Creator Breakdown/Other: Difference between revisions

* ''The [[Goon Show]]'' may be considered as a product of Spike Milligan's manic phases.

** A fair chunk of his poetry was written in a depressive phase, such as a poem about a child grabbing a rose:

Life is already telling lies.'' }}

* Parodied in the [[Derrick Comedy]] sketch "Girls Are Not to Be Trusted".

** The infamous painting of Saturn devouring his children in particular takes on a new significance if you know your Classical Mythology and that Goya had six children, only one of whom lived to adulthood.

* Played for laughs by stand-up comedian/singer Stephen Lynch when he sings the last verse of the song "Superhero," where at one point he seems to get angrier by the second:

Then I would be Justice Guy! }}

* [[John Cleese]]'s frequent lapses into psychiatry and self-analysis could in part be blamed on the constant pressure on the man to be funny. A certain sort of creator breakdown must result from being instantly recognisable in the street and being constantly prevailed upon to do the silly walk, or the silly voice, or just to be funny - all of which got to the famously serious-minded Cleese.

** A somewhat specific example of this pressure could be seen from his commentary on the ''[[Fawlty Towers]]'' episode "The Builders". According the Cleese, the first people who saw the episode were some visiting Icelanders. Icelandic culture dictates that, even if you find something funny, you don't laugh at the show until the very end of it. The whole episode, he was faced with silent stoicisim, thinking that they were hating it when they were in fact finding it rather amusing. Nobody told Cleese this for sometime afterwards and to this day, he repeatedly states how much he hates the episode, seemingly for no other reason than this particular incident.

* British impressionist [[Mike Yarwood]] built a career out of being people other than himself. Renowned in the 1970's for his ability to effortlessly "do" politicians of the age such as Ted Heath, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan, a career largely based on impersonating Prime Ministers hit the rails in May, 1979, when a ''woman'' was elected PM.... Yarwood soon became one of the first victims of Thatcher's mass unemployment because of his inability to do drag, possibly making him unique among British comedians. He also discovered that while his takes on Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter were pretty much spot on, he was incapable of doing Ronald Reagan. He soon learnt nobody was interested in yesterday's politicians, and more than that, the "real" Mike Yarwood had been lost somewhere under all the other personas he put on for a living. Like [[Peter Sellers]], he bemoned his inability to find the "real me". This personal crisis developed into psychosis and alcoholism from which he never fully recovered.

** There was also the fact that he was coerced by the Vatican to create in a medium he disliked. He even made a subtle Easter Egg as a [[Take That]] to the Pope.

* [[Margaret Cho]] spiraled into drug and alcohol addiction after the cancellation of her show "All-American Girl", where she was not only forced to lose weight to play the part of herself but also simultaneously criticized for being "too Asian" and "not Asian enough." She wrote about her experiences in the book "I'm The One That I Want", and her stage show version of the book served to re-launch her career. Her experiences with Hollywood and addiction have since become a regular motif in her stand-up.