Those who write may think they know their target market. They may even feel they can shape the work to fit it. If this is true of you, you have more control over your creative process than I do. Even so, I humbly submit that you try letting your writing shape your target market instead and see what happens.
I don't know if it's naivete or just narcissism, but I start out with this notion that I can do anything. It's not until I get into it that I realize what I've thrown myself into, and then I will do anything not to humiliate myself. And that, I think, is the secret to my success.
I don't think the expectation is that the 'Psych' musical is going to be 'Rent,' so I think as long as we didn't completely humiliate ourselves and it is funny and it is in the tone of what we do, we'd have a fighting chance of pulling it off.
I'm a big girl, but I have a delicate constitution emotionally. If I've been humiliated in some audition, I just cry all the way home and think, 'Oh my God, I suck.'
I'm all for the banalities of life and humiliation and everyday tragedies, but I also think people have big moments, and they have bigness in them.
I'm essentially a humorist and, I think, a pretty good one. I've known all along that 'My Friend Dahmer' is the one book I'll be most known for, and in a way, that's a drag, as it's nothing like the rest of the work I've done or will do moving forward. But the way I figure, it's better to have a best-known work than not to have one at all.
I think that all comics or humorists, or whatever we are, ask questions. That's what we're supposed to do. But I not only ask the questions, I offer solutions.
I'm about 75 pages into a book on poetry. I don't know if anybody wants to read it. It's on any broad variety of subjects. I walk down the street and think of a topic and jot it down and say, 'Okay, that's another one.' They go from the humorous to the serious to every topic imaginable.
If one tends to be a humorous person and you have a sense of humor the rest of your life then you can certainly lighten the load, I think, by bringing that to your trials and tribulations. It's easy to have a sense of humor when everything is going well.
I take a lot of pride in helping people become great. I think that's an element of being a producer that people don't always take in: They want to be great for themselves, whereas I'd like to be recognized as having helped the most people get over the hump.
I was on some bad teams, and I played bad as a young player, certainly, at times. And that all mounts. Yeah, that all mounts. The perception. Everything that goes into that. And so, yeah, I think to kind of get over the hump of that, to change perception, it can be difficult. It's a tall task. And it takes a long time.
Once you identify positional needs, then I think, then, what you do is, you be very selective on how you go about acquiring those players. You have to look at the resources available on how to acquire those players, and then, if you can, go acquire those assets that can best help this team get over the hump.
In my opinion, if I was going to pick main roster guys, I've always had a hunch out for Cesaro. I just feel like if we were able to just go at it, make it a fight, I think it would be pretty sensational.
I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it's probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we'll eat, what we'll do, what we'll think about, what we'll say... and on and on.
I have had hundreds of people work for me over the years, and I don't think I ever fired anybody.
If I go into a relationship with an artist, which at most is going to last five years, we have a 100-page contract covering every eventuality. Whereas with marriage you go into it with no contract, with laws that date back hundreds of years, and I don't think that's right.
I think for hundreds of years or for a much longer time, people have been fighting, professional athletes have been fighting in a ring. So it's just the way it should be. There's no sense in making it a cage.
And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race.
My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It's a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we've come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company.
Because I don't really think of myself as a hunk, to be honest.
