Ep. 233 - Fred Stoller: Five Minutes to Kill: A Story About "Making It"

The James Altucher Show

You have five minutes to kill. That’s it. Those five minutes can make or break a career.

I don’t think I would be able to handle the pressure. I’ve done a lot of public speaking. And now I’ve tried standup. For the past three months I’ve been going up once or twice a week.

It’s difficult. I thought 20 years of public speaking would help me. It doesn’t. It’s the Hunger Games on that stage.

So Fred Stoller is my hero. He was a standup comic 30 years ago, then he was a writer on Seinfeld, then he’s been a guest start on 60+ TV shows including Seinfeld, Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, Scrubs, and every other show I can think of. He’s sitcom history.

And he wrote all about it in three excellent books, including his latest, “Five Minutes to Kill”, about his five minutes on the 1989 HBO Young Comedians Special and what happened to the specific performers of that show.

So I asked, “If everybody thinks you’re so funny, then why didn’t you have your own show?”

But I wasn’t the first person to ask Fred this… He asked himself the same question throughout his career.

So did his mom.

And it hurt his self-esteem. He said, “When I used to headline as a comedian, I’d feel sorry for the people lining up waiting to see me… like I was their weekend.”

Now he’s entering a new world. He’s writing. And learning how to embrace “this weird guy that I am… who got lost finding this place.” He’s learning how to express himself with his own voice.

He reinvented from standup to writing on the best sitcom ever. Then he reinvented again to appear on all the TV shows he’s been on.

Now he’s 59, and he’s reinventing again. He’s a writer. His books are excellent.

Reinvention is not something special people do. It’s not something for only a few. Fred has been frustrated and also exhilarated down every path he’s chosen.

Reinvention IS the goal. Not a pathway to it. Reinvention is a habit. It’s what we do every day to bring out the fire inside that constantly wants to express itself.

That’s why I wanted to speak to Fred. Not because he wrote “The Soup” episode of Seinfeld. But because he’s still doing what he loves to do. And what he loves to do is constantly changing.

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