The Creative Kid – John Mulaney

            John Mulaney is a well versed creative. He is active in the field of standup comedy, as a writer on the well-known show SNL and an actor in recent movies and TV shows. Some of his better-known works include his Netflix standups, The Comeback Kid and Kid Gorgeous at Radio City as well as Big Mouth and his work writing SNL skits.

John got his start doing standup and working as a writer during his junior year of college. He started working with one of his best friends Nick Kroll. They have worked together on many projects since. Most notably they are co-creators of the TV show Big Mouth. In an interview with Rachael Mason, John talks about how he loves to collaborate. He says “I would rather work with the people I like collaborating with. There are people who can write alone, and they have a fine-tuned enough ear that it’s as if they have someone there to bounce jokes off of, they’re just very sharp. I like, for security, and because I think it makes pieces stronger, I like to write with other people.” The ability for Mulaney to bounce ideas and jokes off of other people, especially those that he trusts the opinion of is an important part of his creative process. This kind of writing and collaboration is paramount in the work he does while writing for SNL and Big Mouth, but he applies different techniques when approaching his standup.

Standup comedy is a strange beast that has many of its own unique difficulties when it comes to being creative. In his early years while developing many of his jokes John will admit that he bombed many sets. As his career developed John was able to gain some traction and eventually reach level he is at now because he worked on two things, his delivery and his joke writing. His delivery came naturally with more time on stage and the hit and miss shows that he performed. Its his delivery that makes him such a great comedian. Yet no comedian is any good without content. In the same interview with Mason he talks about his writing process for his standup jokes,” I think of things, I write down jokes in a notebook, I then will, after a couple of weeks, have a bunch of things in the notebook, and I will type them up, and going from the notebook to typing helps me remember them and add to them and flesh them out. And then I will do them on stage and then that helps me too, that normally helps edit them, saying them live.” The process of collecting all his ideas in one place allow John to reflect on his work later with fresh eyes. This gives him the ability to edit them and make them better and flow with his work. And just like anyone who has ever given a presentation in class or did any kind of public speaking, John knows that actually vocalizing and testing his work will allow him to work out the kinks.

John is a true creative. He applies different processes depending on the work that he is doing at a given time. This flexibility and interdisciplinary work helps him have a deeper pool of knowledge and allows him to build connections and collaborate with other creators. Because of his ability he is now one of the most famous standup comedians and involved in many big-name productions.

https://www.vulture.com/2010/09/the-writers-room-a-conversation-with-snl-writer-john-mulaney.html