Comedians@Google Eddie Izzard: Sometimes you have to kill your creative babies
/I'm a big fan of Eddie Izzard and his erudite style of surreal comedy. In this conversation, conducted by Mark Day, he talks about his life, his influences, and comedy. His comedy DVDs are highly recommended as a source of creative inspiration as they are full of hilariously out there juxtapositions. (In an early-in-his-career performance he did a routine on technology and the ridiculous challenges of getting a printer to work correctly that basically rendered me into a convulsing mess of laughter the first time I saw it).
Some of his insights from the talk, slightly paraphrased:
• Spend time on what you are making, don't see it as the obstacle between you and success.
• If you try too hard at being good, then often the final result is lesser than if you let go and just do the work, especially in creativity.
• You've got to create and then move on.
• Create things to be constantly moving, designed to be fluid, so it's constantly alive.
• Avoid creating something fully concrete.
• Whatever you are doing, it's not rocket science, it's not that hard, it's just a lot of work.
• Shame and guilt together are humiliation.
• The first goal is to make them laugh, the second goal is to inform using street language and not preaching.
• Make yourself the first person in the audience.
• The whole world is about the classroom.