Re: What inspires you?

Description: Josh Lieb answers the question "What inspires you?" He discusses his creative process and his influences in comedy.

Question:  Do you have a creative process?

Transcript: It’s just . . .  It’s just sitting down and writing.  That’s my creative process.  I like, you know . . .  Sitting around and making jokes with people is nice too, but you know it . . . it’s . . . when you’re . . . when you are . . .  When you’re a writer and you’re working, you are . . . it’s . . . you’re not really an artist.  You’re a craftsman.  You know you sit down at your table, and you do your eight hours and you’re out.  And it’s great, and hopefully you’ve done something wonderful.  But when you’re not feeling funny, you still have to write something funny.  So that’s really my process.  I’ve . . .  I’ve got a nice chair that a like, and a computer that I’ve set up exactly like I like it, and have a lot of coffee.  And I quit smoking, but I used to, you know, smoke a lot of cigarettes.  And I just sort of . . . you just crank through it.

Question: Is it hard to be funny on deadline?

Transcript: You get used to it.  It’s really . . .  You’re just . . . It’s just a job.  You know it’s . . . Is it hard to get all the chocolates in the box on deadline?  That’s just what you do.

Question: How do you get past writer’s block?

Transcript: That’s a good question.  I mean yeah.  I can say I’m a craftsman; but then again you indulge in block.  I mean that’s just an indulgence.  You really just have to . . . to push through that.  I don’t know.  I’ll go walk the dog.  I used to have a cigarette.  I can’t do that anymore, so I’ll drink more coffee.  I’ll curse myself.  You know, just start typing something, anything, and you generally get through it.  I . . . I . . . I . . . Blocks are generally just laziness.

Question: Where do you look for comic inspiration?

Transcript: I have favorite . . . I . . . I certainly was a fan of Mad magazine growing up, especially the Mad comics – the Harvey Kurtzman ones before it became a magazine.  Like you know I had the little re-print digest of those when I was a kid.  And I didn’t know what they were, the history or whatever; but they were so funny and weird.  And I . . . I would say of anything, like those were my biggest, say, comedic influences.  I’d . . . I’d reread those stories over and over again and . . . and sort of scour the background jokes – all the crazy background jokes.  I . . .  You know, I think Animal House is a nearly perfect movie.  It has an incredibly . . . it . . .  It’s like 98 percent of its jokes are successful, you know what I mean?  It’s a perfectly pleasant movie to watch, and with a lot of funny jokes.

Recorded on: 9/4/07