Steve Zissis Quotes

I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.

People are vocal, so you hear the pros and cons of your shows.

If the laughter of the audience was malicious we wouldn't show it.

Conjoined twins simply may not need sex-romance partners as much as the rest of us do. Throughout time and space, they have described their condition as something like being attached to a soul mate.

When I bring my music to a live audience, I know right away whether it is being appreciated or not.

I'm the biggest proponent of test screenings now. There's two ways to face test screenings. For dramas, I don't know if I would rely on them as much, although I still think you need them, because you're making a movie for an audience at the end of the day. But with comedy... You could go through a script or anything I ever worked on, where you go, "This is hilarious," and you put it in front of people and you get nothing. And then the other side of it, is something you're like, "I think this is really stupid," and it gets a giant laugh.

Like we were saying, the fact that the relationships on the show are love-based, and in the sense that I wasn't aware of how special it was in contrast to a lot of the other TV shows that are on right now. It was our audience members that pointed out the love that you see in the show is special.

I'm a big fan of Lady Gaga. I think she's kinda what modeling is about in a way: Unique-ness, different-ness, edginess, quirkiness is actually special and I think her message is - I wouldn't say it's exactly like my message - but there are similarities in embracing your uniqueness. When she talks about being born this way, I really think she's absolutely fabulous.

I think [Guettel is] probably one of our most special writers now, pushing things in ways that are unique.

I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think about it afterwards because in the end that's what the art that I'm working with is.

My writing process is very feedback based - I listen to the audience. I try to understand what's connecting, what's not connecting... and then rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite. Chris Gethard and I have been on the road a lot together. When we get on the bus at night, we talk about the jokes that didn't work and the joke possibilities that could work. I think this is a little different from other writers.

I think there's something unique in the fact that her powers come from the same thing that powers him, and that is how we've made them have that kind of... that specifically in common, as opposed to it being something else that the comics kind of created, which has been pure romance. But they do have something uniquely special because of that.

I see the audience as the final collaborator. I think it's kind of bullshit when people say, "I'm not interested in the audience reaction." I'm like, "Then why do you do theater? You can write a book, then you don't have to see how the audience reacts." It's a living, breathing thing.

We want to think of ourselves as truly special creatures that are unique in the universe and, well, we are. And we have that capacity to wonder, to question, and to see ourselves in the context of all of life that has preceded the present time, and all that will go off far into the future, one way or another.

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

When you do comedy, the audience is not your boss. They are your collaborators and when you collaborate with someone you don't have to listen to everything they think or say. Sometimes you're not getting the laughs you want or at the place you want but that doesn't mean it's not funny. It means you haven't explored it enough. I'll get laughs in the places I don't want them and that makes me realize the direction I want to go in.

In a way, comedy is like sex. The more noise you hear, the better you think you're doing.

Sometimes I take a temperature of things just because everyone else does. Especially when I'm doing a play. I want to know what people are thinking, positive or negative.

When an audience does not complain, it is a compliment, and when it does, it is a compliment, too, if unaccompanied by violence.

I think what all the Universal monster movies are defined by, and what makes them very special, is that it's really the only genre entirely unto itself, in which you fear the monster and fear for the monster. That's a very hard thing to do. To fear for and fear at the same time is extremely unique.

I like trying jokes and seeing the response, and if I end up doing it in my act, it won't be 140 characters. Twitter is helpful that way to me. It's like a message in a bottle. But a lot of times I think I tweet the stuff I would like to say to teenage me.

There are only a few genres, horror and comedy, where you can get that immediate feedback from the audience. It's very gratifying when that's what you're going for, and you can hear the reactions in all the places that you intended.

Even if you've written something for print, I think it's good to try [it] out on someone because it changes. You can think it's hilarious and they can tell you it's not.

We are one of those couples i used to watch, thinking to myself that I'd never be on the inside of something so special. I remember reassuring myself that it probably looked nicer than it actually was, I am happy to be wrong about that.

Hopefully, if I have done my job right, people will want to know and see more! There is certainly plenty more to tell. I would love to be part of that process of expanding on the lore that makes up Warcraft, but it will all depend on what you, the audience, think of our first film!