The New Rules of Success

 Today's Life Tips

 

 

 The New Rules of Success

by J. Rentilly

men's health

Though he looks like Dennis the Menace or a Schwinn-riding Mitt Romney foot soldier, 29-year old comedian John Mulaney insists his appearance is actually more akin to a “tall child who looks terrible.”

A recovering alcoholic, self-professed former gay child who became a straight man, longtime writer for Saturday Night Live, and rising comedy superstar—thanks in part to New Kid in Town, his laconic, hilarious stand-up DVD and CD (just released)—Mulaney is this generation’s everyman, right down to his deadpan demeanor, near-chronic sense of beguilement, and low-key self-deprecation.

“I’m an uninformed man who watches a lot of TV and works 18 hours a day, if writing comedy is something other people would call work and not wasting paper,” Mulaney warned us. Undeterred, Men’s Health asked Mulaney for advice anyway, and though the Chicago native is mostly speaking about comedy, some formidable life lessons emerged.

 

Perseverance and Persistence. “For some reason, I was given access to this very visible thing, Saturday Night Live. The secret, really: just being around. I did what I do, writing and telling jokes and doing stand-up, and eventually the right people saw me and asked me to audition to be in the cast of SNL. So do that. Keep doing what you do. Hopefully you’re good at it.”

Go With the Flow. “I auditioned for Lorne (Michaels) and Saturday Night Live, and they said, ‘No, we don’t want you in the cast. But would you like to be a writer on the show?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. That’s a much better idea.’ I complimented them for rejecting my performance, and now I’m on camera sometimes anyway.” (See how Social Network star Jessi Eisenberg overcame his fear of water in Courage Is Just an Act.)

Then Get Better At What You Do. “The more you do stuff, the better you get at dealing with how you still fail at it a lot of the time. At SNL, you learn to just keep going. If you bomb, everyone else bombs too sometimes, and you just keep going. If they don’t like you, they don’t tell you to your face. You watch the show on Saturday and your bit is just decidedly not there”

Make Lists. “A lot of being successful is: What ideas do you not talk yourself out of? On Saturday Night Live, you have 24 hours to go from 10 ‘maybe’ ideas to four ‘definite’ ones. You can’t afford to talk yourself out of your ideas, because sometimes you don’t know what’s really good. With me, I put all of my ideas down on a list and then go, ‘Well, they’re all bad ideas. I guess I’d better start by writing the one that’s least bad.’ And sometimes it’s good.”

Commit. “You can’t always see both sides of the story. Eventually, you have to pick a side and stick with it. No more equivocating. You have to commit. This is about comedy, right?”

The Way We Get By. “Fear. Coffee and fear. Or fear and coffee. Those two things.” (Addicted to coffee too? 

Be Nice. “But there are two kinds of nice, so you have to figure out what kind of nice you are. Do you want to be nice, like, ‘I’m a person who doesn’t want any trouble?’ That means you never piss anybody off, which means you’re probably not honest at least some of the time. Or are you just fundamentally kind, which is nice, and means you don’t feel walked-on all the time and you can probably sleep at night. I work all night.”

Take Care Of Your Temple. “You can do good work simply staying up all night and eating nothing but junk food, but probably not in the long term. I think Saturday Night Live has probably taught us that. So I have a trainer now and I work out twice a week with her. That’s right, I said ‘her.’ I couldn’t handle the shame of working out in front of another man. I can’t lift a kettlebell. But sitting on your butt writing sketches all day long, you occasionally need some upper body work. With her.”