I had JB Smoove on my
show a couple of times,
and JB was a writer for a
while for Saturday Night Live.
And he told me he was
a killer at going in on
those writing meetings. He was so
good at the table. Read that this,
this is his estimation. I
don't know what you felt,
but he says most of my stuff, this is
his quote, did not make it on the air.
How could a guy be so good at the table
read and have so many great ideas and
then not get his stuff on the air?
Where JB was a stone cold killer and
assassin to a degree I had never seen
before, or since was
in the pitch on Monday,
Everyone would sit down and
kind of pitch their ideas.
I would stand up as if I
was performing my pitches.
It was like a standup doing
a character of a guy pitching
sketch ideas.
And the thing about like Spiderman goes
to the dry cleaner and gets Batman's
costume.
And like,
that's like, that is a far better
pitch than an actual sketch.
Like you write the sketch. There's
not much, you know, or, um,
I remember it just had a thing about a
guy with a real, a really long cigarette.
Like the ash would go ...
And then he would act it
out, you know, and laugh.
Uh, you know, people. Ah, the other
one of my favorite of JB's is, um,
uh, the helicopter family, everybody,
uh, in a family was a helicopter pilot.
So they would come home and they would
walk real low and scream real loud.
When he tells me those stories, I go,
JB, you're a genius and he'd
go, I know I am. And I go,
I don't understand how they didn't
make the sketch, the helicopter family.
I don't even, he goes that's right.
I remember the first time I met Larry
David the first thing I said to him is
like,
I'm so happy that you figured
out how to get the essence of
JB on television,
because I think a lot of people have
known him over the years and had the
question we're having, which is how can
this guy have these incredible ideas?
And we can't figure out how to
take it from there to sketch.
Whereas, you know, there
are actual scenes in Curb,
Your Enthusiasm where basically JB
will pitch like three crazy ideas and,
uh, and it's gold
Pussy tea: all the taste of
pussy without the commitment.
I put that shit in a teabag.
And he has a, you know, for the fact
that he had a very short time on SNL,
the fact that he left as a legend,
he was the greatest pitcher
that was ever there.
And it's very hard to be
the greatest at anything.
