The Best Advice I Ever Got (22 page)

Larry David

Writer, Actor, Comedian, and Producer

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Please

Throughout my life, I’ve learned a lot. Unfortunately, I’ve retained next to nothing. There is, however, one piece of advice, given to me by my uncle Julius when I was a mere tyke, that has resonated with me lo these many years. It is, of course, to always, no matter what the circumstances—I don’t care if you’ve won the lottery—always be sure to curb your enthusiasm. Uncle Julius, who hated mankind more than I hate zucchini, said, “Nobody wants to see you jumping up and down and acting like an idiot.… Nobody! I’m not saying you can’t be enthusiastic. Just do it in private.” I couldn’t agree more. Unabashed displays of enthusiasm are every bit as off-putting as watching a couple making out in public. Do you think Anne Frank appreciated it when Miep Gies, the woman who hid her, paid a visit, then couldn’t stop yammering about how beautiful it was outside? “Oh my God, Anne, what a spectacular day! I took a hike, played with my dogs, and just got back from swimming.” To which Anne replied, “With all due respect, Frau Gies, I’m glad you had fun. Now do me favor. Shut the hell up and get out of here.”

Ellen Levine

Editorial Director of Hearst Magazines

Get Over Yourself

Right out of college, I was lucky to get a job as a reporter at a big daily newspaper in New Jersey. My dream had always been to live the life of comic-book heroine Brenda Starr. And there I was, working nights on the police beat following mob murders in Fort Lee and working days interviewing celebrities or covering fashion shows.

One of my biggest thrills was spending a few hours alone with a young Dustin Hoffman chatting about his first hit,
The Graduate
. This was before publicists ruled Hollywood. Dustin was easy to find. Hours after his film opened in New York City, I just looked him up in the white pages. His New York number: 989-7261. Sitting with Dustin for three hours was a twenty-one-year-old’s fantasy. After my story appeared, he sent a handwritten note detailing how much he liked the feature and inviting me to a cocktail party at his New York apartment.

Days later, a fashion designer sent a limo to chauffeur me to an interview with a young starlet. As a thank-you for that profile, I got a huge flower arrangement. Then the governor of New Jersey requested that I visit the official mansion to report on his family and their life at home.

All that flattery and partying with celebrities was inflating my ego. My boss decided that it was time to take me to the woodshed. In the kindest way, she lectured me on the facts of life. (No, not those facts!) Miriam Petrie, highest-ranking woman on the paper and divorced mother of two, laid it out. “Get over yourself,” she said. “It’s not about you.

“Don’t ever sit down at the dinner table with the people you’re assigned to report on,” she continued. “Don’t, even for an hour, forget who you are. You are not a guest. You are an observer. The celebs at the party don’t think of you as a friend. The compliments they toss your way are investments they expect to be returned with positive publicity.” Channeling the voice of the fabulous Dame Edna, Miriam reminded me that I was merely a tool, the gateway to burnishing their image.

Helen Gurley Brown, the remarkable editor who created the
Cosmopolitan
magazine empire, worried out loud that when she retired no one would ask her to lunch. With her “I’m just a little girl from Little Rock” intuition, she had figured out that the billion-dollar magazine she’d created was the power position. She knew that the next editor occupying that throne would get the bouquets. Of course, friends took her to lunch, but the magic wand she once held passed into the hands of her successor.

A media job puts you in a position of power. Most jobs do. But leave the seat of power and the praise and flattery stop. So Miriam’s words—“Get over yourself”—set me straight at twenty-one. You are who you really are. You are not the title that is attached to your name.

Craig Ferguson

Comedian, Writer, Actor, and Host of
The Late Late Show

Hurry Up and Take Your Time

Every year around Christmastime in the U.K., hundreds of shows play at theaters all over the country in a festival called Pantomime. This tradition is perhaps the most commercially successful form of theater in the world outside of Broadway and the West End.

In every town there is a production. In the larger cities, big theaters have TV stars and famous comedians and successful reality contestants appearing in the shows to cash in on their fleeting moments of fame. In the smaller towns, the shows are less elaborate but still as popular with local audiences. This is because they know what they’re going to get. “Panto,” as it is lovingly referred to by customers and players alike, is strongly traditional: usually an old fairy story like “Sleeping Beauty” or “Jack and the Beanstalk” with a couple of songs, a few dance numbers, a slapstick sketch, and some jokes as old as Britain itself. This mass pilgrimage to the theaters in December and January has the happy result of a breakout in employment among actors.

As a young comic, I showed a petulant disdain for this tradition, citing my groovy rebellion and self-proclaimed genius as reasons not to appear in a panto. However, even a young genius like I was then has to make a little money now and again, so it was with some shame that I accepted the part of the “comedy policeman” in the Stirling MacRobert Arts Centre production of
Aladdin
in 1987.

On the first day of rehearsal, I met the show’s director, an elderly Cockney gent by the name of Dennis Critchley. Dennis had been a young comic during the heady days of Music Hall in Britain (much the same as vaudeville in the U.S.) and knew every hackneyed old panto routine in the book. He assigned me a tried-and-true slapstick sketch called “Widow Twankee’s Take Away.” The sketch contained all the moments I had seen a thousand times myself as a child when I attended these shows on school trips or with my parents. I would get a custard pie in the face; I’d have seltzer squirted down my pants; I’d be outwitted by a piece of fur on a wire that was meant to be a rogue ferret; and I’d have to shoot a sausage that was trying to escape my custody. If you ever watch my TV show, you’ll see that much of this material is still gleefully incorporated into my life. (The dancing horse Secretariat is a direct lift from panto.)

My comedy career up to this point had been all stand-up, cracking wise in nightclubs to other angry young drunks like myself. I had never been faced with physical comedy, and as rehearsals progressed it became evident that I was floundering. I could never get the seltzer/custard-pie/sausage flow that the routine required to be funny. I was infuriated and humiliated and embarrassed, and when geniuses are embarrassed they start looking for excuses and a way out.

Lucky for me, Dennis—the grand old master, the Yoda of the soda syphon, the Mr. Miyagi of the comedy sausage—had dealt with insecure young comics before. He took me through the routine inch by inch, step by step, and slowly we built speed and flow into what I now realize was more like a dance routine than anything else.

Over and over, he stressed the importance of pacing.

“Hurry up and take your time,” he would say whenever I botched a maneuver or tripped over myself.

“What the hell does that even mean, Dennis?” I growled at him after a few days.

“Exactly as it says,” he reiterated in his cartoon Cockney accent. “Take the time that you need, don’t rush, but don’t dawdle. It’s your time; don’t let your nerves f*** it up for you.”

“You a philosopher, too?” I snarked.

“Exactly. Everything in life, young un. Hurry up and take your time. Now come on, you shot the sausage too early and your trousers are dry. Let’s try again.”

Every time I’m a little nervous about performing—most recently, just before going onstage for the second of two sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall in New York City—I remember the advice I got from the old English vaudevillian, who, of course, I grew to adore.

“Hurry up and take your time.”

Not a bad philosophy for life, I’ve found.

Take that, Descartes.

Maria Elena Salinas

Emmy Award-Winning Univision News Anchor and Syndicated Columnist

You Never Stop Learning

My mother’s wisdom is the compass that has guided my life. A Mexican immigrant, she taught me to embrace family values long before they became a political issue. She taught me to embrace two cultures, two languages, and two sets of traditions, and that you can be a working mother without sacrificing family life.

Tony DeMarco, a family friend who was better known as baseball player Fernando Valenzuela’s manager, was the first person to put a microphone in my hand. “Don’t sound like an announcer,” he’d say. “Just be you.” Years later, Paco Calderon, my old editor from Ecuador, echoed that lesson. Paco would tell me that the most important thing on television was to be natural, but this was also the most difficult thing to accomplish.

My first news director, Pete Moraga, loved to say that he could teach people how to read and write the news, but he couldn’t teach them how to read and write. I remember a local election that I covered as a young reporter in Los Angeles. It was the first time a Latino was running for the City Council in decades. Latinos at that time made up twenty-five percent of the population yet had no political representation. I went out to interview people on the street about the election, and out of sixteen Hispanics with whom I spoke fifteen were not voting because they could not, didn’t know there was an election going on, or simply weren’t interested. When I returned to my newsroom and told Pete Moraga that I couldn’t do the story with those results, he said, “Can’t you see it? Your story is right there in front of you. This is the first time Latinos have an opportunity to elect one of their own, yet they’re losing it because they feel disenfranchised from the political system.” This piece of advice helped shape what would become a mission in my career: to work toward the political empowerment of the Latino community.

This leads me to possibly the best and most important piece of advice I ever got. My father, a simple man who was an intellectual, spoke six languages and had a doctorate degree in philosophy. He would walk around with a book in hand at all times. As a little girl, I asked him one day what he was doing, and he replied, “Studying.” “Studying at your age?” I asked. He said, “Of course. You never stop learning.”