Don't get distracted by the bullshit...

Dana Gould's advice to fellow comics

Dana Gould has told fellow comedians not to become obsessed about climbing the career ladder or trying to pander to TV executives.

Making the keynote address at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal, the long-standing comic and former Simpsons writer reminded his colleagues: 'If you grew wanting to be a comedian and you are a comedian and you have made it' and that all the rest was nonsense.

He added: 'If you don't fit into the spreadsheet projection of what a focus group company has told a TV exec what their prospective audience finds desirable – who gives a fuck? It has no bearing on who you are as person or your value as an artist. It will not affect the grand arc of your career at all. At all.

'There are too many venues, there are too many outlets. No one has power over you. At most it's work stuff. What matters is what happens when you walk out on stage and pick up a mic.'

He told of disappointments in his own career, such as his long fight to perform on the David Letterman show … and when he finally got on, he delivered a mediocre set that made no difference to his life.

And he recalled his disappointment when he auditioned for Saturday Night Live but lost out to two comics who tried out alongside him: Chris Rock and Adam Sandler

'The word I would use to describe how I felt back at that time would be poleaxed,' he said. 'You couldn't talk to me for a month after that. I would bump into Holocaust survivors and say, "You would not believe what happened to me.

'I remember thinking at that time maybe it's just not going to happen. Maybe i'm note very going to make it. What I didn't realise at that time is that it already did happen and that I already had made it. It is difficult when you are in it, to be able to step back and objectively look at your career and see what success really means. But the sense of awe I held George Carlin and Richard Pryor in as I child, I already possessed my own version of that. I would walk on stage and I pick up a mic and everyone shut up.

'It wasn't just a thing I did. It was my job, my career, my life's work. So to the comedians that are here: If you grew wanting to be a comedian and you are a comedian and you have made it. The rest is just levels of degree.'

However he added that it was natural to be competitive in a world where 'everything has been reduced to a competition. Because in competition there is drama and drama is compelling; and when something is compelling people watch it and when people watch it, you can sell advertising. And if you're not selling something or buying something, why the fuck are you awake?'

Gould explained: 'Showbusiness is a very simple paradigm. It's people in their 60s telling people in their 50s to get people in their 40s to hire people in their 30s to tell people in their 20s to be entertained. But as a comedian it's not your job to worry about that. Nobody in this room needs to waste another minute running a race that isn't being held because they want to win trophy that doesn't exist.'

And he said that all the movers and shakers who seem to act as gatekeepers to greater careers will move on, meaning no path is permanently blocked. 'When I first came here the people who held the keys to the kingdom I wanted access to have all moved on to other jobs,' he said. 'I have the same job: I go on stage and pick up a mic'

He said it was going on stage with a mic which led to him landing his job writing on The Simpsons, not trying to pander to anyone else.

And he concluded: 'What I thought would be important me was so wrong, it's kind of brilliant. I wasn't close on anything.'

Even the knockback of being rejected from SNL proved a blessing as it enabled him to develop a blossoming relationship with his future wife – and that was 'a fuckload more important than being recognised on the street for being Cold Cuts Man or whatever my character would have been.'

And he joked: 'Sure my wife and I got divorced… but Saturday Night Live isn't what it used to be either.

'I like to think we got cancelled because we were doing poorly on the overnights.'

Here is the speech in full: