I'm not saying writing comedy's brain surgery, but there is a certain pressure to it. It's the equivalent of doing homework that's going to end up on national television.
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I'm not saying being a comedian is brain surgery, but it is definitely - it's like being a carpenter. You learn how to make tables and chairs. You have to have the right tools, and you have to know how to put the thing together, right?
With comedy, I think it's so important, especially in TV, to know and trust what the writers are writing and just have it down.
Most comedies are really hard to write, or to watch, because you kind of generally know what's coming.
Editing and post-production is so important with comedy.
With comedy, you really want to work things out beforehand.
You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.
And if you have great writing, it's really easy, but if it's not so great and you have to work a little harder, I could tell where the work needed to be done but comedy is just fun.
I think comedy is one of the hardest things to do.
Anyone can write. But comedy, you've got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.
I know this is going to sound very self-serving, and I apologize for it, but if you can write comedy, you can pretty much write anything, because it's the hardest. It's the most technically demanding, the most precisely evaluated form of writing. People know if it works or not. There's a big button marked 'fail,' and that's when nobody laughs.