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BJ Novak – November 25, 2015

BJ Novak – November 25, 2015
  • Podcast – great debates.
  • TF – Why is Harvard linked to Hollywood?
    • Main reason he believes is Harvard Lampoon.
  • Big advantage in life – knowing your skills, and having the courage to pursue them early on.
  • Everyone who gets into show business, has a story that is not replicable.
  • If you don’t care about the money, always give the money to charity. People are more likely to do it.
  • Book – easy riders, raging Bulls.
  • If you want to do stand up, book your first week of comedy in advance, so you can’t back out.
  • It took him 1.5 years of doing stand up to get decent and start getting booked.
  • The Office was an early viral hit.
  • “writing is just a guess.”
  • For Steve Carell comedy isn’t the means in and of itself, it’s a byproduct of authenticity.
  • The writing process – 2-4 weeks of every possible ‘what if’ imaginable. Throw out as many bad ideas as possibly. Eventually you’ll find a few good ones. The best ideas will fuel you, and it will be obvious what the winners are.
    • Find what you love about the episode, and you’ll have the drive to get through the stumbles around it.
  • Being in a good mood is the most important part of the creative process.
  • Book – Daily Rituals.
  • His morning is all about getting into a good mood.
  • Or mix self-loathing and caffeine.
  • For creativity, he divides it into the idea phase, and the execution phase. Writes down as many ideas as he gets as soon as they come to him, without worrying about execution. Then reviews them over coffee the next day.
  • TF – Isaac Asimov article – creativity in groups vs creativity alone.
  • Unibolic vision pen.
  • TF – people biased against old material, so he moved the dates on his blog posts to the bottom from the top.
  • TF – scrivener used for his last two books.
  • Wood Allen asks, If someone wakes you up and shakes you in the middle of the night, asking you what you are, how do you answer them? BJ – writer.
  • If teaching acting, he would assign students to parody what they were learning in other classes.
  • Comedy – it’s like sex – did both people enjoy it? Saying it’s good, versus feeling it’s good.
  • Comedy – a good comedy operates like a good mystery – the punchline is right in front of your face the whole time, and you never would have put your finger on it.
  • Comedy – observations are the currency of comedy – a good new observation on life fuels good new comedy.
  • Movies – adaptation, ferriss buellers day off, pulp fiction, casablanca, naked gun.
  • A movie should be a pleasurable experience. It should be entertaining and invite you in. Christopher Nolan is cold and formal.
  • Website – Li.st – social site for sharing your lists, including following Celeb lists.