All language subtitles for Masterclass Steve Martin Teaches Comedy - 19. Editing

Editing is one of your most powerful

tools to success.

Changing, subtly, reorganizing, taking

out. It's thrilling.

I don't think you want to start uh

editing

right away.

Although sometimes

internal editing helps you, like if

you're writing a paragraph, helps you

get to the next paragraph, you go, "Oh

my god, I I this whole half of this

paragraph really needs to be up here."

And you're helping establish the the

flow of it. So sometimes I do edit, but

but if you're writing a, you know, an

opus, you just want to keep writing and

don't let your critical mind come in too

soon. I always speed through a first

draft. And the reason I speed through it

is you I just want to get the whole

thing, the whole picture because I know

that this is going to undergo

50 edits, 50 drafts.

Um,

and I just like to have the overall

thing because I can start changing

things internally. Like I say, I can't

think of all the little notations and

tweaks that I'm going to understand

about it later. What you're for me, I'm

creating something to help me understand

what it's about. And then you start to

look and say, okay, this is I I see how

the shape this is taking. So that means

that this scene is extraneous and this

uh this scene actually is more important

than I thought.

I find a great uh thing that helps me in

writing pros, especially fictional pros,

is reading it aloud to yourself. I

always use met I actually would read it

to my dog. And you can hear things that

you don't pick up by reading. You can

hear the flow of that sentence. You can

feel as if something's stopping the

reader. And when I'm listening to myself

as a comedian or watching a movie that

I'm in, I always listen to where it

slows down. I always think it's slow. I

can you can smell it where it's slowing

down. And you can smell it as a reader

reading your own work, especially if

you're reading it aloud. You go, am I

interested in this?

When someone writes effortlessly, it's

the greatest thing in the world. And I

have so many friends who, you know, I

have a lot of friends in the art world

and we kind of make fun of of art pros

that is gobbledegook that uses words

that you're trying to

understand what the meaning is. It just

sounds so smarty pants and no

information is transmitted. No emotion

is transmitted. It's all intellectual

information. And the the real good art

writers I know like Peter Sheldall,

Deborah Solomon, Adam Gopnik,

they're very clear. They make it fun to

read. It's emotional. Uh

there's no uh fancy words unless they're

necessary.

And I just prefer that style of writing.

And I believe that style of writing

is can be simultaneously very smart and

very accessible. And I would say that's

what you shoot for. That's what you

shoot for in comedy is a a kind of

surprise clarity but with a twist.

I feel that time helps you uh

understand what's relevant and what's

irrelevant or what can be better.

You write it, you read it, you're in

love with it. put it down for a month

because when you come back, you'll have

forgotten all your wonderful pain you

had when writing it and your insights

and you you're not trying to preserve

that moment in yourself. You're trying

to look at it. You you will see see it

more objectively on the page. You know

that there's a cliche, you have to kill

your darlings. And and it's uh it's kind

of true that you'll find that the things

you love most, people don't

they they they can't uh interpret your

emotion and it's got to be on it on the

page. So you might have a line that's

let's say a tur line and you know it's

filled with thought and it was my father

and this and that but they can't

interpret that from that. So you have

this special investment in this line and

the audience doesn't. So I I like to

take time. I find

I hate to say how often it might be that

I'll write something and think, "God,

it's just feeling really good, really

good." Put it down a month and go, "What

was I thinking?"

Don't you appreciate it in a movie when

there's some scene building that fight

scene between the two lovers and they

just cut away from it and you say, "Oh,

thank God. I don't have to watch the

scene that I already knew was coming."

When I was writing uh Bowfinger movie

Bowfinger, even just imagining

this scene going on, breaking up and

hearing the dialogue, I'm bored. I

thought, okay, why don't I just

abbreviate this scene

and make it funny and and I said, uh,

we're we're I said, we're breaking up.

Why? You slept with JIF. And she says,

so I said, oh, I never thought of it

that way. Okay. And it's over. and you

don't make the audience endure this uh

you know kind of predictable scene you

know the nature of that scene is is

known a breakup

and

I don't know it appealed to me and she

did it perfectly you know we are

finished we are over

how come

you had sex with Jeff

so well

I never thought of it that way

we'll see you tonight

what time 8 Okay.

You know, Adam Gopnik said, here I go.

I'm going to contradict myself again. He

he once wrote a piece on the there was a

set of books issued, which was the

classic books

edited. So, you have Moby Dick

edited by a professional. So, you know,

a book that this is this thick has now

come down to this. And he complimented

them. He said, you know, it reads it

read well. Uh it's what a really good

New York editor

would have done uh to your book as it

comes in to make it faster, faster,

funnier, as we say.

He said, "But

these works of art in the Moby Dixie, by

the way, I've never read it. I'm just

quoting him. He said, um, do we really

need the, uh, not tying passage, you

know, the five-page not tying passage?

No. But these quirks,

uh, may help bring it to life and put it

in a different category than just a

fast-paced, exciting adventure book.

So you always have to think that it's

some of these rough edges actually make

a thing more interesting in a subtle way

illogically. It just can't go from joke

to joke to joke to joke to joke. The

boring parts are what is setting up this

thing that's giving it meaning. And so

you can edit too deep. You could just

cut the heart out of something.

when I was writing uh The Jerk with Carl

Riner and he said u I said maybe we

should cut this. He said no no no. He

says leave that in. Uh that's a

refrigerator laugh. I said what's a

refrigerator laugh? He said, "Well,

you're in the theater, you're watching

it, and it doesn't get a laugh, but then

you go home and you're opening the

refrigerator and you go and you get it

12 hours later." And uh I instinctively

kind of done that, but you'd be

surprised in when you leave in those

little weird bits. You can't do it a

lot. When you leave them in, 20 years

later, that'll be the joke that somebody

will come up and say, "Oh god, I love

that joke." and blah blah blah because

it was off, you know, it just didn't

have the regular rhythm and it had this

slight offness. And you'll be surprised

how much that grows, that thing that's

slightly out of time and place and uh it

quality,

the mind remembers it.

I'll give you some advice.

If you're if you've written something

and you finish, don't send it to five

friends yet because when you send out

your manuscript, you can only ask them

to read it once unless they're

professionals. I send it out to one

person, get the feedback, listen, weigh

it,

work on it, and then you choose your

next friend. So now you have five times

to go out to your friends rather than

one time all at once. Just a little

thing I learned and it's hard to resist

because when you think when you finish

something you think I'm done and it's so

good

and then you realize there's just always

work to be done. There's almost no such

thing.

You know, when I first um wrote my

memoir, which I'm very pleased with, I

wrote it from my heart, spoke the truth,

uh told how things were developed. I

said, I want to I want to tell exactly

how things happened. Because sometimes

when I read uh a memoir, a show business

memoir, they'll they'll say I was in uh

high school and uh then I got a job on

NWF TV as a whege

leap from high school to getting this.

How did that h that's what I want to

know. So that's what the story I tried

to tell. So I finished it

and I gave it to some friends and I

said, "Uh,

what do you think?" They said, "Nice,

nice." I'm thinking, "Nice?

I don't want nice. I give it to another,

you know, agent." Yeah, nice. It's nice.

That's not what I'm looking for. So, I

searched around and found an editor

named Bill Phillips who had edited many

manuscripts. And I I didn't know what

this was going to mean because I'd never

written anything like this before. and

he started

arranging it in terms of television,

terms of standup. started categorizing

it and he started to ask me questions

say you know I want to know about how

you did this

first I go I have to write another thing

when it's actually already perfect and

uh and he really provoked me and gave me

insights that I could not uh have gotten

myself at least at that time in my life

and it was really really helpful. I paid

them out of my pocket.