rules if he watches the DVDs but he's drawn he wants to he has inner conflict I want to follow the rules but I want to watch the DVD that's the story and resolving

that conflict is the end of that story I don't know how it'll end I have a feeling that he's going to end up watching those DVDs but somehow disavow them I wasn't breaking the rules According to my own terms so that I can still feel good about my comic filter going forward right maybe she got them at the swap meet and then he needs to watch them so he can make sure that the entire thing was pirated and then he's going to go back and and and report to wherever wow I I I feel like

you and I could work effectively because you you have this knack for taking an idea and yes anding it to something you're you're What if tool is working quite well thank you and especially because oh yeah I I can see that what he's doing on a psychological level is creating a rationalization now it might be my job in our creative partnership to shine a light on what's Happening and then your job to make it funny or the other way around or maybe we change roles but that's the way this collaboration is working because I'm saying

it's funny cuz he's got these DVDs and he has Conflict and then you're saying well based on that conflict he might try this strategy and then I'm saying that strategy reflects this state of mind this psychology rationalization and then I'm going to say let's make the bad situation worse let's make that strategy not work how can we how can we block him from his piece of watching the video and not feeling bad class Ah well uh maybe his supervisor calls him and so now he feels a little bit torn because now sure her supervisor or

somebody says you can't do that that that way is not allowed right or maybe she says that's a cheap rationalization if I ever saw one you can do it if you want to I won't feel bad I want you to watch the movie but he'll say no no I can't give her the satisfaction I can't let her win this is something we find over and over again when comic filters Go to war with each other the the the main motivation that every character has is I can't let them win I have to win that's what

makes strong Comic characters going back to Kramer if Kramer doesn't win he's not happy and because he has this strong comic filter it kind of gives him superpowers and he can use the superpowers to win in situations where you and I couldn't win it we talk about comic filters but it's also useful to talk About superpowers comic superpowers Powers because if a character has a strong comic filter that character will do things that you and I can't do that character has permission a great example of this is uh Crossing against a red light normal people

will cross against a red light they won't they won't do it they'll wait for the light to turn green two classes of people will cross against the red light with consistency one whose comic filter is I Don't know the rules and another whose comic filter is the rules don't apply to me both of those characters will cross against the light they will achieve a goal that normal people can't achieve because they filter reality through their comic filter sure yeah I've seen a lot of that that's a great because there are certain people that are like

these car Dodgers and they just they feel it's their just right to be it doesn't matter if it's the cars are stopped but they Feel like this is my universe as well and I'm going to saunter through and you'll stop for me it's the cliche it's a of the New Yorker I'm walking here who that that's from Dustin Hoffman and Midnight Cowboy I believe he's crossing the street in New York saying I'm walking here I'm walking here how does a writer build a comic filter I start by looking within and asking myself what comic filters

do I have we've already determined that I'm Playful I'm inquisitive I have curiosity I avoid conflict I like to exercise let's take that last one now I know something that's true about myself I like to exercise now all I have to do is exaggerate it what is the most extreme example of someone who likes to exercise someone who can't stop running no matter what believes that all sports are great all sporting activities are valid and Nothing else in the world is worth doing now we have a strong comic filter made Strong by exaggeration so how

do you make a comic how do you build a comic comic filter take normal reality it and exaggerate until it becomes comic reality it's the same thing in creating the comic premise the comic filter is the comic premise of the character it's the way the character differs from real reality right now I'm thinking about the character in about no up shitz creek the Eugene Levy character who just thinks he's going to go to this small town and everything's going to be completely fine and cool and his comic reality is I can cope but real reality

against that and his comic reality creates the comic premise City guy in the country because he's driven to prove himself in that new environment I haven't seen the show I want to see it so it sounds like he still has his City sensibilities about him uh other Characters in the in the character map have their City sensibilities as you would imagine but let's just take a different example let's look at Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory his comic filter is I'm better than everyone his superpower because he has that comic filter is he can do

things normal people can't do he can use his arrogance to achieve his outcomes the reality that he lives in is Sheldon Cooper world it's not our reality we wouldn't put up with Him but because his comic filter is so strong it creates the comic premise that this guy can fruitfully exist in this world hey when last 5 minutes in the real world he'd be unhappy but in this world he can find happiness cuz he has is superpower all of which requires that we look at it from underneath with psychological tools and from above it with

awareness and from the audien's perspective and all these other Different angles people think that the the idea is developed and then it's done a better way to think about it is when you're pursuing a creative outcome you're like a detective who is simultaneously creating Clues and following them the more clues you create the more effectively you can follow and the more effectively you follow the more discoveries you make the more discoveries you make the more clues you Surface and the more clues you surface the more you succeed in moving toward your goal should someone know

their own comic filter oh yeah absolutely the first as the starting point starting as a starting point what do I think is funny and the way to think about it is this when your friends say you're funny what do they mean this is I'm I'm now speaking to people who would be in my comic toolbox Master Class they're there because they want to be more funny than They are so they have some they're interested in comedy somewhere along the way somebody told them they were funny about something otherwise they wouldn't be here or they thought

they were funny otherwise they wouldn't be here so what brought them here what sensibility do they have walking into the room that needs to be discovered and nurtured and expanded and exaggerated so that it becomes a comic filter that's a platform upon which their work can stand I've had People say I'm clumsy people know that I'm clumsy as an example where are you funny I'm funny when I'm clumsy okay in the real world you're going to try not to be clumsy cuz you could get hurt in the comic world you can be as clumsy as

you want your comic premise is I can be clumsy and not get hurt and now you're off and running you can take that anywhere you want you can build a platform for standup comedy routine or you can endow that attitude on a Character in a sitcom or a comic movie or play or comic novel it's a building block it's not the end of the story but it's a piece of the puzzle hence Kramer you know hrer but he always lands on his feet always lands on his feet and and it's built into the character so

when we think about comic filter we're also thinking about something right next door called controlling idea the comic filter is this is how the character will be funny Because he's always clumsy but the controlling idea is I'm not clumsy I'm I'm elegant I'm what's the word I'm looking for I'm I'm drawn a blank uh not not ambidex Siri give me some synonyms for clumsy for Deft uh anyway you get the idea his his controlling idea is I'm going to prove to the world how cool and smooth I am his comic filter is I'm clumsy and

those two things fight against each other in an interesting way and that's What makes the character interesting when his comic filter is one thing and his controlling idea fights against it you have automatic inner conflict Jack Tripper thre company yep what a great thank you I was trying to think of an example Jack Tripper whose comic filter is women love me right and who's no who's who's and his well I get this I guess I have this wrong his comic filter is I'm no good with women but his controlling idea is I'm great with Women

does comedy have the same plot structure as drama most of the time the the Arc of a comic story is this the hero goes through an arc of change from denial to acceptance of the theme the thing he has to fix and he is rewarded with Community uh I'm thinking about the movie Liar Liar Jim Carrey is a pathological liar he needs to learn to tell the truth so he under goes an arc Of change from denial to acceptance he goes from thinking lying is good to telling the truth is good and he's rewarded with

a good relationship with his son so he's rewarded with Community if you think about every movie you've ever seen with the word wedding in the title The Arc is always the same Heroes go from denial to acceptance of the thing they need to change in order to win true love then they're rewarded with true love they're rewarded with entrance Into community in its most profound expression which is couplehood in the eyes of the tribe that's kind of how we value community at the utmost the difference between between comedy and tragedy specifically in comedy the hero

learns the lesson of the theme and is rewarded with community in tragedy the hero never learns the lesson of the theme and is punished with um Exile or Death right now I'm thinking about God how many times have I said right now I'm thinking about when I watch this video back I will knock myself in the head for having said right now I'm thinking about so many times examples are great though thank you let's consider The Great Gatsby Gatsby never learns that his path to glory is not the one that he thinks it is and

he's devastated in the end or king Lear king classic tragedy of King lar look lar you only have to do one Thing accept your daughter's love if you do that all will be well no I'm a dumbass I'm stubborn I cannot accept her Love Therefore I must die in the wilderness blind in insane and alone that's what happens when you don't learn the lesson so what's the difference between comedy and drama well between the difference between comedy and tragedy is clearly in comedy the hero learns the lesson in tragedy the hero never learns the lesson

drama can kind Of end up both ways you can reach a space where the characters have achieved understanding but still get a bad outcome that's problematic for audiences I'll give you a great example the movie Thelma and Louise these characters need to undergo transformation one needs to have a authentic bond with another human being that's Thelma and one needs to set herself free from her abusive relationship that's Louise I think I have it right if it's not that it's Exactly the other way around they go on a journey together they achieve their outcome but the

way they achieve the outcome in in achieving the outcome they cross a line that Society will not allow they kill they murder and so they have to pay the ultimate price and at the end of the movie in the original screenplay I've read it it it looks like this they fly off the cliff sorry spoiler alert they fly off the cliff and crash and die the end when they tested that ending in Front of audiences the audiences hated it CU they love Thelma and Louise they don't want to see Thelma and Louise die they want

a happy ending the story will not allow a happy ending so the filmmaker very cleverly creates the expectation of a happy ending or at least the suspension of the bad ending when now see thelman Louise taking off and freeze frame and we know yeah they're probably going to die but in this moment we can imagine that they Live in eternity and they got their happy ending exact same ending as Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid where butcher Butch and Sundance by the way if you haven't seen that class go see that Butch and Sundance they have

their backs to the wall they must die and they run out with guns blazing and they're shot dead but it's Freeze Frame so we never see them die they live on in eternity that's how how you bring a character to a tragic but not unhappy ending what are Some of your pet peeves when it comes to plot I was watching a movie last night called narvik it's a no no no I got a better example I recently read for the first time in my life Treasure Island uh Robert Le Stevenson's classic tale of pirates and

piracy I didn't realize how many of our pirate tropes come from that novel but the plot was very unsatisfying to me my pet peeve was I was ahead of the narrator I knew what was going to happen even though the Narrator was trying to fool me I could see several steps ahead so that's a pet peeve for me when the narrative is not sufficiently sophisticated that I don't know what's happening when that I that I know too easily what's happening that there's not an interesting puzzle for me to solve interestingly I decided I'm going to

cut Robert Lewis Stevenson a little slack because when he wrote those plot twists they were brand new nobody had ever contemplated a move like that In a novel before so and and the 10-year-old boys who encounter it they've never experienced it it's spellbinding to them it's legitimate move we go back to the big fat middle maybe I'm not the Right audience for that book a pet peeve of mine in storytelling is storytelling that's clumsy unsophisticated makes it too easy for me to problem solve I also am very frustrated with moments where it seems like an

action is being taken either Because the writer is being lazy or the character is being stupid I find those are places where I check out of a story if I feel like I'm reading something I say to the writer man you could have done better than that that's just that's a that's only an okay choice I expected better than you than that of you or more profoundly if the writer gives the character a choice that doesn't make sense according to my understanding of the character I'm not having that I I Will not tolerate um I

I won't root for a hero who doesn't know enough to act in his own self-interest there's a great example but I'm not sure if I can share it because it has to do with Avatar 2 the way of water there's a moment in Avatar 2 the hero has is has taken his family to safety they're safe as long as they don't make any mistakes the bad guys will never find Them they've achieved their mission trouble is if if they've achieved their mission that's where the movie ends it's not very interesting this is very early in

the movie relatively early character makes a mistake character reaches out to allies in the outer world and unintentionally tips off the bad guys where he is he gives him he gives himself away is is what happens and I say to myself I leave this movie right here cuz you just did something so Manifestly not in your self-interest either you did it because you didn't care or you did it because you didn't know and either way I no longer like you I've checked out emotionally I ran this by a friend of mine and he said you

are watching the wrong movie Avatar 2 the way of water isn't about strategic choices it's about pretty pictures and if you you'll give yourself a better movie goinging experience if you take if you it where it lives so to speak and so I realized once again I'm bringing my expectations to the story I'm losing enjoyment because I'm letting my expectations interfere with the moment if I just let go of my expectations and let the movie be exactly what it is I'm going to have a better time the real takeaway from this is don't have pet

peeves don't have them at all don't have expectations and then you won't be disappointed meet the material where it is recognize it's not a good movie or a Bad movie it's just the movie that it is there's a great one that people argue about all the time it was um the the U Disaster Artist James Franco's take on that guy I don't even remember his name but that guy made a movie that people couldn't stand the room the room that people couldn't stand but other people found surprising value in it the ones who couldn't stand

it couldn't stand it because it didn't match the Norms they expected the ones who had value in it Were the ones who met it where it was well this is this guy's expression he's got something to say he's gone to some effort to say it let's Embrace what he has to say rather than rejecting it because it doesn't fit our expectations nevertheless writers keep your character smart because audiences will leave they're not as generous of spirit as you would like them to believe be and they'll leave if they feel like the character is doing things

that they Can't get behind what is a joke a joke in its simplest form is the setup and defeat of an expectation you give the audience the impression that you're about to say something and then you say something that they didn't think you were going to say and when they experience the new information and gain a new understanding that's when they laugh I'll put it in another way a joke Is a puzzle you give to the audience to solve and when you give them the right information in the right way and they solve the puzzle

the solution of the puzzle presents itself to them in a tight little package that makes them laugh see if I can give you an example there are many I'm not sure what what is a good one we could go to a a a light bulb choke how many producers does it take to change a light Bulb well does it have to be a light bulb funny if you know that producers are the kind of people who will make arbitrary very bad choices so the truth and pain of the moment is I'm a writer I got

to deal with producers they don't always know what they're talking about that's the truth in pain the joke is presenting to the audience how many producers does it take to change a light bulb well does it have to change what does that tell me about producers that I Didn't know if I've done my job right and if the audience has enough information to solve the puzzle of the joke then they'll laugh if I'm not sure that they have enough information to solve the puzzle of the joke I'll give them extra information to make sure I

might say to them I went to pitch to this one producer and he's one of these guys you know he just never knows what he wants so I told him a joke I said uh how many producers did take change a Light bulb he says wait a minute does it have to be a light bulb that will give the audience more information packed in such a way that they will arrive at an explosive solution to the puzzle in the form of a laugh that's a joke interestingly if you ask AI chat GPT to tell you

a joke uh-huh its definition of jokes is very narrow all the jokes have the same structure why did the X do why because a b or C and I've done some exploring here and I got to tell you some of the jokes are okay but they're not new jokes here's an example why did the chicken cross the playground to get to the other slide not a bad joke for AI it's kind of a dad joke it's also a well-known joke AI didn't invent it but AI will invent a joke that goes like this why did

the chicken cross the playground because it wanted its feathers to get wet or something Completely nonsensical and then that's hugely amusing to me because I'm like what was the thought process that brought this madness to life I did a stand-up comedy thing reading AI jokes and what was funny about it was not the AI jokes but the bewilderment of myself and the audience over how did AI how could AI imagine that this was funny well it's an unsolved problem but give it six months and that problem is going to be much Better solved yeah so

that's very true I think AI understands what is a joke the way my six-year-old great nephew understands what is a joke it's not the same and and also you said the joke sort of a puzzle but then if you take it too far then that puzzle doesn't get Sol exactly if you give the audience too much information there's no puzzle for them to solve and a lot of jokes don't work don't land as they say for this specific Reason the example that I just gave you why did the chicken cross the road to get to

the other slide if you've already heard it it's not funny you already have too much information there's no puzzle to solve but a lot of times people who construct jokes construct them with too much information and the joke doesn't work because the puzzle isn't hard enough and I tell them this joke work you just need to take out some information subtract some information so It's not so obvious where you're headed I'll give you an example of a joke involving Dwight Eisenhower Richard Nixon and a construction worker in the year 1955 when Dwight Eisenhower is President

uh construction worker is hit on the head and goes into a coma and he wakes up some number of years years later in 1968 when Richard Dixon is President as You might know but he looks out the window he doesn't know he's been asleep he looks out the window and he sees a flag flying at half mast and somebody says he says why is the flag flying at half mas and he says he's told oh President Eisenhower just died and the guy says oh no that means Nixon is President see it's funny because he fell

asleep when Nixon was vice president president and woke up when Nixon was president and didn't know that that had Happened and none of this is funny because you don't have enough cultural references from the 1960s and how people felt about Richard Nixon to solve the puzzle of the joke the way I want you to So In This Moment here I am profoundly experiencing failure modeling failure by giving you a joke I expect you don't know enough to understand I thought it was going to be that he woke up and he saw a flashlight at the

Watergate hotel and and some but I'm taking it from the from the Forest Gump scene in in the movie but yes I don't know I wasn't alive then but but I I didn't some of it did not land no but I I thought you were going to there was something about a FL I was thought that we were going to Watergate some trust me if I had wanted to make it funny I had have made it funny so but I wanted to make it not funny I wanted to show what a joke looks like when

you don't have enough information to solve the puzzle Of the joke okay right and I and I don't yeah so here let me try another one okay sure I this is one I use by example because sometimes the telling of the joke will actually give the audience information that it needs to solve the puzzle of the joke let me tell you about my friend Dave and his big ego okay yeah that sounds good yeah old Dave Dave and his big ego now you don't know Dave so if I tell you I said to Dave the

other day Hey Dave you know what I call ego the little Dave inside me and Dave turns to me and he says what do you mean little now you know something about Dave that you didn't know before and that's an example of a joke that gives the audience the information they need to solve the puzzle of the joke right there in the punchline when they're solving the joke and those are the jokes that tend to work best and you talked about your Friend with the long hair that you walk dogs with and I didn't know

him and and you said he he's from Kentucky yes I I have a friend who looks like uh a mad scientist and he's from Kentucky and so I think that for a guy like him a story involving a mad scientist in Kentucky would be a good story but you don't need to know anything about him except how he looks in order to see how that class of jokes Will work now let's just imagine that his his look is wild he got big hair it's completely out of control but he thinks he's the brill cream man

he thinks he's so sophisticated and smooth doesn't recognize his hair is out of control so when he goes into a social situation and he says hey what do you think of my hair and somebody says your hair scares me to death he'd be surprised by that it would confound his Reality now if he went into a social situation in 1972 his hair would be heroic but then the problem might be that he's not a hippie but everybody thinks he's hippie because he's got a massive U head of hair and it might only be that he's

poored and can't afford a haircut it might be that he sees himself as not a hippie but he has to conform to everybody around him so he's wearing his hair long even if he doesn't feel like a Long hair now again we found an interesting character a long hair in the 60s and we've asked ourselves what's interesting about this guy what's confounding about this guy what'll give him trouble we've discovered an interesting inner conflict he's a long hair who thinks he's a short hair that's something we can work with that's a platform we can stand

on so the joke is never about what's happening on the surface it's always about what's Happening inside the character and what if some of those people that think he's a cool hippie they saw him come out of a meeting room for the young capitalist Society they would turn against him and then he would probably realize that he was in the wrong Camp all along he probably fell in love with someone who said to him I want to love you but I can't love your values and I can't love your values until your values Change now

this is a character who had no need to change his values until love got in a way and now has a passionate need to change and also a passionate need not to change and that's what drives the whole story because here's a character who's got to figure out some way to be true to himself and meet the expectations of the person he loves that's a big challenge a great example can be found in the mve Tootsie where Dustin Hoffman is a man playing a woman And at the end reveals himself to be uh reveals himself

to be a man playing a woman and in that moment in his Moment of Truth he says to the character I'm not the person that you thought I was but I have become the person you need me to be and that's the moment of truth and that's when he wins if I'm a young writer now today I'm leaning heavily on tools and templates you know what else I'm doing circling back to AI I'm using AI to generate outlines I'm using AI to Generate beat sheets I'm using AI to check whether my story structure is sound

and I'm not threatened by this I'm not afraid that AI is going to put me out of work or maybe I am but at least I recognize that AI is definably three things a tool a partner a competitor it's not always all those things but we can count on it being one or another of those things pretty much all the time and it's not Totally accurate yet from it's still in its infancy it's not it's going interesting places it sure is it has it has solved a big problem in my art because all of my

work is digital I don't draw by hand and so the question is always in my mind where does the base image come from and I'm very um I'm I'm careful about what I take I'm careful about how I create my images I don't want to borrow pieces that look like borrowed pieces But I can say to the AI give me a uh a collection of stick figures in blue and green and it'll create an image that I've never seen before and never imagined I might not want that image but I might see it as the

start of something interesting and then it's where my piece begins it it's not stolen from anybody because it was generated According to some words that I made up so the Genesis of the idea is the words I made up the the words I put Into the search prompt what comes out of that if it's true AI is something that we'll never have existed in any form before not just a scraped image the problem with AI right now is that it's borrowing too liberally from what's out there and passing it off as original content that's not

what it is and that's copyright violation that's a lot of problems but true AI will respond to a sophisticated set of Search terms tell me a story about an astronaut stranded On the moon whose wife is running the mission from mission control on Houston and AI will give me story beats that are very conventional according to its understanding of what it means to be stranded and what it means to be separated from spouse but it's going to give me a pretty solid platform for a story that I just thought up in the moment that's an

example of using it as a partner and a Tool on the other hand and if my producer can get the script without bothering to engage me because AI is doing that good a job then it's a competitor this is me in my tranquility and my objectivity saying hey everybody is not a good thing not bad thing it's just a thing that's happening and if you want to have a good relationship with AI whatever it becomes or anything you can think of for that matter don't apprehend It as a threat don't apprehend it as an opportunity

just apprehend it as exactly what it is experience it without laying your own judgments on top of it interesting Nan technology was thought of in the same way it was something to be feared and something to be uh embraced um the Y2K bug we thought it was going to end everything people took precautions they got ahead of it some of it worked some of it didn't I think AI Will be as much of a GameChanger as the internet was the the thing that I read that scares me the most is we are currently capable of

building with AI we're capable building Network platforms Global Network platforms like Google um Yahoo any Global platform you can think of that are so complex and sophisticated that we can't control them only AI can control them yeah it's not a good thing it's not a bad thing it's Just something that's coming let's find out sure or the bad actor that created it well and Bad actors have used the internet and and my career has prospered because of the internet so right so the good and the bad the ying and the Yang it has no it

has no intrinsic value in and of itself it's only how we use it and we can say that that's true for writing comedy as well As I mentioned earlier comedy can lift up or it can break break down it's up to you to decide how you want to use it be lift her uper or knock her down or even choice is fine it's a choice you get to make all of creative Enterprise is making choices anything you can think of writing a joke telling a story painting a picture writing a song dancing a dance it's

all Choice everything boils down to I choose to make it blue instead of green or red instead of yellow or use The word what instead of why and when you understand that creativity is just making choices and you understand that those choices can be changed later and that your job as a Creator is just to make as many choices as you can as thoughtfully and effectively as you can then you're free then you're not afraid of bad outcomes because you know my job is just to make choices not even good choices not even right choices

just Choices so that's where I live I live in Choice what is on the- nose Dialogue on the nose dialogue is dialogue that's too direct and straightforward it doesn't give the audience anything interesting to think about often we can find on the no's dialogue where the character is saying exactly what he means with no space in between the text what he's saying and the subtext what he means if I'm in love with you and I say I'm in love with you that dialogue is directly On the nose I'm telling you exactly what I mean and

for the audience watching unless it's a very special moment that's probably not a very interesting moment because nothing nothing is being challenged everything's a little bit too easy if I say to you would you like to have a cup of coffee with me and everybody understands I'm really saying I love you then I've taken dialogue that's on the nose and moved it off the nose I've Given an inference or a suggestion of what I mean without stating what I mean directly as a point of Interest I can tell you two different ways to say this

phrase in other languages oh please yes in Spanish it's deasio too obvious they don't have a metaphor for it but in Russian it is the beautiful schlish vlob schlish vlob that means too much forehead which is their way of saying on the nose and often the difference between Okay writing and great writing can be found in the distance between what is being said and what is being felt so dialogue that's on the nose is generally not satisfying because it doesn't give the audience anything to work with or think about the subtext of would you like

to have a cup of coffee then we could subvert the audience's Expectations by I meet you for coffee and it turns out you're presenting me with some kind of multi-level marketing Thing that you want me to be a part of and I thought you were going to propose there you go so I got all excited told all my girlfriends I think he's the one because I I read misread his subtext right clearly he's asking me for coffee that means he's he wants to marry me right um how do you get that sister because I'm not

sure you're interpreting reality correctly you might be filtering more through hope than reality which makes it interesting for the character I Want this guy I want this guy to propose to me but he won't do it and I want him to propose to me so badly that I'll invent circumstances where he will suddenly I am thinking about a movie called The Proposal Chaser which is the story of a young woman who wants her boyfriend to commit to propose and thinks up all of these outlandish situations where she kind of tries to Corner him into proposing

and he doesn't Do it and he won't do it and finally she's at the point of saying I can never make this relationship work I was wrong to think that I could I have to let go of my expectation that he's going to give me what I want and just accept him as I am as he is and that's the moment where everything changes and opens the door to the Happy Ending what if a writer gets a note that all of their characters sound the same if all of my characters are sounding the Same to

the reader it must be that I haven't delved into them enough to make them sound different I can assume that it's a problem that they all sound the same if it if it's not a problem that's great if they say all of your characters sound the same and we love it like great problem solved let's pay me and I'll go on to my next project but if they're saying the problem with the script is that the characters all sound the same Same then I have a problem my first problem in the moment is ouch my

feelings you just told me something bad about my work and I feel bad now that's me processing information through ego I'm asking how does this information make me feel that's not going to get the problem solved that's just going to make me feel bad they hate me they think I can't write multi-dimensional characters or different characters this sucks I suck it's the end of the World so in the moment when they're giving me these notes I'm making a different Choice I'm not filtering through go I'm filtering through the work I'm asking what information are they

giving me and how can I use the information they're giving me to improve the work now we can pass through the notion that I don't think they're right I don't think the characters sound the same I think they all sound different but if it's a situation where they're Giving me notes and I have to work from those notes then I'm going to say to myself if they're right how are they right what is their problem well it looks like these two characters I don't think they sound the same cuz their comic tones are quite different

oh but I do see that they agree with each other on what's a great TV show they both love this one show and there's no story purpose for it it's just a fact they're too similar in that sense they love the Same things okay I can start to solve the problem by rethinking the characters and saying they don't love the same thing they hate they love different things so they each hate what the other loves I made a different choice now I'm in a space where I can start to give the character different comic filters

more exaggerated comic filters and separate them move them off in different directions there's a good example of characters who are very close to one Another who you would think would sound the same and you kind of wonder how they ended up not sounding the same it's Joey and Phoebe from friends because Joey's comic filter is Teflon brain nothing sticks to his brain he's pretty dumb pretty but dumb no just pretty dumb Phoebe's comic filter is naive innocence she's not dumb she's not unsmart she's not unsophisticated she's just naive and in fact she's naive as a

defense mechanism which is an Interesting thing about the character just like Joey is dumb as a defense mechanism to protect him against the allegation that he's dumb weirdly enough so we have two characters who are very similar in tone they would both respond to things generally in a sense of I don't understand what I'm looking at but they would respond to it for two very different reasons Joey because he doesn't have the cultural information to solve the problem that he's looking at And Phoebe because she won't allow herself to think about things in a sophisticated

self-aware way she she will adhere to herself self-image for the sake of self- protection that's another interesting thing about Comic characters they will always serve their self-image above their self-interest it's a really interesting thing characters will do things that are bad for them if they think it'll make Them feel good how important is it for characters in a comedy to tell jokes that seems like a loaded question but the answer is is really it's not important characters generally should not be telling jokes unless it's in their character to tell jokes and a lot of beginning

writers kind of make this mistake they're writing a sitcom they have a joke they love and they kind of force it into a character's mouth do really belong in The character's mouth but they know it's a Surefire joke and they think it's the job of the page to be funny and they think that the presence of the joke will be funny but that's not the character being funny that's the writer telling a joke if it's built into the character's nature to tell jokes then you can tell jokes all day we were just talking about friends

and we can think about Chandler and friends in the first episode he says I use comedy as a defense mechanism I Protect myself by telling jokes he's not hiding it he tells us right there in the first episode that that's who he is so when that character makes a joke it's never for the sake of the joke it's never for the sake of making the audience laugh it's for the sake of making the AUD character feel good about himself so when I as the writer put a joke into the script for the sake of making

the audience laugh and basically ignoring what the characters are and What their needs are if it's not appropriate for them to tell jokes and I throw jokes in there the audience is going to say why is that happening I don't understand what's going on but if I want to tell jokes I will build telling jokes into the nature of the character I wrote a spec episode we know that Quantum Leap is back my career goes back so far that I wrote a spec episode of Quantum Leap oh back in the day and I built it

around the story of the Character leaping into a standup comic why cuz I knew I had some quality in telling jokes and I knew I'd have to write some standup comedy material sooner or later in that script and so it was a way of playing to my strength I created a character and I created a situation that would let me tell jokes organically cuz telling jokes was something I was good at I hear myself saying that cuz telling jokes is something I was good at and I Realized that sounds so not funny I was like

I don't know where you got so analytical John vorous but I can't imagine back in the day that you were much different than you are now so were you really that funny do you think we actually think we're funny like it isn't it more reaction from other people because sometimes you talked about naive with Phoebe and you know sometimes when you see someone that's like that in real Life they don't realize that they're so funny that's what's funny about it that's true AI doesn't know how funny it is doesn't doesn't realize well that's backward actually

it's not funny but sure people are like that and people will say oh you're so funny now let's just let's just imagine that you said those words to me when I was 25 years old oh you're so funny I would have had a couple of problems with it one is I'd have trouble Fitting it into my Paradigm because I don't think of myself as funny I mean I do think of myself as funny but not just funny so I might feel like I'm I'm achieving a low Target but that's not my big problem my big

problem is I have to fit your approval into my mindset you just told me I'm funny and now you're demanding that I feel how I feel about what you just told me because I'm creative and I'm insecure and I'm 25 I have a lot of trouble owning your Validation I have a lot of trouble feeling good about the approval you just gave me I carry in my mind a construct that says I'm not worthy and because I'm not worthy I have trouble accepting praise and also because I'm not worthy I have trouble operating effectively in

Creative spaces for myself as a practitioner I had a very clear moment of Revelation where I learned the difference between fearing I'm not Worthy and knowing I'm not worthy and in that moment my life changed I'll tell you about it it's short story I was struggling with my Hollywood career but I was teaching effectively and because I was teaching effectively I got invited to to go to Australia with some very Heavy Hitters from Hollywood who would provide the Glamour and then I would provide the content and at the first break three young women came up

to me young adult women and I remember them Clearly because they had great Australian empowering names for girls their names were respectively Saturday Sheridan and rebel I like wow you guys are doing your kids some favors here giving them staunch names like that but this is what they said to me I I remember clear as day I was standing on the left side of the auditorium on the steps after the presentation they said these words they said of all the presenters here today we like you best And I heard myself say the words I'm not

worthy and I understood that to mean what they're telling me is they appreciate my gifts and what I'm realizing In This Moment is those are gifts they were given to me all this time I've been walking around the world saying what if they find out I'm a fraud what if they find out I'm not worthy this is fearing I'm not worthy in that moment I understood of course I'm not worthy I'm playing with a House's money I've been playing with a house's money since this game began from the moment I was born I was standing

on a a mountain of gifts The Gift of Life the gift of this brain which is a good brain and the body you know can't shoot a basketball can't hit a hockey puck but I can tell a joke and I can think things through that's a gift that's I developed it I worked with it I made it more but in that moment I understood I spent all my time wearing on I'm not worthy They're going to find out I'm a fraud and I'm never going to feel good about myself the minute I accept that I'm

not worthy that I'm standing on a platform of endowed gifts I got nothing to lose I'm already winning I'm winning in a way that transcends what you might say to me that's positive or negative and that's really when my my best life began and I'm sorry you were how old at this point I will have been just shy of 40 ah not that young interestingly how did I get it was 93 or '94 and I was born in 55 so yeah just just Shia 40 how did I get that deep into the game before catching

on I think I spent a lot of time distracting myself with outcomes that allowed me to advance but didn't allow me to explore I spent 5 years as a singer songwriter singing and playing guitar like Bob Dylan until I realized there were two things I couldn't do Particular well sing and play guitar I came to Hollywood and spent 5 years doing situation comedy with some degree of success but not connecting with the the environment the ecosystem that I wanted to be in not at home in that environment and not not willing to admit it once

I discovered that I could teach meaningfully and inspirationally then I I a lot of doors started to open CU I was no longer rejecting that part of me that Was my best part I I had some problems with it as you might expect because there's this old cliche those who can't do teach and I was afraid at the age of 35 30 35 I was afraid if I turn my back on writing and just become a teacher then I'm going to be one of those those who can't do teach guys and though I'd already been

teaching for 15 years in one form or another teaching adults I taught songwriting when I was learning Songwriting so I figured who better qualified to teach it than someone learning how to do it same thing when I came to Hollywood I taught a class on breaking into Hollywood cuz I'm doing it let's give it a try I was a teacher all along but I didn't accept myself as a teacher I thought it was only valid as a practitioner and then I had a student liberate me from that in in about the same time student said

well how about those who can do do both and I said That's my path cuz I know me I'm not happy when I'm not writing but I'm also not happy when I'm not teaching so if I can spend half my time writing that'll help my teaching and if I can spend half my time teaching that'll definitely help my writing and I can move back and forth between these two worlds that's my place if I can accept that that's my place by letting go of earlier expectations then I can start to operate effectively I was afraid

that I would stop writing so I Made sure I didn't stop writing and two dozen books and countless teleplays and screenplays later I can say without fear of contradiction I never stopped writing I paused from time to time but the fire never went out and I never really needed to worry that it went would go out I just hadn't found the most effective version of myself the most effective version of myself is certainly he who can do teaches he who can teach does wow fascinating so it was a student that Posed that that's wonderful and

this is why we teach because when we teach we learn I mean over and over again I so much of what I've shared with you today comes out of experiences that I've had in other classrooms elsewhere and I've cited them as such I told you about the time that I modeled failure by accident and got such a big reward part of what makes me effective is stockpiling discoveries my my Keen attention to my own process gives me Better Effectiveness in subsequent situations as as that example uh if you accept people's praise then you only have

to feel good you don't have to feel bad if you can't accept their praise because you don't think you're worthy of of your pray their praise you're just going to spend some time feeling bad and who needs that okay I learned that in that moment so later in other places where people have wanted to Guru eyes me and they have they've Wanted to treat me as a guru and I can live with that because I understand there's two kinds of gurus there's the high Guru who is above the people and there's the low Guru who

basically drinks and so I'm kind of a low Guru I'm with the people we're all there together I'm practitioner just like you so if somebody wants to say I value you for what you know now I'm in a place of real healthy Tranquility where I can say I appreciate the value that you're giving Me because I'm not dependent on it see the thing for me in Hollywood was and even really up to this moment of Revelation I only felt good about myself when outer reality told me I was doing well when I was validating validating

myself through the Val validation of others the hard lesson that Hollywood taught me was Hollywood will extend validation to you and then take it away arbitrarily suddenly and for no particular reason other than they're no Longer interested in you so a lot of what I struggled with in that time was I'm not getting the validation that I need from Outer reality and I don't know how to get it from within once I learned how to get it from within all of those problems stopped how did I get it from within just by recognizing that I

stand on a platform of gifts and my only job is to exploit my gifts if I do that everything's going to fall into place Questions of am I am I good or bad am I achieving or not achieving am I high am I low none of that matters my only job is to be in my practice to make creative choices and and and Achieve creative outcomes because that's what I'm intended to do with my gifts now let's dwell on that for a second because this is somebody who understands that his gifts include creating and teaching

but he also understands that they don't include neg negotiating they don't Include combat they don't include excellence in sports they don't include getting things from high shelves so it's not just a matter of saying wow I'm so high and mighty I have all these gifts it's rather a matter of saying this is who I am and all of the qualities that I have I can be in acceptance of not because I can accept good qualities and bad qualities alike but because I can see past the value judgment of good and bad I can accept Everything

about myself like everything else as I've said before it's not a good thing it's not a bad thing it's just a thing that is and if I have limitations I use tools if I can't reach a high shelf I use a stool if I can't draw a sunset I use AI why wouldn't I what are some of the worst day jobs you've had oh man let me start by telling you one of one of my best day jobs just because of Such a good life hack when I first came to Hollywood I took a job

uh as a temp typist so I know how to type uh they they brought me into a on a some office somewhere and this is in the early days of computers and they said do you know how to use Word Perfect now up until that moment in my life I had never heard the words word perfect but these are the words that came out of my mouth it's been a while give me the manual and I'll refresh my Memory and I realized that that that strategy is one I use a lot I if I don't

know how to do something I will fake that I know how to do it shamelessly happily uh because I usually can pull it off I have confidence I'm not faking brain surgery I'm faking you know we're perfect it's not the end of the world I did teach archery and sailing and I didn't know how to do either of those things so that was problematic but uh nobody got hurt in the end um the the First worst job I had was as an advertising copywriter my first job out of college I got a job that was

a big challenge for me because there was no creativity in it and I wanted there to be I was a copywriter I'm supposed to do what the client wants and if the client wants the headline to be uh spring sale that's what the headline needs to be you know not spring into sale or whatever else I think is funny I had a couple of jobs I got fired Out of that job because they knew I wasn't right for it and I didn't know I wasn't right for it so they did me a favor by firing

me my next job was also in advertising and that was bad in a different way cuz they loved me and they offered me the moon they said you can be a creative director here in no time at all you can be a star and and I realized I was 25 and I said if I if I go down this road I'm going to wake up when I'm 40 feeling like I made the world safe For advertising and that is not the destiny I want so I quit that job and I quit it to become a

creative entrepreneur so really from the age of 25 I haven't had much of what you would call day jobs I've had a succession of hustles staff assignments uh you know script assignments whatnot I spent a cup of coffee on staff at Charles in Charge and that was a bad job for me because I was too insecure I Hadn't yet figured out how to manage my insecurity I suffered a lot on that job I suffered cuz I wasn't getting validation and I wasn't getting approval and they didn't bring me back and and they were right not

to do so so I find that the jobs that that I have considered to be bad jobs are ones where it hasn't been a good fit between what I can do and what is required of me but I scooped ice cream in high school I sold stereo in college that Wasn't a bad job uh I've taught a lot but I love to teach so that's not really a bad job I thought I had a bad job when I started doing doing educational Consulting cuz I thought I was moving away from my path uh I thought

okay clearly I got to go after this cuz it's sick billable hours the the the clientele that I have is an educational consultant these are people who are trying to get into top Business Schools and they're paying top dollar for my service happens that I didn't realize I had a lot to offer them also didn't realize I was going to learn so much about how to be a standup comic by teaching them how to be a good interviewer and then I was going to turn around and help them interview better by what I learned from

from standup comedy I am uh I'm a polymath I go off in all different directions I have never had a Day job that stunted me for long because either I figured out or they figured out that I was in the wrong place I often fantasized about what I called the vacation of 9 to5 kneejerk mentation I wanted a job that I didn't have to think about I could just put in my time and do my thing it it was not to be because there's something in my nature that says I'm really only comfortable in groups

that I'm Leading and now that I know that about myself I stay out of situations that that are not right for me also I figured out early on if you're an employee you can be fired or laid off your destiny is not your own and it was clear to me that I wanted that so I think I come at your question from a different point of view than most people in this audience you have your day jobs and you know that there's a relationship kind of An adversarial relationship between what you're doing for money and

what you want to do for love and we can describe this as the difference between hard work and hustle hard work is what you do at the job it's hard it's work you do it hustle is what you invest in your own self and your own own goals and my sense of it is that if you can apply the same professionalism and showing up on time and doing your job that is required of most day jobs to your creative Aspiration if you can be as diligent in your side hustle if you as diligent in your

art as you are diligent in your paycheck then you can Thrive creatively but let's not make a mistake at the end of the day you might have to take a step off a cliff you might have to be like the fool in the Tarot deck who stands on the preus on a cliff with one foot off into space he's holding a flower in one hand that represents Beauty he's looking off Into the sky where there's a a sun and and an infinity symbol and his understanding is if I take this step forward into the void

I'm not going to fall I'm going to fly and that's what he does so if I can speak from my heart to your heart there in the audience I would say this you stand on the edge of a cliff and you want to step off step off you'll never fall you'll fly what are your thoughts on balancing Life between having a day job and being an artist I addressed this question early on when I was teaching the class how to break into Hollywood it occurred to me that I needed to divide my time into thirds

onethird of my time needed to go to put money in my pocket body keeping a body working onethird of my time had to go to my mind that was my creative aspiration my work the work that I wanted to do and Onethird of my time needed to go to my spirit and that would be Recreation friends relationships love uh Sports Athletics Ultimate Frisbee that's where my passion lies uh and so I was just very practical about it I said I'm going to I'm going to look for work but I'm not going to let it take

up too much of my time and then I'm going to be diligent in my practice I'm going to make time for my work and then I'm going to be generous in my Recreation because I know that my Recreation is a valid required part of this when you get down under the hood of this question you see that there is a hidden conspiracy at work it's the conspiracy between Inner Fear and outer reality let me tell you what I mean if my work and creativity are not balanced in the sense that my work is dominating and

my creativity is suffocating I'm likely carrying this attitude with me home from work every Day I just worked all day i' I have engaged my brain I earned some money I have been working I am excused from not working now I'm tired from working so I'm just going to veg out on the couch this is what's happening on the text level but on the subtext level it's a little bit more devious because there's part of me that never wants to do the creativity The Fear Part fear is always present in the creative process and when

you are early or young in your process Fear dominates and fear is sneaky fear tells you you worked hard all day you can afford to goof off because fear is actually instructing you not to engage with the work cuz fear doesn't want to be afraid so fear will say fear will make excuses you've worked plenty you don't have to work anymore your mother wants to see you go see your mother your friends want you oh that movie sounds so great but all you're really doing is making excuses for not engaging with Your practice people face

practical circumstances they might need to give 40 hours a week to their job in which case they need to say to themselves my creativity exists in the corners of my time I know that that now my job is to expand the corners find Corners use the corners recognize that fear might keep me from going there and just try to go there anyhow and then I'll use tricks I remember using this One a lot when I was trying to get my writing going and struggling like you do I said to myself I'm going to wait to

write until 15 minutes before I know I have to leave to go somewhere and that way when I sit down to write I know it's only going to be for 15 minutes so it doesn't scare me cuz how much damage can I do to myself how much negativity can I generate negative self-image can I generate in only 15 minutes of bad writing and that 15 minutes turned into 20 turned into 25 turned into 30 that's how I put more time and effort into my practice as I worked for more sophisticated ways to cut down on

the time I wasn't spending in practice I will tell you that the secret to this share the secret if you're selling your time and only your time you can't really get ahead because you're selling something that doesn't have added value you're selling something that everybody has and you're Competing against other people who have the same thing to sell like you can go and stand in a shoe store for eight hours a day oh I had I sold shoes for a while that was a bad job it's a college job summer camp counselor that was another

bad job now that I remember I figured out that if I could sell added value I could sell my time at a much higher rate I'm not working for minimum wage competing against other people who are Working for minimum wage I'm doing something they can't do so I can charge more for it and boy was I strategic about this I I'll give you the the inciting incident and then some manifestation I had quit my job as an advertising copywriter and I was being a singer songwriter and I was hustling for gigs any kind of gig

it didn't have to be a singer songwriter just whatever I needed to put money in my pocket saw an ad in the newspaper remember newspapers Kids saw an ad in the newspaper wanted Santa Claus on stilts this was a Friday afternoon say to myself Santa Claus on I called the guy up I said I heard you're looking for Santa Claus on stilts he said do you walk on stilts I said when do you need me to start he said Monday I said I'll be there I never said I walked on stilts I said to myself

I got the weekend to learn that's plenty of time how hard can it be um but it paid $30 an hour in 1982 chunk of change When I came out to Hollywood in ' 85 I brought with me the experience of booking myself into fairs and festivals not just singing and playing guitar but painting faces uh uh strolling uh vilus act all kinds of I did the strolling Punk folk Troubador where I dressed half in Punk and half in fol and made up songs on the spot whatever when I came to California looking to be

a writer and knowing that I couldn't give away my time cheaply I started calling Rolodex Calling every shopping mall in Southern California and building relationships with uh marketing directors and selling myself into shopping malls as a strolling Entertainer a mime of triloquist a juggler special for holidays you know Cupid for Valentine's Day oh oh Bob the leopard no that's a Al no that's it I well now I'm Bob the leprechaun don't you know here on St Patrick's Day to entertain you I could earn $100 an hour doing that and My wife's working as a mom

and she can earn $100 an hour on the same gig so we're pulling $600 out of 3 hours worth of work in 1985 we didn't need full-time jobs we found a way to level up the value ad what we were doing So for anybody who's looking for a way out of the Trap of a 9-to-5 job the place to start is to ask what can I do better than anybody else and how can I make that pay all of which is by way of saying it's considerably Harder now than it was when I was younger

because the the competition not just the the number of competitors but the price competition if I want to sell a novel I'm comp competing against everybody who's willing to give their novel away just because they're desperate for somebody to read it how can I as a as a purveyor of literary fiction make a living in a world where people can read through a thousand lifetimes for free books on the internet And never run out of material just on the Gutenberg project so it's really really hard now in some senses it's easy streaming media makes things

more accessible to writers of scripts and do it yourself makes it accessible to to everybody in ways that that that weren't I imagine if I were me but young now I'd be all over Instagram and Tik Tock and and probably just saying probably nobody's ever going to watch this but what the heck it's Something I can do now let's do it and see what happens I'm fond of the following expression throw it out the window and see if it lands chances are it will