"I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good, and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was"
About this Quote
Then he pivots to National Lampoon, where the romance of comedy as invention kicks in: “everything out of nothing” is the badge of a scrappier era, when the joke wasn’t just performance but world-building. The subtext is that creativity isn’t inspiration; it’s manufacturing. You don’t wait for lightning, you produce it on deadline.
SNL lands like a cold splash: no mistakes. That’s not just about live TV nerves; it’s about a culture of high visibility where failure is immediate, public, and replayable. The phrase carries the faint, familiar bruise of a place that makes legends and eats them, sometimes in the same season.
What makes the quote work is the escalating constraint: generosity, then invention, then perfectionism. Collaboration arrives not as a kumbaya ideal, but as survival training. Murray’s intent feels almost corrective - a reminder that comedy, at its best, is less lone-genius magic than a relay race run at sprint speed.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teamwork |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Murray, Bill. (2026, February 16). I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good, and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-to-second-city-where-you-learned-to-make-148337/
Chicago Style
Murray, Bill. "I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good, and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-to-second-city-where-you-learned-to-make-148337/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I went to Second City, where you learned to make the other actor look good so you looked good, and National Lampoon, where you had to create everything out of nothing, and SNL, where you couldn't make any mistakes, and you learned what collaboration was." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-went-to-second-city-where-you-learned-to-make-148337/. Accessed 22 Feb. 2026.
