I’ve posted
several quotes from an interview I did with comedy writer Larry Gelbart, who
passed away recently at the age of 81, and here’s a bit more from him—this time from an
interview conducted by Mike Sacks last year:
Any advice you'd care to
give to those writers out there just beginning their careers?
"When
you're writing and come to a rough spot and the ideas just aren't flowing, put
down dummy text and keep on moving—especially if it's at the end of the day and
you're going to stop. Your brain will never stop for the day, even if you have
stopped working, and there's a very good chance you'll come up with something
better. Also, at the very least, you'll have something to come back to the next
day, instead of a blank page. That's important.
But
in general terms, just sit your ass down in a chair and hope your head gets the
message. Isaac Bashevis Singer's advice for the struggling young writer was to
stop struggling and write. As for me, I don't have any other advice. If I did,
I would have had a far more trouble-free life and a much, much better career."
In that
interview, Gelbart also has a few choice words to say about Dustin Hoffman
regarding the film Tootsie:
“Tootsie is my vision, despite Dustin Hoffman's lifelong mission to deprive anybody of
any credit connected with that movie, except for his close friend, the writer
and producer Murray Schisgal. I say that because Dustin appeared with James
Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio in 2006 and declared that the Tootsie idea sprang from Schisgal's
intestines. I don't know much about gastroenterology, but I do know that the
central theme for Tootsie came from
me. And the central theme was that Dustin's character, Michael Dorsey, would
become a better man for having been a woman. That was the cornerstone of the
film. All of the other details are just floating around that idea.”
(Want to write your own script, novel, or nonfiction book? For guidance, get a writing coach in a book: "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available at Amazon and other online and offline retailers)