Akiva Schaffer Quotes

I really want to have actors contribute their own ideas, with phrasings and ideas on all levels.

A lot of directors want to storyboard you, whereas the best way to get a performance out of an actor is a collaborative process where you listen to the actor's input.

When I was working on 'Deadwood', it was understood that the script was a work in progress, and when we got to set, everyone would kind of work on it together.

Harry [ Hannigan] and Chris [Ellis] are sitting there while we're doing [ Fresh Hell], and Chris is directing, obviously, but if we start fooling around a little bit, Harry comes in, and he's got some addition that makes it even funnier. But we start with a complete script.

Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard's lines came from onstage improvisations by actors.

There's a fraudulent root element of comedy in that we say things night after night as though they are rolling effortlessly from the brain and off the tongue, when in fact they are crafted over weeks and months and years.

Writing comedy is an exposing thing because you're putting yourself on the line with every joke you write, and although you can't second-guess an audience, if you want to be successful, you have to write stuff people like.

With comedy, it's really hard to tell if something's working on the page - you really need the actors to bring it alive. The scariest part is if people will laugh or not.

Coming up with comedy is hard, man. Those bits aren't easy to think of!

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.'

I mean, comedy's hard. If you go back and look at the first season of 'Seinfeld,' it's a work in progress and that's what happens. It just takes time for people to figure each other out, and figure out timing, and to develop creatively with the writers.

The great thing about 'Justified' is that the writers will craft a scene, but if the actors come up with a great idea, they're 100% for it.

I'd say any good set or any comedy that I've worked on, that's worked, has been comedians pitching ideas back and forth to each other. A lot of like, 'What if you say this? What about this?'

I share an office with Jason Sudeikis, and I'm friends with him, so I end up writing for him a lot.

I find that with any good run on a show with good writers, they put something on paper, and you put something back on film, and that affects what they put on the paper the next time.

It takes many years to be a great comedian.

All of the material for 'The Fine Line' was created via improvisation with my partner, but not in front of an audience. We'd continue to refine it in front of an audience based on their responses until it was set and scripted.

What's great about having the live audience is you know immediately if you're funny or not. That always helped when we were doing 'Hannah Montana;' it teaches you if something worked or didn't.

The truth of it is that people are not going to want to go to improvisational theater if it's not funny. You can succeed in doing all the things you're supposed to do - be truthful to scene - and if it's not funny, I'm telling you that no one's gonna care.

With most good scripts and good shows, they expect the actor to bring some of their ideas to the backstory of the character. It's always a good collaboration between the actor and the writer and the director to try stuff out during the process.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

If you create a fun environment, people will take liberties and grow and expand. And then you'll get your final screenplay in my favorite style, which is 'tossed away' - as if the actor just thought of it.

I couldn't deliver a joke if you asked me to. It would have to be live and spontaneous. And that's what I was able to have in New York, at 9 o'clock in the morning, and people all over the country seemed to respond to it.

We have a full writers' room, and with something like 'MyMusic,' we've scripted it out with professional writers. There is some very basic improv from the actors, but everything is very to the letter, so it's easy to edit down to an episode. There are fun little things an actor might throw in there.

I've never sat down and written jokes. I wouldn't know how to.