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Interview With Liz Feldman

Out writer and performer Liz Feldman, the four-time Emmy Award—winning former writer-producer for The Ellen DeGeneres Show, got her start in entertainment when most of us were still figuring out how to get away with cutting class.

She started doing stand-up comedy at the age of 15 and soon afterward was hired as both writer and talent on Nickelodeon’s All That. Spurred by a lifelong dream of working with Ellen DeGeneres, she moved out to Los Angeles and honed her comedic skills at improv schools Second City and the Groundlings before writing and performing on Blue Collar TV. From 2005 to 2007, Feldman realized her dream by writing material for DeGeneres on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Feldman recently returned to the world of stand-up comedy, and she has also produced an award-winning short film, My First Time Driving, which is screening at festivals worldwide. Among the many projects she’s currently working on is her own AfterEllen.com comedy series, This Just Out with Liz Feldman.

I recently talked with Feldman about how she got to where she is today, working with DeGeneres, the power of visualization, and how blazers have always been part of her formula for dressing for success.

AfterEllen.com: Was anyone in your family in showbiz?

Liz Feldman: I was influenced by my brother and sister, but they weren’t really in the industry. My sister was a really good actress in high school, the lead in all the plays, really pretty and popular. And as my mother says – I’m a big Jew, by the way – during the Purim play at synagogue when I was 6, my sister was 11 and playing Queen Esther, and after the show was done I dragged my mother up the stage, pointed at it and said, “That’s what I want to do!”

That’s the crazy story – all because of the Purim play.

When I was 10 I became obsessed with the entertainment industry, and I asked my parents for an agent for my 10th birthday, not knowing that it doesn’t work that way. They said: “That’s nice. Here’s a 10-speed.” I made a deal with my parents at that time – I’m from Brooklyn – that when I became old enough to ride the train by myself, then I could start auditioning for things.

So when I was 12, I became old enough to ride the train, and I started going on auditions and got involved in theater in Manhattan. When I was 15, I answered an ad in Backstage magazine. They were looking for kids who performed stand-up and wrote their own material. At the time, I didn’t do any of that. But I knew I wanted to and that I probably could do it. So I answered that ad.

I wrote three minutes of material. It was all about my mom, a little bit about high school and the SATs, and I auditioned and I got into this show that was about kids doing stand-up. I got a manager and I just started performing.

One of my early jokes – OK, I’ll embarrass myself. This is so bad. Hopefully you’ll see how much funnier I’ve gotten over the years. So 15 years ago, this was one of my first jokes: “You know how some kids will get embarrassed when their moms will spit on a napkin to wipe the dirt off their face? My mom just licks my face.”

AE: Oh my God, and it’s so gay!

LF: So gay! I was screaming out and I didn’t even know.

AE: So you got funnier and gayer?

LF: Maybe less gay, I don’t even know! Do you want to know what I was wearing when I first started doing stand-up?

AE: A blazer?

LF: Of course! My original stand-up outfit was light linen pants, a white button-down shirt, an embroidered vest and a matching linen jacket.

AE: Jesus, Liz! Come on.

LF: At the time [I] had a boyfriend. However, that suit was dating a woman behind my back.

So I got an agent from doing that kind of stuff. Believe it or not, not a lot of girls doing stand-up at age 15.

So I graduated from high school and I was supposed to go to Vassar, and my mother was thrilled because I had gotten in off the wait list and it was a minor miracle that I was going to a school that someone might have heard of. But then I got a job offer. I had been scouted by Nickelodeon – the show All That wanted a female writer.

I had never written anything other than my own jokes and essays from high school. So much to my mother’s dismay, I withdrew from Vassar and moved to Orlando, Florida. Three weeks after graduating from high school I got my own car and an apartment.

It was amazing, but it was far too much. I was not really ready for such a thing. And the experience was … challenging. It was a wake-up call for me, because I really loved being on the show, and I also really wanted to be a kid. I worked ridiculous hours, and it was more than I was really capable of at the time. It made me want to go to college and not worry about having a job. So that’s what I did.

So after that I really wanted to go to school, but Vassar wouldn’t take me because they wouldn’t accept students in January. So I started hanging out with my friend Dan Fogler, who is now a movie star [Balls of Fury]. He went to Boston University and I met all his friends, and as a matter of fact my very first girlfriend went to BU as well.

I was there visiting Dan at BU and he was about to go to an audition for the campus improv group. I thought it sounded like fun, but I didn’t go to school there. But I went with him anyway and they accepted me, telling me if I was a student there I could be in the group. So that’s why I went to school there, so I could be in their improv group.

Not only did I learn a lot, but I also met my best friend, Jason, doing that, and he and I eventually moved to Los Angeles together. Anyway, I graduated with a B.S. in TV writing [laughs], and lo and behold actually used it.

After graduating, Jason and I got in the car and moved to L.A. Here, I got involved with the Groundlings, and overall I had a great experience with them. I met so many amazing people – really talented, really inspiring – and made a lot of important creative partnerships and definitely found my voice as a sketch writer.

AE: Were you more interested in writing than performing?

LF: No, I was always more interested in performing. Writing was something I would do because it came to me. It was always way more fun to perform. Writing can be really torturous, but I loved performing and coming up with crazy characters and wearing my wigs …

At the same time I also did the program at Second City, and their approach was more satirical, more current events, more what’s going on right now. At the Groundlings I became good friends with Kristen Wiig [Saturday Night Live], and she and I started an all-female group, and she’s just so talented and such a lovely person.

So I did these two different comedy schools at the same time, and they were both very complementary to each other. Groundlings is more about characters and situations, and Second City is more satirical and topical.

So I was really head over heels for the Groundlings, and I was in the Sunday Company for a year and a half, which is the precursor to being in the main company. And that would be the point at which they vote. And I did not get into the main company. I was truly heartbroken.

At that point I wrote a show with Pamela Ribon called Letters Never Sent, which is about saying all the things that you always wanted to say. We ended up getting to perform the show at the 2005 HBO Comedy Festival in Aspen. At the time, it was a huge deal for my career, and she’s really talented and a really good writer.

Because of that I started doing episodic work on such classic shows that have since been canceled as The Mullets and It’s All Relative, and that’s also when I did Significant Others.

I was actually getting a lot of work as an actor, but I wasn’t making any money. And it started to weigh on me, because I don’t want to be a struggling anything. I just want to feel like I’m using the skills that God has given me in the best way. I knew that I needed to start writing because I thought that if I put myself out there as a writer, I should be able to make more money. It became a financial thing because I was working at a restaurant and I was not happy with myself.

So I sat down with my manager, and I have to say that I owe a lot of my career success to my manager, Christie Smith, because she is just an angel in my life. I told her I want to start writing and make money and asked her to see what’s out there. And three weeks later I got a call that the show Blue Collar TV really needed to hire a female writer, because on certain shows, on certain networks, they have quotas where they have to hire women or a minority.

I really didn’t know what the hell it was. I knew who Jeff Foxworthy was, but I was working at a restaurant, so that sounded great! So I submitted to Blue Collar, and I went in for the interview and I got the job. And it was literally three weeks after I had that conversation with Christie.

I ended up doing really well on the show, making some appearances on it. I did two seasons on that show, and it was a network, prime-time show, so it exactly answered the need that I had. It was like a miracle, but it showed me not to be afraid to ask for what I want. Figure out exactly what it is that you want, then don’t be afraid to ask for it. But then also don’t be afraid when it comes true!

Any modicum of success I’ve had, I owe to the fact that I said it out loud first. My mother has been a big support to me throughout my life, and she has always been the one to ask: “What is it? What do you want? Say it!” And I grew up visualizing and always picturing exactly how I wanted to feel about things at the end of the day. That’s how I’ve achieved any success I’ve had.

AE: How did that lead you to working with Ellen DeGeneres?

LF: Ellen was always my hero. When I first started doing stand-up, I worshipped her. I knew every single joke she told, and I was always compared to her, even from the age of 15. I think I looked like her more then than I do now. There’s a resemblance, I guess, but as soon as I started doing stand-up there was always the comparison. I never shied away from the comparison because I thought she was brilliant.

So that was one of the things I had always visualized – working with her, or knowing her or being in her circle – to the extent where for about 10 years I had a recurring dream in which I knew her. And I don’t even remember most of my dreams, but I had probably 20 dreams in which we were friends or colleagues, or I knew her and Anne when they were together, or in which we ran into each other and she knew me. It was just really weird, and it was always right there on the edge of my subconscious, basically.

And so when her talk show first started, I was so thrilled for her because I had met her when I was 21. I went up to her [at that time] and I said, “You’re Carol Burnett and I’m Vicki Lawrence, but you don’t know that yet.”

AE: I love it!

LF: I was so ballsy when I was 21. … I just was compelled. And at the time her show had just been cancelled, and I think she was going through a difficult time. She looked at me and said, “So I’m going to get another show and put you on it?” And I said: “That sounds great! I’ll see ya then.” And I left. It was just one of those really weird things.

Then when I moved here, I had been here for 10 days and I went out to lunch and they sat me right next to her and Anne and her mother. It was the weirdest thing! And I was so excited that I could barely eat. But I’m a Jew, so I did.

I really take things like that … as a sign that I’m on the right path. I don’t really see them as coincidences. Those sorts of things always make me trust myself, that I did the right thing that got me to this moment.

Then over the course of all these years that I’ve been here, I would see her all the time. I would always run into her, it was really crazy. So when her talk show started I was thrilled for her, and I also immediately knew that I could write for it. She was doing these three-minute monologues at the beginning, and they were just jokes. And I could write jokes for her; I know all of her jokes. That’s what I do, I write jokes.

I actually stopped doing stand-up at that point, so I wasn’t writing for myself because I wasn’t talking about myself personally; I wasn’t out as a stand-up. I was in real life, but I wasn’t onstage.

I had started doing it so young that I didn’t quite understand how to create a new persona for myself. I was always this really young kid doing stand-up, then all the sudden I was the same age as other people and not talking about this really obvious thing that was going on. So I stopped doing it, because I wasn’t sure who I was as a comic anymore.

So when I saw Ellen doing these monologues, it really inspired me to start writing jokes again. And without knowing anything about the show other than watching the first episode, I wrote a submission for it. It was a like a compulsion – I had to. I called my manager and told her that I had written it.

Cut to a couple of years later. I’m working at Blue Collar and realizing that this writing thing might be working out for me; why not write for a comedian that I actually identify with? Because – no offense to Jeff Foxworthy, but that’s really just not my style of comedy. I had positive experiences working on Blue Collar, but I was not writing for my audience. It was not the ideal environment for me.

I thought to myself, if I’m going to be a writer and I’m going to write jokes for somebody else, why not write jokes for Ellen? This is what it’s all been leading up to, so why not just try?

By that time I had very good representation and I knew that if I asked, they could probably find out. Lo and behold, right as I was done with my Blue Collar gig, they needed to hire one writer for Ellen. So I dug up that submission that I had written earlier, changed some things, punched it up and sent it in, and then five days later I’m getting called up to meet with the executive producer of the show. I was told that Ellen would not be there, which meant I could breathe. [Laughs.]

So I show up and immediately I already know this is a better environment for me because the receptionist is this really cute gay girl, and I thought, “Oh, this is gonna work out just fine.” I got there really early and I was holding a cup of water trying to get my hand to stop shaking. I was practicing trying to look like a normal person holding a cup of water.

Then from the corner of my eye, I swear I see Ellen. But I was told she wouldn’t be there, so I thought: “That’s weird. Well, she probably just won’t be in my interview.” And I walk into this office, and Ellen is sitting on the couch underneath a very oversized stuffed bear. And I think she’s trying to hide, but they had me come in the wrong door. So she throws the bear and says, “Damn, now it’s all ruined!” [Laughs.] And she was trying to surprise me. And I was so glad that she didn’t, because I would have had a heart attack and it would have been the last day for me.

And so of course as soon as I saw that she was there, in my mind I was telling myself, “Don’t tell her about the time that you met her, don’t tell the story.” And the first thing out of my mouth was, “Oh, we’ve actually met,” and had to tell her about the whole Carol Burnett/Vicki Lawrence line.

And she said to me, “I actually remember that.” I was shocked! Then we just had this great meeting and she told me she had read my stuff and she loved it. And I think I crapped my pants about then.

Then I put on a fresh pair of pants and proceeded with the interview. They were telling me that it was a really hectic environment, face-paced. And I thought, “I’m going to say whatever it takes to get this job. This is my dream job!’

They made me wait a week or so before I found out. When I got that call I was just thrilled. I jumped up and down like a maniac. It was definitely the biggest thing that had ever happened to me.

So I started working there, and it was amazing. I would get nervous every time I was in the room with her, so nervous, but it was this great lesbian utopian environment to work in because there were so many gay people. And I had come from working at Blue Collar, where I was gay but I almost had to apologize for it or make fun of myself … to beat everyone else to the punch.

And now I’m working in this environment where not only is it OK to be gay, but probably because I’m gay, that actually helped me get the job. It was extremely liberating. I had been out of the closet since I was 17, but this pushed me over the edge.

It’s one thing to be out, but it’s another thing to be truly proud, and I became truly proud of myself because I’m so proud of her! I told her this all the time, too. We really had an adorable relationship, because without being a kiss ass, I was honestly so humbled and appreciative of her that it made me feel that way about myself.

I will always be out. I had a really positive experience working with Ellen. She was so supportive and I learned a lot about comedy and writing jokes from her. We ended up having a lovely relationship because our brains work in similar ways comedically. I ended up writing a lot of monologues for her – like I had wanted to – and developing a nice mentor relationship. She completely lived up to everything I would have wanted her to.

Ellen DeGeneres with Liz Feldman (right)

AE: And you came in when her show was really taking off, and as a result won four Emmy awards for your work on the show.

LF: Yeah, I came in at a great time. Just having had the opportunity to work with her was an award for me, and then I find myself at the Emmys with her. I’m standing backstage with her and I’m carrying an Emmy and she’s carrying an Emmy, and I thought, “This is just too much.”

I was a writer and a producer on the show, so as I writer I won an Emmy for the 2005—2006 year, and as a producer for the 2005—2006 year. Then the same thing happened the following year, and I won for writing and producing again.

When I was growing up, my mom was so supportive. And for some reason, she always said to me, “You’re going to take me to the Emmys.” And this was before I even had a job working in television. And I would say, “Sure, yep, whatever you say.” Then I’m sitting there in June 2006 at the Emmys with my mom – she was my date, of course. It was the highlight of my life at that moment, not because it was an Emmy, but because I was able to make my mother proud in this really definitive way.

AE: And you wrote for the Academy Awards as well.

LF: Yeah, that’s another thing I would have never imagined in a million years. Ellen was hired to host the Oscars, and she was only allowed to hire a few people from her talk show because they didn’t want the talk show to suffer.

So I’ll never forget this moment either. I was driving on Crescent Heights and … I’m on the phone with Ellen in the car, and she says, “I want you to write some jokes for me for the Oscars.” And I was like, “Duh … OK!” I turned into Homer Simpson. And then I think because she’s just a stand-up person, she got me and a couple of other writers hired by the Academy so that we were official. We weren’t just writing a couple of jokes, we were on the payroll.

So professionally, that would probably be the highlight for me. To be able to be there, let alone the leading up to it, but sitting in a circle with Ellen and some of the best comedy writers in Los Angeles and me, pitching jokes about Peter O’Toole and Judi Dench … it was comedy heaven.

Then to be there, with her, at a moment in her life that was so huge. It was her dream come true – she had always wanted to host the Oscars. So to be there supporting her was an extremely powerful experience. And to be backstage pitching jokes on the fly in the middle of the nine-hour telecast was unbelievable.

AE: Were you free to do gay humor?

LF: Interesting. If it had been the Brokeback Mountain year, it would have been different. But it wasn’t, so there wasn’t a lot of gay stuff to draw upon. So I don’t think I really made any gay jokes because it just wouldn’t have fit in. I don’t think she was hosting it as a gay woman, I think she was hosting it as a comedian, you know? Which is, in a way, even better. The great part about it was that it had nothing to do with her being gay; she was just there because she was the funniest. Funny always wins.

Anyway, so the next year I wrote for Ellen again, and it was a really hard decision to leave the show, but I just knew it was time for me to focus on my own career and to reinvigorate myself as a performer. She was really kind and had already put me on the show a few times doing bits, doing characters and stuff. It was really fun, but if anything it just made me want to do it even more.

I left on really nice terms with her, she couldn’t have been more gracious about me going. She wished me the best of everything and told me I deserved all the success in the world. She’s just a lovely person. I worked on her last special that she did with TBS [Ellen’s Really Big Show], so … I guess she isn’t mad at me.

AE: After you left the show did you start doing more stand-up?

LF: Yes, I immediately started doing stand-up again. I had gotten into this routine where I wrote jokes every day, but they were all for her. So I couldn’t stop my brain from writing jokes. Because now I’ve essentially developed a filter through which I see the world, and it’s just one joke after the other.

AE: Was it challenging for you to shift your voice or your point of view to be for yourself and not her?

LF: It wasn’t awkward because there were so many things I wanted to write for her that I knew she could never say in the daytime medium. So I started to make notes to myself. Coming back to stand-up was a smooth transition for me because I knew that I could finally say everything I wanted to say.

AE: Did you start having a gay comedy set at that point?

LF: I wouldn’t say that I started having a gay set. I definitely started being myself. I no longer had a question of who I would be onstage. I really found my voice from writing for her because I got frustrated sometimes that we couldn’t be more edgy about her sexuality or current events or even about the observational humor that she’s so good at doing. It would only go PG, rarely even going to PG-13, so I found myself writing much edgier material that I would then always have to erase. So I kept it for myself.

So yeah, I immediately addressed the fact that I am gay, but most of my shows were for straight audiences. I really believe that as a comedian that you need to know your audience, so when I do a show for a lesbian or gay audience, it feels really different for me.

AE: How is it most different?

LF: There are jokes I wouldn’t tell a straight audience. It would be too foreign for them to relate. For a lesbian audience, I will do very lesbian-specific humor for them, not just because I know they’ll appreciate it as lesbians, but for me as the lesbian, I appreciate being in front of lesbians so I can tell these jokes.

I talk in my stand-up routine about how I don’t feel like I fit into one of the established labels of lesbians, you know, because I’m not really butch and not really femme. I’m kind of a Lizbian. I don’t want to necessarily share that with a straight audience, because I want to know that people are laughing for the right reasons.

And I’m really sensitive to gay as punch line. That has a lot to do with the audience. You can tell a joke to a straight audience and have it seem like you’re making fun of gay people. But you can tell that same joke to a gay audience and just feel like you’re making fun of yourself.

AE: What do you think about LGBT comics who focus on their sexuality – do you think it limits their appeal? And also, if the ratio is 10-to-1 for female comics, do you think being a lesbian has given you any kind of advantage in such a male-dominated profession? Is it easier for a lesbian to be a stand-up comic than it is for a straight woman?

LF: I will say this. It is not easy to be a stand-up comic.

AE: Then I guess my alternate question would be, “What the hell is wrong with you?” Or maybe, “How is this fun?”

LF: [laughs] The truth is that it’s not easy for anyone to be a stand-up. That’s why I know for me that I do it because I really like it. I don’t do it because I like hearing myself talk … although from this interview, you would think that I do. [laughs]

I am interested in connecting with people, especially about things I really care about. I enjoy doing stand-up for gay audiences in a deeper way than I do sometimes for straight audiences. Especially as a lesbian, I feel like we’re really thirsty for good comedy. I think there are some really good lesbian stand-ups out there. I think Suzanne Westenhoefer is really funny.

So if you’re a comic and you’re talking about being a lesbian and it’s funny, then great! I don’t think there are any hard-and-fast rules about what you should and shouldn’t talk about. I know for me, I’m way more comfortable with myself being out, because I feel like I would be cheating the audience and myself if I didn’t talk about it. It’s a really simple formula for stand-up: Be funny.

Watch Feldman performing her stand-up act:

AE: What are you working on now?

LF: One of the things I’m working on now is promoting the short film I made with my sister, called My First Time Driving. It was a story I always wanted to tell because I thought that maybe it could help people. It’s currently playing film festivals.

I had a really unique coming-out story which involved my mother knowing I was gay long before I did. When I was 16, I went away for the summer for a drama program, met a girl. She totally seduced me –

AE: Nice.

LF: Yeah, super hot. We’re still friends. And I was like: “Huh. I guess I like girls.” But I wasn’t ready to say anything about it. Plus I thought I also liked guys at the time.

So a year passes, I go to another summer program, and my mom comes up early to see our show. I let my mom into my room, but I didn’t realize that in my roommate’s bed were two girls sleeping. They weren’t gay; we had all just been up all night and they were tired.

About a month later, I’m coming back from having spent the night at one of those girl’s house. I’m a senior in high school and I’m coming home because I have an appointment with my SAT tutor. I get home and my mom says, “There’s a letter on your bed … it’s from me.”

So I start going over in my head all the bad things I’d done from the night before. I smoked cigarettes, I drank alcohol. I was already spinning my story in my head. I already know I’m in trouble because – my mother had a hard time communicating the tough stuff, so she often did it through poetry. So I know I’m in trouble because I know it must be tough because in this envelope is at least one poem.

She tells me, “Don’t open it here, open it in the car!” I’m 17 years old, I’ve had my license for six months, and my mother won’t let me drive the car. So she will be driving me the 15 minutes to this appointment because I’m not allowed to drive the car even though I’ve had my license for six months. And this was far more pressing on my mind than my sexuality, because all I wanted was that goddamn car!

So I open the thing, and it’s a poem and it rhymes and it’s from the perspective of a daughter talking to her mom, and it’s basically like … I’m gay.

I was so shocked and not at all ready to discuss it. So I turned to her and said, “You’re very perceptive.” I didn’t know what else to say. And she says, “There’s another poem.” I look behind it and the second poem is the mom talking to the daughter, saying, “It’s OK, we’ll figure it out, I still love you.” And it all rhymed.

I said nothing, so I think my mom knew she was onto something. So she kinda freaked out in the car a little; she was crying and worried. This was 1994. You forget how different things were then; it was before Ellen came out of the closet. You can read about that on BeforeEllen.com.

I knew that my mom would be fine with it eventually, but I knew my dad was very homophobic. He made it very clear to us growing up that he felt that gay people had a mental disease, which even before I was ever aware of my own sexuality, I remember thinking that was so wrong. I had a sense of social justice about it, and it really bothered me when I was 10 or 11 to hear him talk about that.

So when my mom surprised me with these poems, the only thing I could think to say was, “Don’t tell Dad.” But of course that’s her husband … so that night she told him. I was watching TV and my dad came in and said in a thick Brooklyn accent, “Your mother told me you’ve been having some questions about your sexuality.”

So I said, “Yeah, I have.” He got really upset and started to tear up, and as much as I was mad at him for having the beliefs that he had, I really kind of felt for him too. It was definitely not what he expected. So he wanted me to get a psychiatric evaluation. And I said I would, but only if he went with me.

So we all went – me, my mom and my dad – to this therapist. She said, “What’s the problem?” And I said: “That’s just it. I don’t think it’s a problem. Everybody else thinks it’s a problem, but I just wish we would stop using the word ‘problem.'”

And I look at myself now, as a 30-year-old woman looking back at me at 17, and I’m really proud of the way I handled it. I don’t even know if I would have handled it that well now. So we talked about it, and I had my psychiatric evaluation, and we all met back together. The therapist said I was the most mentally stable teenager she’d ever had in her office and that I didn’t need therapy, but that she recommended that my parents stay on.

That was our conversation in the therapist’s office, then we were done and we walked out to the car and my dad put his arm around me and said, “Most mentally stable kid, look at you!” because suddenly he was all proud of me again, and my mom handed him the keys to the car. And he threw them over at me and I caught them, and that was the first time I ever drove the car.

And that’s the genesis of the film, except that I wrote my dad out of the movie to protect his privacy. And the story is inspired by that story, but it’s really just about my relationship with my mom.

I made the film with my sister, which was also a dream come true. I always wanted to work with my sister, we’re very close and get along really beautifully. And we just had this great experience making the film and we’ve had a lot of success with it.

AE: Is filmmaking something you’d like to be doing more of?

LF: It’s one of the things. There are a few different jobs I’d like to have, shows I’d like to work on. But my dream scenario is to follow a Norman Lear type and create socially responsible and really funny shows. My ideal for television would be to create socially progressive sitcoms.

I feel a sense of responsibility to the lesbian and gay community, and I’d really like to create shows that have positive gay characters on them and make television shows that matter. And I’d also like to keep making films with my sister. She just had a baby, so we just have this new project we’re working on called Sylvie.

So basically I would love to use whatever comedic gifts I’ve been given for the good of all people. Including the gays.

AE: What would you tell LGBT people who want to get into the entertainment industry?

LF: I would say first and foremost, be voracious about the comedy you love. Growing up, I loved Ellen, loved Lily Tomlin, Paula Poundstone, and I saw as much material by those people as possible. I just soaked them in like a wannabe comedy sponge.

This is not a business for the faint of heart. But I had to do it. I can’t do anything else. My skill set, for whatever reason, works out so that I have to be a comedy writer-performer. If I could do something else, I might have. My dad always told me, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” That is one of those fail-safe things that is true every time.

But the most important thing I think you can do is visualize. When I say visualize, I mean don’t be afraid to picture yourself doing exactly what you want to be doing. And don’t just picture yourself doing it, picture yourself loving doing it. And picture yourself at the end of the day after doing that work. Feel how you want to feel when you’ve accomplished what you want to accomplish. And if you can really embody that feeling of accomplishment and that feeling of doing exactly what you wanted to do that day, you can train yourself to get there.

I apologize to the people out there who aren’t into this frou frou business, but that is my secret. I’ve always visualized exactly what I’ve wanted to happen. And you know what? It works.

You are only as far away from your dreams as you are your ability to imagine them. I’m a kid from Brooklyn, with absolutely no connections to Ellen and no family connections to the business. But it’s all I ever wanted. It’s all I ever thought about. It’s all I ever visualized, and here I am.

Watch This Just Out with Liz Feldman, and visit Liz on MySpace.

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