Poking a Dead Frog Quotes

“Part of success is just starting something, working toward a goal, and then living long enough to achieve it.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“Look, here’s the thing—if you’re in this business and you can cover your overhead by writing exactly what you want, you’re living the dream.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“I saw a guy the other day at a wedding, and I told him my theory on why we’ve seen this explosion in comedies in the past fifteen years. Number one, America is tacking hard to the right. That sort of extremism always kind of kicks up the need to create comedy. But the second thing is Avid. What’s Avid? It’s a digital movie-editing program that directors use, and it’s incredibly helpful. I think Avid is hugely responsible for this boom in comedy. In the past, one would have to shoot the film and edit it, which was a big deal. Now, filmmakers can record the laughs from a test audience at a screening, and we can then cut to the rhythm of those laughs, the rhythm of the audience. We synchronize the laughs with the film. We can really get our timing down to a hundredth of a second. You can decide where you want your story to kick in, where you want a little bit of mood, where you want a hard laugh line. All of this can really be calibrated to these test screenings that we do. It doesn’t mean that it becomes mathematical. It still ultimately means that you have to make creative choices, but you can just really get a lot out of it. Sort of like surgery with a laser compared with a regular scalpel. We’re able to download a movie onto the computer and literally do all our edits in minutes. The precision is incredible. You play back the audio of the test screening and get everything timed just right. Like, “This laugh is losing this next line; let’s split the difference here.” You’re able to achieve this rolling energy. You can try experimental edits, and do multiple test screenings, and it’s all because you can move so fast with this program. Comedy is the one genre that I think has just really benefited from this more than any other.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“The more you can remove any stakes or pressure—just write as fast as you can type—it’s going to come out better.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“The world is comic. It’s not always funny but it is always comic.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“I like to think that everyone I love is an influence in some tiny way. And even with people I hate, I think, That’s something I never want to do.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“When you stop looking at reality, and you just start walking around like you’re the best, you don’t evolve. You’re stuck in amber. You don’t find roads for improvement. It’s death, basically.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“I would hate to die for a lot of reasons. But mostly because of all the books I haven’t yet read.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“So much luck really does seem to play into it all, both in terms of achieving success and not achieving success. You hate to admit it, but it’s all luck. It’s just really all luck. And that’s why it always frustrates me, as a lifelong Democrat, when I hear the Republicans talking about hard work. “It’s all hard work.” Well, yes, it is always hard work, but there are a lot of people who work very hard and are unlucky and they get screwed.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“You have to appreciate the journey. You can’t control where you’re going to end up. You better appreciate the experience; otherwise you’ll never be happy.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“Doing a movie or a play is like running a marathon. Doing a television show is like running until you die.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“I never knew anyone who said, “I deserve to be famous.” In Hollywood, that’s every other person you meet! God bless these douchebags.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“If the world is terrible and awful and screwed- up, there isn’t much point to writing something about how the world is terrible and awful and screwed up.” What made more sense to him—and, subsequently, to me—was to write about how people attempt to navigate this awful screwed-up world and to then find a way to be happy within it, and to make things better.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“We published a variety of story types. People being nibbled to death by animals was one type: “I Battled a Giant Otter.” There was no explanation as to why these stories fascinated readers for many years.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“Do you think you ever went too far with these stunts? I might have done things differently if I could do them over again. There was one time when Scott Adsit [the actor who later played Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock] and I and the rest of our group were performing in front of an audience. This was when Bill Clinton was president. Scott came out and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have some terrible news. President Clinton has just been assassinated.” Scott’s a really good actor and he played it very real. The whole crowd completely believed it. We then wheeled out a television to watch the most up-to-date news coverage. We turned it on and the audience saw NFL bloopers—we had already inserted a VHS tape. One of us yelled, “Wait, don’t change it!” The whole cast came out and hunkered down and just started laughing at these football bloopers. The people in the audience slowly began to file out, dazed. That was the end of our show. And you know, that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re twenty-five or twenty-six.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“With that said, there have been some terrible hosts over the years, including an infamously bad 1991 show with actor Steven Seagal at the helm. Yes, that was a case where it was all we could do not to talk about what a douchebag he was. What was his specific problem? Did he refuse to do what was necessary to put on a good show? Well, I guess now it can be told. He was just so fucking stupid.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers

“Basically, I think life is way more knuckleheaded than people make it out to be. It’s making spaghetti, and then it’s sitting with someone and having spaghetti. That’s basically all life is.”
― Mike Sacks, Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today's Top Comedy Writers