So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea th… - John Cleese
" "So if I may give a word of advice to any young writer who, despite the odds, wants to take a shot at being funny, it is this: Steal. Steal an idea that you know is good, and try to reproduce it in a setting that you know and understand. It will become sufficiently different from the original because you are writing it, and by basing it on something good, you will be learning some of the rules of good writing as you go along. Great artists may merely be “influenced by” other artists, but comics “steal” and then conceal their loot.
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About John Cleese
John Marwood Cleese (born 27 October 1939) is an English comedian and actor best known for being one of the members of the comedy group Monty Python and for co-writing the TV series Fawlty Towers in which he played Basil Fawlty.
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John Marwood Cleese
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Additional quotes by John Cleese
Mrs. Richards: Girl, there's no paper in my room. Why don't you check these things? That's what you're being paid for, isn't it?
Polly: We don't put it in the rooms.
Mrs. Richards: What?
Polly: Well, we keep it in the lounge.
Mrs. Richards: [aghast] In the lounge?
Polly: I'll get you some. Do you want plain ones or ones with our address on it?
Mrs. Richards: Address on it?
Polly: How many sheets? Well, how many are you going to use?
Mrs. Richards: Manager!
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Gra was always mildly irritated by any display of decorum, or good taste, if he felt it was a direct challenge to his deepest beliefs. When I mentioned once that Connie and I had guests coming to dinner that evening who were a bit formal and stuck-up, he carefully cut out some very small pieces of paper, wrote an obscenity on each one, and then hid them round our flat in all the rooms our guests were likely to visit. Connie found one of these just ten minutes before they were due to arrive: a moment of pure panic that set off a frenzied paperchase, as we raced around the apartment trying to find them all before the doorbell rang. We missed one, which he had placed on the basin in the visitors’ loo. It simply read, ‘Anus’. I’ve always wondered whether our guests speculated why we might have put it there.
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